It’s a strange mysticism that belongs to the corps alone and brings comfort in death
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Escape in dead of night to give up; some killed on way to U.S. lines
By Ira Wolfert, North American Newspaper Alliance
With the U.S. infantry outside Saint-Lô, France – (July 13, delayed)
Finally, about one o’clock this morning an end we all had been hoping for came. There was no moon at the time but there was a kind of pearly quality to the darkness, and when something stood up in the open field you could make out the shape. Anyway, you could tell whether it was a man or tank.
There had been an air raid a mile or so back; then the Germans had laid in some shells to keep us awake, and our boys talked back for quite a while to show them we were awake. But now there is the quiet you get in a field at night when, no matter how soft you try to make your breathing, you can still hear your breath making a tickling little noise as it crawls in and out of your nose.
A Nebraska boy on outpost duty lay in a hole under a hedge chewing cigarette tobacco to give himself the feeling of having a smoke. There was an open field in front of him, boxed in all around by hedges. Suddenly the voice he wanted to hear and has been waiting for through the long, long dangerous day spoke up from the hedge beyond and to the right.
“Kamerad!” it said. “Nicht schießen!”
There was a rapid, excited panting for breath. “Halt!” our boy cried, and the cigarette tobacco sprayed out of his mouth in the excitement and clung like hair to his lips. “Halt! You–!” he cried.
Cry heard again
“Kamerad! Kamerad! Bitte nicht schießen (Friend! Friend! Please don’t shoot)” the voice repeated.
The Cornhusker’s finger was on the trigger of his rifle but he couldn’t see anything to shoot at except the hedges, and he thought a long time about what to say next, listening, as he thought, to the German tale coming in a rapid, begging, panting breathless voice and trying to pick out a word that would make sense to him.
“Hands up!” he said finally. “Get out in the open with your hands up!”
Big, baggy shapes
The German passed the word to his companions. He was the interpreter. “Hands hop,” he said excitedly. “Die hands hoch.”
He came out from the hedge and stood in the open field, a black, baggy shape in the pearl-colored darkness, trembling and crouched over a little, trying to plead with hands clasped behind his head.
Then another shape came out from the hedge behind him, and a third and a fourth, and still more, all baggy and black-looking and all crouched over pleadingly.
“He’s brought the whole damn Hitler army with him,” the Nebraskan shouted, and for a moment in that dim field it really looked that way. It really looked to his excited eyes like the beaten-up pulp of a gutted army, but it turned out to be only seven boys led by a 19-year-old German corporal from Carlsbad serving his Führer as a rifleman.
Psychological warfare
The corporal had sampled some of our psychological warfare put out by a mobile radio broadcasting company, a combined British and American unit which had won medals for itself by talking some 2,200 Germans into coming out of their tunnels and forts in Cherbourg.
The situation here is quite different from Cherbourg and much indicative of the breakdown in morale, at least in that part of the German Army now fighting on the Cherbourg Peninsula.
At Cherbourg, the Germans were surrounded and had no hope of being rescued to fight again for their Führer. Here the rear was open for a retreat if the German command would permit it.
In this case our psychological warfare, aided by our crushing weight of firepower, talked the Germans into defying the orders of their Nazi masters and into running away from the bullets shot at them by their officers and into the American bullets in order to surrender.
Some are Poles
In all, 18 men gave themselves up in the early hours of this morning. Some of them are Poles, but most are Germans. How many more were killed trying to do so is not yet known, but there must have been many, for each of these 18 was shot at by his own officers on his way to us.
How many more Germans want to surrender but are afraid to walk the dangerous path to our lines is also not yet known, but the prisoners I spoke to as they came in all said that whole companies would surrender if they could find a way to do so.
That seems to be the problem to work out a path along with the Germans may surrender. And until this is worked out the fighting here will continue to be the hard, slow work of hopping from hedge to hedge. The Nazi’s best chance for life is to fight off our assault, and these beaten-up, sagging bags of Nazi “supermen” that we are fighting here want to keep on living. Oh, yes, that is very high on their minds – to keep on living.
Executions by Nazis to be punished
SHAEF, London, England (UP) – (July 15)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower announced today that the French Forces of the Interior under Maj. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Kœnig are a combatant force and form an integral part of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
The Allied Supreme Commander issued his statement after receiving conclusive evidence that the Germans were labelling the French resistance forces as francs-tireurs (free shooters) and executing them.
Openly bear arms
He pointed out that the members of the FFI openly bear arms against the enemy and are instructed to conduct their operations in accordance with the rules of war. They are provided with a distinctive emblem, he said, adding that he regards them as an army under his command.
Under these circumstances, he warned, German reprisals against the resistance troops violate the rules of war. Such crimes only strengthen the determination of the United Nations to bring the war to a speedy, victorious conclusion and see that justice is carried out, he said.
Guilty to be punished
Every effort will be made to trace the authors of any atrocities committed against the members of forces under his command, he said, and steps to this end are already being taken. The guilty will be brought to swift justice, he added.
The London radio, heard by the United Press in New York, charged the Germans had executed a group of French patriots in Dax, 32 miles northeast of Bayonne. Quoting reports from San Sebastian, Spain, the broadcast added that a large-scale street battle had taken place in Bordeaux between resistance groups and the Fascist militia.
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Advance of three hedgerows costly day’s work, but Yanks show they can beat Hitler’s fanatics
By James C. McGlincy, United Press staff writer
Outside Saint-Lô, France – (July 15)
“Advanced three hedgerows.”
That’s the way the message read which reached this command post this afternoon. It summed up the whole bloody battle for Saint-Lô.
In the attack on Saint-Lô, which began Monday, a gain of three hedgerows represents a sizable advance.
This isn’t a spectacular battle. there are no breakthroughs, no end runs, no big bag of prisoners – just a steady fight day after day that is whittling down both sides.
The Germans are being beaten here. But it’s no garden party. It’s a rough show, probably as rough in its way as the initial landings on the toughest beaches on D-Day.
Ceaselessly all week
The outfit attacking Saint-Lô has fought ceaselessly all week. Almost every day it has been the same story – our boys have jumped off in the morning.
They’ve found energy when they thought there was none left. Maybe they’ve had one- or two-hours sleep. Maybe none at all. Maybe they’ve been shelled all night. But in the dawn, they’ve gotten up and started forward gain.
Today was no exception. The boys started forward at 5:15 and by late afternoon they could count a maximum advance of half a mile. I’ve just looked at these boys. They’re tired, their eyes are bloodshot. Their faces are dirty and bearded. And their morale is high.
Having a tough time
But they aren’t kidding themselves. They have been having a tough time and they will be mightily grateful when they can have an end to it.
One of those kids came to Maj. Paul W. Prznarich of Mesa, Arizona, to report this evening. He was Henry H. Noonan of Santa Ana, California. He was just a private but he knew his fighting, this thin kid with the serious eyes and four days growth of whiskers.
He squatted on his heels and told what he’d seen. The Germans had one field covered by a machine-gun set with its muzzle dead level with the ground so that you didn’t have a chance even lying down.
“Do you know how their artillery is spotting us?” he asked.
Periscopes over hedges
“They’ve got periscopes which stick up over the hedges five or ten feet and they can see you every time you stick up your head.”
He told how the boys had been dropping all around him. He shook his head as though he couldn’t quite understand it. In the same tone, he told how he spotted a German in a foxhole.
He said:
I stopped and emptied the whole magazine of a Tommy gun in it. I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. I just ran on.
He wasn’t bragging about killing the German. He told it as matter-of-factly as he told the rest of it. It gives you an idea how tough these boys have gotten up here watching their buddies go down beside them.
Life only a game
They’re fighting some tough babies too. They found a copy of a German paratrooper’s credo on a prisoner. Among platitudes about what a grand and glorious thing it is to die for the Fatherland and Führer, it said: “We parachutists know how to die because life is only a game for us.”
They’re fighting as though they believe that. They’re being pounded by a mighty array of guns which is never silent for a whole minute, but they’ve got the terrain on their side.
One of these days the capture of Saint-Lô is going to be announced and you may be sure that it was won the hard way – with the blood and guts of American kids who have got the stuff to overcome Hitler’s tough young fanatics.
Nazis kept guessing about next move
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
SHAEF, London, England – (July 15)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, after having picked the most advantageous point on the entire French and Low Country coast for the invasion, has maintained since D-Day “complete strategic ascendancy over the enemy,” Supreme Headquarters state officially today.
It is now known that after 40 days of fighting the Germans, who tried to hold the beaches at all costs, are still confused about Allied intentions and unable to make a satisfactory realignment of their forces, the headquarters spokesman added.
Of the 60 divisions which were available to the Germans on D-Day for the entire Western European defense, about 20 to 25 are now engaged in Normandy – 11 to 12 on the American sector.
Attacks five beaches
Gen. Eisenhower snatched the advantage from the enemy at the moment of landing by smashing onto five beaches along a 15-mile front with assault forces so large that they equaled one-eighth of all German armies in the west, the spokesman said.
Sixty German divisions probably amount to 720,000 to 900,000 men which means that the Allied invasion army must have been between 90,000 and 112,000 men.
Used mathematical formula
He added:
The Germans had no clear convictions where our first landing was going to be. As a result, they fell back on a mathematical formula based on the theory that the danger of a landing increased with the proximity to England.
In Normandy, Gen. Eisenhower knew he was going to face eight enemy divisions. His troops were thrown against seven infantry and one panzer divisions.
The density of the German defense forces varied with the locality. Northward the density was reduced sharply toward the northern tip of Holland.
Few on southern coast
Southward it dwindled also but less sharply and from the Seine River on around the coast to Cherbourg, there was about one division for every 20 miles.
All the way from the mouth of the Loire River to the Spanish border, there were only three divisions of inferior quality.
On France’s Mediterranean coast, there was one division to every 30 miles on the western side and thinning out to one division for 60 miles in the easily-defendable Nice–Cannes area.
With the U.S. Army in Normandy, France (UP) – (July 14, delayed)
A Russian general and two colonels, making the first Soviet visit to the American beachhead, said today that they were “pleased and impressed” and that the Americans were now in position where they can open up and go places.
The Russians were taken to the prisoner cages, where their eyes lighted when they looked upon the throngs of imprisoned Nazis.
They thought most of them a puny lot and one of the officers remarked: “All of the big Germans are already under the soil of Russia.”
The general was impressed by American air superiority. “In Russia,” he said, “we could not have our camps above ground as you Americans do here.”
His only criticism of U.S. methods was that we weren’t secretive enough. He said too many people had access to the situation maps at various headquarters.
U.S. troops six miles from key Italian port
BY James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Higher wages asked for unskilled labor
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Barkley is second, but far behind
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Attorney General’s criticism of strikes during wartime begins stinging rebuke
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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His actions wraps up all 72 ballots
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
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U.S. would subscribe almost $3 billion
By Elmer C. Walzer, United Press financial editor
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Clevelanders add up some twisters
The European War will end at 2:00 p.m. on Sept. 7, 1944 – if you believe the figures.
Admitting the truth of the old adage that figures can be twisted to mean anything, it must still be admitted that Patt Hallisey and Mike Gettings of Cleveland have done some fancy twisting to predict so precisely the exact moment when hostilities will cease.
Their method, as revealed in the Hotel Gazette, a trade publication, was arrived at by “going into seclusion with slide rules, reams of paper, and dozens of pencils.”
They produced a chart headed “What Do You Make of This?” and listing the birth year, age, year office was assume and number of years in office of Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Il Duce, Stalin and Tōjō. The columns all add up to the same figure, 3888.
Next step, for an unexplained reason, was to cut that 3888 figure in half to get the “year the war will end” and to cut in one-fourth to get the day.
The chart, and what do you make of it?
Churchill Hitler Roosevelt Il Duce Stalin Tōjō Year born 1874 1889 1882 1883 1879 1884 Age 70 55 62 61 65 60 Took office 1940 1933 1933 1922 1924 1941 Years in office 4 11 11 22 20 3 — — — — — — 3888 3888 3888 3888 3888 3888 END OF WAR: ½ of 3888 – 1944
½ of 1944 equals 972, equal 9/7, 2 p.m., Sept. 7, 1944To find the supreme ruler, take first letter of each of the above names.
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The Nazis threaten that if the war “spills over our holy German land,” they will “turn this continent into a maelstrom of destruction where only one cry is heard – the cry of blood.”
As if their bloodlust needed advertising!
Do they think the survivors of five years of the Nazi “maelstrom of destruction” can be frightened now? Do they that German land is more “holy” to Germans than the desecrated homes of Poles, Russians, Frenchmen, Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians, Yugoslavs and others are dear to those victims of German invaders? Do they think the British have forgotten the blitz or the present wanton robot slaughter? Do they think the Czechs, or any of the Allies, have forgotten Lidice?
Have the Germans not just reminded the world of their savagery by deeds more terrible than their words of blood?
In the Greek village of Distomo near the foot of Mount Parnassus, seat of Apollo and the Muses, neighbor to the birthplace of Hesiod and of Plutarch, the supermen of German kultur last month slaughtered more than 1,000 unarmed civilians. According to the report by the Nazis’ own puppet regime:
The villagers were rounded up within a square, facing machine-gun posts and troops with submachine guns. When over 1,000 of the villagers were assembled, the Nazis opened up point-blank fire. When all the victims had fallen, the troopers went among them, pistoling those who were still alive, and stamping the life from babies whom mothers and others had protected with their own bodies. The Germans then fired the village.
And now the Germans warn us that if “holy German land” is touched, they will cause “destruction” everywhere and “the cry of blood.”
And not long ago, incidentally, a group of American churchmen signed a petition opposing continuation of air raids against German war industries without the effects of which the present successful invasion of France would have been impossible.
When the Allies have closed in further on Germany – when invading armies are actually fighting on German soil and the Nazis are working desperately for a negotiated peace, it may be expected that pleas of “mercy for a defeated enemy” will arise. The same sort of impractical idealists who wanted to stop the bombing of Germany will then find excuses for the “misled” German people, and will plead that we do not continue a hopelessly one-sided war merely to punish the defeated foe.
There will be pleas not to march on Berlin; to stop the bloodbath with a merciful peace – in short, to let the Germans off short of complete defeat, as we did so disastrously the last time.
There will be many well-intentioned people who will join in this cry solely because they want to get their loved ones home, and see in a negotiated peace the surest means of shortening the war.
If we are saps again, there will come another war after the Nazi-trained youth of Germany has had a chance to recover from this war.
If the atrocities of today are forgotten and forgiven, Germany will surely turn on the world again. Only by complete, savage, final defeat on the bloody fields of Germany can this war be won with the probability that it won’t break out again in an even more ghastly form.