Courts open probe of Pearl Harbor
Army and Navy set up ‘grand juries’
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Many union demands expected –
Backpay decisions due shortly before election
Roosevelt will get retroactive wage cases as well as pay increase appeals
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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Tank work halts over racial issue
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Allies repulse starving Japs
Counterattack made in New Guinea
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Men died so they could celebrate –
Frenchmen dance and sing first time in five years
Yank band plays, Allied soldiers join Cherbourg in Bastille Day events
By William R. Higginbotham, United Press staff writer
Cherbourg, France –
For the first time in five long years, people danced in the streets of Cherbourg last night.
It was Bastille Day – the French day of independence – and was held in the Place de la Republique, next to the harbor where, less than three weeks ago, men died in battle so that these people could dance and sing.
U.S. soldiers, nurses and officers, British troops and French sailors who helped to liberate this historic city danced along with the French people.
While a band played, first serious tones and then American jazz, the French people looked on in almost disbelief. It had been a long time since they had witnessed such a scene.
The crowd was hushed as the band, led by Pvt. Lou Saunders of Butler, Pennsylvania, began playing. After a few serious numbers, Pvt. Saunders broke the band down to nine pieces and opened up with their theme “Time on My Hands.”
Serious faces among the crowd began to melt a little and there was scattered laughter when Frenchmen asked people to dance. Finally, the tension broke and the crowd formed a little circle as an American captain, Perry Miller, who used to teach English literature at Harvard, pushed back his helmet liner and started dancing with a tall Normandy blond.
Then the band broke into “I Go for You.” A French sailor with kinky hair and a bronze face danced alone; two Negro G.I.’s swung together; young French girls wearing the tricolor in their hair tried to step to the unfamiliar swing.
Guitarist Sgt. James R. Wilson of Lafayette, Indiana, brought the people stomping and cheering, and he stepped to the microphone and in the best hillbilly style sang of the “Hills of West Virginia.”
As the festivities ended, the band reformed in full and played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise.” A hush fell over the crowd. Men in battledress came to attention. The people stood and listened.
Goebbels warns Allies of chaos
Makes implicit appeal for softer terms
By the United Press
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Gen. Roosevelt is buried among 2,000 fallen Yanks
Battle noise furnishes accompaniment to ‘Taps’ at cemetery near Normandy village
By Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writer
Sainte-Mère-Église, France –
The body of Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, who died of a heart attack Wednesday night, rested in a simple grave today among those of 2,000 fallen comrades in the U.S. Army cemetery outside this liberated Normandy village.
As the body was lowered into a white-canvas-lined grave after an impressive military ceremony at twilight last evening a final salute was fired by a rifle squad picked from thee companies the general had led in the first D-Day assault on the beaches.
The rumble of gunfire from the front interpolated the rites and furnished an accompaniment to the muffled notes of the bugle sounding “Taps.”
The general’s son, Capt. Quentin Roosevelt of the “Fighting First” Division and his buddy and aide, Lt. Marcus O. Stevenson of San Antonio, Texas, stood solemnly at attention during the ceremonies.
Around them were more than a dozen high-ranking generals; several hundred doughboys; and numerous French who had gathered at the cemetery to honor the dead American soldiers as part of the Bastille Day observance.
The rites were conducted by two Army chaplains, Col. James A. Bryant of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and Lt. Col. P. C. Schroder of Flushing, New York (former pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Messiah).
Poll: Public split on allowing beer on ships
Vote on lifting of ban is tie
By George Gallup, director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Henry: Violent fight in cemetery routs Germans
Battle for ‘Murphy’s’ is short but bloody
By Thomas R. Henry, North American Newspaper Alliance
With U.S. forces in Normandy, France – (July 12, delayed)
It was “Judgment Morning” today at the village churchyard, “Murphy’s Crossroads.”
There were screams of shells and Gabriel’s trumpet as tombstones were knocked down, graves blown open, and an hour’s death rain on a suicide company of German paratroops manning machine guns among 17th-century crosses and through holes punched through church walls.
“Murphy’s” is the soldier pronunciation of the crossroads at La Meauffe, near Saint-Lô, east of the Vire River, where a unit of Missourians and Kansans fought yesterday, ending in one of the briskest fights of the campaign.
Unit is halted
A unit under the command of Lt. Col. Joseph Alexander of Chicago jumped off at dawn yesterday and was halted in midmorning before a hedgehog village (a village whose outer defenses included barbed-wire entanglements).
There was a little church, a moated chateau, and a few farmhouses where the Germans commanded all approaches. There were machine guns behind gravestones, in chateau windows and at road corners.
The crossroads was an elaborate system of dugouts connected by long tunnels.
Caught in hail
“I got six months’ training in two hours,” Capt. Gerald E. O’Connell of Emporia, Kansas, in command of the leading company.
Caught in a death hail of machine-gun fire, the men sought shelter in the ditches. There we were observed from the steeple and pinned down for two or three hours by mortars and German 88s behind La Meauffe.
Machine guns were firing from a brush pile 20 yards ahead. I finally made a flying leap over a hedge and lay with my breath knocked out on the other side. A few minutes later, I crawled back to shelter with the others.
Attack is repulsed
A second attack at noon was repulsed, and all afternoon the men lay in foxholes under a harassing mortar fire. The night was horrible for the troops, half of whom were kept awake constantly expecting a German onslaught.
Relief came this dawn when our artillery poured 1,500 rounds into the crossroads, under which the Germans died or fled. Then the infantry, with Lt. Sidney K. Strong of St. Ignatius, Montana, leading, advanced again under cover of intermittent shelling and chateau grounds. They found the place strewn with dead.
A few prisoners were taken, but most Germans had stolen out in the night, leaving only suicide groups. By noon the place was mopped up.
I never saw before such a Golgotha as “Murphy’s” cemetery after the battle. Tombs were a heap of rubble. Graves, many of them from the 17th century, yawned wide open.
Church is demolished
Dead Germans were strewn in the surrounding fields. Glass artificial flowers were pathetic dust. Wings were clipped on two pink and blue porcelain angels over the grave of two little girls. The old stone church was near complete demolition.
The only object intact was a gilt-crowned, red-robed, life-sized figure of Jesus, on a high pedestal over a bomb-struck altar overlooking the scene with sorrowful eyes.
With Lt. Col. Harry W. Johnson of Alexandria, Virginia, today I went over the scene of yesterday’s battle where artillery landed squarely 10 yards behind a 500-yard line of elaborate dugouts.
The barrage caught the defenders eating a breakfast of macaroni and water. They never knew what hit them. one who was shaving died with his razor in his hand. Another was apparently on his knees at morning prayers.
Twenty ghastly dead boys lay in a row on the edge of a red clover field.
“They look like big wax dolls,” said Col. Johnson in pity.
It has not been long since they played with soldier dolls. Thus, Hitler scrapes the bottom of his manpower barrel.
President runs long shot risk for Wallace
Roosevelt silence stirs hopes of score
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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G.I.’s overseas now often see movies first
Bottlenecks cleared by added projectors
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De Gaullists prove adept in civil affairs
They take over in Caen with efficiency
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
Caen, France –
Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s organization for the relief and rehabilitation of liberated French towns and cities is proving so brilliantly effective in the case of Caen that the pretentious preparation of Allied Civil Affairs detachments seem, to some extent, superfluous.
Even before British and Canadian troops entered the city, resistance leaders loyal to Gen. de Gaulle had, by popular consent, taken over the local administration, food control and health services with the result that Allied officers found that only limited material aid was required of them. Today, Caen is being administered by Fighting French officials acting in cordial liaison with Allied military authorities.
Allies are delighted
Allied civil officers are frankly delighted with this situation. A Canadian colonel charged with Caen’s civilian relief told this correspondent today:
The French authorities are working beautifully. What they need is our help, which is thankfully received. They asked us for oil to work a generator in a big hospital for the pumping machinery with which to restore the water system, soap, medical supplies and a very limited supply of staple foods. These we had prepared and were able to furnish immediately.
Everything else was fully organized by the officials acting under the de Gaulle organization. The city is being administered to the post by Gen. de Gaulle long in advance of D-Day.
The French preparations were meticulous, even to medical orderlies and cooks recruited from among French women in England. They all have been working magnificently with our civil affairs officers and our field commanders.
Within a few hours of the entry of our troops, the French administrators had requisitioned civilian trucks for the evacuation of homeless refugees to Bayeux. Only 3,000 required evacuation, some 30,000 electing to remain in Caen. Civilian casualties thus far counted are below advance estimates. About 650 were found in a hospital and there are about 600 civilian dead.
Worked with underground
The net result of Gen. de Gaulle’s ambitious preparations for civilian relief is that his appointees are everywhere and assuming complete control. This fits in with the plans of Allied Civil Affairs detachments whose instructions are to hand over the civil administration to the French as quickly as they can handle it. And de Gaulle appointees are quick as lightning in presenting the administrative fait accompli in every liberated town.
Everything points to the conclusion that Gen. de Gaulle made his preparations through Underground channels within France long before our invasion. Local leaders and rehabilitation problems were determined the moment Gen. de Gaulle took formal control of the resistance movement in July 1942.
McGlincy: Only one robot hits beachhead
By James F. McGlincy, United Press staff writer
U.S. 1st Army HQ, France – (July 13, delayed)
A German pilotless plane, either by accident or design, plummeted into the American sector on the eastern end of the Allied line in Normandy recently.
No other pilotless planes have landed on our front since then, and it is still uncertain whether this single instance was an error or an experiment by the Nazis. American officers said the Germans might have sent over the plane as a test, but the fact that there has not been any repeat performance led them to believe that it was an accident, probably due to a bad rudder or some other mechanical defect.
Nevertheless, it was conceded that the plane might have been launched from the runways later discovered in the Cherbourg area which at that time had not yet been captured.
The lone flying bomb did not land near any military installations and inflicted only minor damage.
Lt. Gardner Botsford of New York City, who investigated the incident, said that despite the tremendous explosion, the flying bomb failed to dent the earth. Pieces of metal were scattered for 100 yards but, Lt. Botsford reported, there weren’t enough to pick up or even try to begin to put together.