Reporters in robot’s path tell of escape from death
By Collie Smith and J. Edward Murray, United Press staff writers
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Hitler speaks to help rally home front
Talk is scheduled for next Thursday
By Edward W. Beattie, United Press staff writer
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2,000 Jap bodies litter route of infiltration
Marines on Guam hurl back pre-dawn charge by several thousand on Guam
By Percy Finch, representing combined Allied press
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Guam Japs waging fight to death
Cliff-to-cliff battle much like Saipan
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Shapiro: Fanatical Nazi resistance below Caen puzzles Allies
British and Canadians stopped cold by fiercest enemy opposition since D-Day
By L. S. B. Shapiro, North American Newspaper Alliance
With British and Canadian forces below Caen, France – (July 27, delayed)
Out of the tortured, rubble-strewn terrain that marks the rolling battlefield between the Orne River and the town of Bourguébus, one dominating fact emerges. It is that the German formations opposing the British and Canadian troops are fighting more effectively now than at any other time since D-Day.
Whether or not this is merely a coincidence, they have retaliated with a new degree of frenzied violence since the attempted coup within Germany. They have, temporarily at least, stopped our advance and there was only one reply when an Allied officer in the line was asked for an explanation.
“Jerry is throwing everything he’s got into this fight,” he said, “and that’s plenty.”
Fighting like madmen
There is no tendency to blame the weather or the artillery fire or the air support or any of the many facets of a modern battle that can be used to concoct an excuse for failure to move forward. The only possible story is that the Germans are fighting like madmen and are using superbly the weapons they have at their disposal.
Sullen, exhausted prisoners coming into our lines can give few clues to explain this development, but several explanations are put forward. One is that, since last Friday, young, fanatical Nazi officers have been promoted to take charge of formations on this front and have imbued their men with or bullied them into new powers of resistance.
Another is that they have a special plea from Hitler to hold on pending the arrival at the front of so-called new victory weapons. A third explanation is that the full extent of the German crisis has been revealed to the troops and they have been exhorted to make the supreme effort to stabilize the front on the theory that retreat means collapse everywhere.
Poles, Russians fight well
Any one or all of these explanations may fit the situation, but none explains the sturdy resistance of Russian, Yugoslav and Polish elements which form probably 20 percent of the German formations.
Whatever form of bribery or compulsion has been practiced on them, they are fighting effectively enough to point up the power of discipline and training upon the peasant mind. They desert when they have the opportunity, but their German noncoms see to it that they have precious little opportunity, and so long as they are in the line, they do their work like automatons.
Whether this is the beginning of unforeseen German strength on this front or a last superhuman effort before they collapse remains a very lively question.
The Afro-American (July 29, 1944)
ARTILLERYMEN IN FRANCE CORRECT OFFICER WHO THOUGHT THEM QUARTERMASTERS
Tan gun crew stuns Germans; Nazis call artillery ‘whispering death’
Part of mixed unit; boys with long toms called Army’s best
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent
With advanced U.S. forces, France –
We were about three miles from the German lines. Heavy gunfire was continuous and German ack-ack was spattering mushroom bursts of flak as our planes dived over their lines and our observation grasshopper planes sailed placidly along, spotting the German guns and radioing back their positions.
When a white colonel saw colored troops in the midst of all this, he said: “This is the first time that I have ever seen quartermasters up so close to the front line.”
Staff Sgt. Eugene W. Jones of 1611 W Butler St., Philadelphia, replied:
Sir, we are not quartermasters, we are field artillery and we have just been given a firing mission. Want to watch us lay one on the target?
One of best in Army
That was my introduction to the first colored 155mm howitzer outfit in France, one of the best groups of artillerymen in the Army, white or colored. Two battalions have been in action for weeks and had a big part in the taking of La Haye-du-Puits. Another unit operating 155mm Long Toms has just arrived.
These hardworking gunners will tell you frankly that they know they are good. Their officers told me that they are good. White infantrymen who won’t budge unless these guys are laying down a barrage say that they are good and German prisoners ask to see our automatic artillery that comes so fast and so accurate.
Late in the afternoon, I was conducted to a cleverly concealed gun of one battery engaged in shelling a target miles away by 1st Sgt. John Clay of Louise, Mississippi.
As we arrived, Staff Sgt. W. G. Gaiter of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, had a field phone in his hand and said quietly “fire mission” and all twelve men jumped to alert. “Base deflection so and so,” said Gaiter, and the men automatically twisted dials causing the big gun to swerve to the described position. “Load with charge so and so and fire.” Gaiter snapped.
It happened so quickly that I had no time to put my fingers to my ears. Boom, went the gun, and you could hear the heavy projectile whispering on its way. “Cease firing, end of mission,” said Gaiter, and the men had the gun open and clean even as he spoke. End of mission means that the target has been demolished, which usually comes after one shot from these boys.
New Jersey lad ace gunner
Gunner at this post was baby-faced Donald Morre, 21, of New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was at Rutgers when drafted. The kid is known as one of the best gunners in the Army. The boys tell a story of another outfit firing at a German observation post in a church steeple during the fight for La Haye-du-Puits. They missed several rounds, but Moore and his gang blasted the steeple at first shot. I saw what was left of the church.
Others in the gun crew are: Cpl. Ozzie Jones of Birmingham, Alabama; Cpl. George Hood, Pvt. Perry Cockrell and Pvt. Eseasy Redmand, all of Lexington, Mississippi; Pvt. Willie Allison of Columbus, Georgia; Pvt. Isaac Rolle of West Palm Beach, Florida; Pfc. Lester Dobson of Patterson, Georgia; Pfc. Allan Davis of New York City; and Pvts. Jefferson Stockard of Oxford, Mississippi; Nathaniel Davis of Chula, Mississippi; and Eddie Scott of Reddick, Mississippi.
Artillery whispering death
The Germans call our artillery whispering death because the shells don’t whine and the lads sit at the guns day and night, ready for the phone to ring. Before arrival of the Long Tom the group had two white and two colored battalions, but now it has three colored and one white battalion, with white officers except two chaplains, Capt. H. C. Terrel of Birmingham, and Lt. Carranza Holliday of Longview, Texas.
On the roads nearby and all around the gun crews are signs of bitter fighting. Our boys entered the area before the mine detector crews and found dead Germans and Yanks and many cattle. I saw dead swollen livestock all around that perfumed the neighborhood; also much discarded equipment, German and American. I saw one American helmet, still full of clotted blood, where a sniper had scored a direct hit on the helmet.
Snipers were still around and I approached each hedgerow cautiously. That first night, I wrapped a blanket around me and slept in a foxhole without undressing. The gun crews had their shoes on for five days. There was no laughter or loud talk as every man realized that this is serious business, with death stalking all day and hovering in the air at night.
Save thousands of lives
Unmindful of this, however, these men take pride in taking the lead in every big push and they will have performed a memorable service for the Allied cause. Their accurate fire preceding advancing infantry columns has saved thousands of lives and softened many targets the gunners never see.
As I crawled through the brush to a camouflaged position, a message came over the field phone that enemy planes were approaching the area. I was already nervous and dived into a foxhole dug by the Germans, but these men stayed at their posts, some manning machine guns, others cursing Jerry as they calmly scanned the sky overhead.
Stewart describes work of artillery unit in Normandy
By Ollie Stewart, AFRO war correspondent
With advanced U.S. forces, France – (by cable)
Every member of our field artillery unit that I have talked to in this sector has expressed nothing but contempt for the German 88s when compared to the 155mm howitzers they operate.
This unit, a part of a four-unit artillery group including a battalion of 105’s and two 155mm Long Toms, has been termed “one of our best units” by the colonel at corps headquarters.
All are specialists
Every man in the unit is a specialist with a definite job to do for which he has had intensive training. To fire one shell requires the use of precision instruments and the latest equipment known to modern warfare.
The headquarters or command post is the nerve center which directs the fire of all battalions under its command. The battalion headquarters likewise has a fire direction network of phones to direct the fire of three firing batteries under its control, and finally the battery commander directs the fire of his four guns.
Experts in unit
All along the line are radio experts, observation post experts, surveyors, computors, gun crew chiefs, machine-gunners, recorders and dispatchers. Dug in the ground, the draftsmen chart the exact position and elevation of the gun necessary to score a hit on the target, and also the power charge to be used.
The guns are dispersed but the fire of all of them can be directed on any given area.
When the big push begins and a heavy barrage is called for, the corps commander may order “serenade,” which means that perhaps the battalion will aim to fire all guns simultaneously so that the target is completed blanketed by fire. The effect is frightfully devastating and a wide area is pulverized.
Usually, however, the artillery is used to knock out gun positions, tanks, or ammunition dumps. The muzzle of the howitzer is covered except when firing to keep the enemy from spotting the position. After firing, the barrel is lowered and hidden.
The battalions have their own mine detector squads and signal section for stringing wires.
Our troops 9% of invasion force
SHAEF, England –
Colored soldiers, now constituting nine percent of U.S. troops in Normandy, are contributing generously to the Allied effort, the War Department recently announced.
Maj. Gen. Cecil R. Moore, chief engineer, in this theater, recently praised their accomplishment of engineer tasks. He said that one battalion volunteered its free time for six weeks to expedite special programs of construction.
An engineer firefighting company is credited with saving millions of dollars’ worth of such vital supplies as gasoline, paint, lumber, and other stocks in depot of the United Kingdom.
Two colored signal construction battalions in Normandy have earned praise for signal installations there. They rehabilitated German communication lines and instruments for our use and captured a number of prisoners.
SURVIVORS DESCRIBE HORROR OF BLAST
No buildings left standing; men knocked from beds mile away
AFRO at the scene; third blast Wednesday halts salvage
By Pauline A. Young and J. Robert Smith
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FOUR NEW OFFICERS ARRIVE IN ITALY
2nd largest infantry group also lands; Brazil unit mixed
Joe Louis to begin tour of Italy
By Art Carter, AFRO war correspondent
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Huachuca colonel defies War Department’s orders
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War reporter in Middle East
By Frank E. Bolden, NNPA war correspondent
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Race plank stalled Democrats two days
Convention deadlock broken by wire from FDR okaying compromise
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Dewey calls New York’s soldier ballot simplest of states’
New York –
Declaring New York soldier ballot the simplest of all the states, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, charged today that “a group has been playing partisan politics with the right of the state’s fighting men to vote;” declaring, “it is time that this campaign of deceit backed by unlimited financial resources, was labeled and exposed,” he issued a prepared statement at his press conference.
It says:
Instead of helping soldiers to vote, they have distributed millions of misleading circulars designed to confuse both the public mind and the mind of soldiers.
Asks families’ aid
Accordingly, I urged all families and friends of members of the Armed Forces immediately to write to them telling them the truth about their right to vote in the state of New York.
The New York Soldier Vote Law is drawn to fit precisely Title II of the federal law. Every member of the Armed Forces will be handed a postcard. This is required of the Army and Navy by federal law.
All a soldier has to do is to sign his name and his home and service address on that postcard and mail it to the War Ballot Commission at Albany.
Indirect application
Even a letter or card to the soldier’s friends or parents will serve the purpose if sent in to Albany. The soldier will receive a full ballot with the name of every candidate for every office printed on it.
This is the simplest application form of any state in the Union and yet it meets the requirement of the State Constitution so every ballot will be both complete and valid.
130,000 received
Even before the government postcards have been placed in the hands of the men and women in the Armed Forces and almost four months before election, the New York State War Ballot Commission has already received more than 130,000 applications.
I have been urged, in addition, to approve the federal supplementary ballot for use in New York State. This is only a partial ballot for four offices and would be void and worthless under the Constitution of this state.
Colored vote in Texas primary
Houston, Texas –
Colored citizens all over the state voted, Saturday, in the Texas Democratic primary, the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that these primaries should be open to colored Texans.
No violence was reported as election officials obeyed orders of state and county officials to permit colored persons to vote if they had qualified by poll tax payments.
One precinct refuses
Dr. Lonnie Smith, a local dentist on whose case the 1944 Supreme Court decision was based, cast the first ballot in his precinct.
Only one precinct here was known to have refused to permit colored persons to vote, and affidavits are being taken preparatory to fighting this case.
Formed precinct convention
Colored voters here not only went to the polls Saturday but also organized a precinct convention, and at another were elected delegates to the Democratic county convention on July 29.
In Precinct 25, which is predominantly colored, 50-60 colored and three white persons attended the convention called by E. H. Harrison, union officials and 3rd Ward Civic Club vice president, who was elected temporary chairman.
Miss Lottie Wallis, white precinct election judge, was elected county convention delegate.
Mr. Harrison said that Miss Wallis was named because it was a precinct custom that the election judge be elected the first delegate and that the district was entitled to only one representative.
Heaviest vote in history
Miss Wallis said that in Precinct 25, which has 25-50 qualified white and about 1,000 colored voters, 400 votes were tallies as compared with 16 cast by white voters in the 1942 primary. This was its heaviest vote in history.
At the Precinct 48 convention, ten colored and ten white persons were elected delegates to the county convention.
2,627 vote in one county
M. L. O. Andrews, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Committee, said on Monday that colored persons cast 2,627 of the approximately 55,000 votes tallied in that county.
Mr. Harrison estimated that 9,000 colored persons in the county paid poll taxes this year.
Sidelights on Democratic Convention in Chicago
By Carl D. Lawrence
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Brown almost an ‘incident’ at Democratic Convention
By Harry McAlpin
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Editorial: The postcard Democratic plank
That’s all, brother
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week adopted a postcard plank of 41 words on the race question. This is it, and for the sake of comparison, beside it are printed the Democratic plank of 1940 and the plank adopted by the Republicans:
1944 Democratic plank – Roosevelt-Truman (41 words):
We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.
1940 Democratic plank – Roosevelt-Wallace (103 words):
Negroes
Our Negro citizens have participated actively in the economic and social advances launched by this administration, including fair labor standards, social security benefits, health protection, work relief projects, decent housing, aid to education, and the rehabilitation of low-income farm families.
We have aided more than half a million Negro youths in vocational training, education and employment.
We shall continue to strive for complete legislative safeguards against discrimination in government service and benefits, and in the national defense forces.
We pledge to uphold due process and the equal protection of the laws for every citizen, regardless of race, creed or color.
1944 Republican plank – Dewey-Bricker (108 words):
Racial and Religious Intolerance
We unreservedly condemn the injection into American life of appeals to racial or religious prejudice.
We pledge an immediate Congressional inquiry to ascertain the extent to which mistreatment, segregation and discrimination against Negroes who are in our armed forces are impairing morale and efficiency, and the adoption of corrective legislation.
We pledge the establishment by federal legislation of a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission.
Anti-Poll Tax
The payment of any poll tax should not be a condition of voting in federal elections and we favor immediate submission of a Constitutional amendment for its abolition.
Anti-Lynching
We favor legislation against lynching and pledge our sincere efforts in behalf of its early enactment.
At first glance, it is evident that the 1944 Democratic plank is less than half as long as the other two.
In addition to its brevity, it is so general that it does not use the word Negro or colored. The party states its belief in equal rights and a vote for minorities as expressed in the Constitution, and adds that Congress should see that these rights are protected.
In 1940, the Democrats were far more specific in promising colored people (they used the word Negro then) legislation against discrimination in government service and in the Armed Forces. At that time, they also promised enforcement of all laws without regard to race, creed, or color.
By contrast, the 1944 Republican Convention plank, adopted in the same Chicago Stadium just a few weeks previously, not only condemned race and religious prejudice, but pledged (1) an investigation into mistreatment and segregation of colored people in the Armed Forced and legislation to remedy it; (2) a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission; (3) a constitutional amendment to abolish poll taxes, and (4) a federal anti-lynching law.
While the Democratic Convention substituted general and almost meaningless phrases on the color question, it was quite definite and specific on other matters.
For example, it favored (1) the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and citizenship; (2) legislation guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work with men; (3) self-government for Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii; (4) a vote for the citizens of the District of Columbia; (5) use of an international armed force to prevent future wars, and (6) a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.
Why, then, was the Democratic Convention so definite and sure on those six issues mentioned above and so mealy-mouthed on the issues affecting the progress and welfare of colored people? Why did it say something in 1940 and little or nothing in 1944?
The answer is: the South. The Southern delegates who stand for segregation and white supremacy, came to the convention united upon the program of eliminating the “colored” plank altogether.
They did not succeed entirely but they did “cut and carve” the plank until it bears no relationship to the party’s stronger stand of 1940.
All told, the 1944 Democratic Convention plank is not only disappointing to colored Democrats, it is unsatisfactory to colored people.
Certain it is that the great Democratic Party which bid openly for the colored vote in 1940 has withdrawn the glad hand in just four years.
Editorial: Roosevelt and Truman
Unable to prevent the renomination of President Roosevelt, the South ganged up on Vice President Wallace Friday night in Chicago so that the 1944 ticket is Roosevelt and Truman.
In the interest of party harmony, Mr. Roosevelt, who cast Garner aside in 1940, fed Wallace to the wolves in 1944.
To the credit of the liberal Mr. Wallace, it can be said that he went down fighting.
His dramatic challenge, “The future belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political democracy and economic democracy regardless of race, color or religion. In a political, educational and economic sense, there must be no inferior races. The poll tax must go. Equal educational opportunities must come. The future must bring equal wages for equal work regardless of sex or race,” electrified the convention and stunned the white-supremacy Southern delegates.
The answer of the South, led by Maryland, Delaware, Alabama and South Carolina, was to switch their votes from their favorite sons to Truman. In this, they had the help of machine bosses of Chicago, New York and Jersey City who opposed Wallace for his tie-up with the CIO labor unions.
Altogether the South had a couple of field days in Chicago last week. So far as the convention itself was concerned, the New Deal was held in check. The South had one foot in the saddle.