FDR denies Nelson ‘kicked in the teeth’
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Security conference opens at Washington
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Republicans claim New England sweep
Albany, New York (AP) – (Aug. 21)
The prediction that the Republicans would carry most, if not all, of New England was made to Governor Thomas E. Dewey today as the GOP presidential nominee awaited the outcome of his foreign affairs talks by proxy with Wendell L. Willkie.
The Governor spent nearly three hours with Horace A. Hildreth, Republican candidate for Governor of Maine, who later told reporters that either Dewey or his running mate, Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, would visit the state on a campaign trip.
Editorial: More nurses
The war news has been so good in recent weeks that we at home are all too liable to overlook a part of the cost of victory which, so far as Europe is concerned, seems not so far ahead.
This does not apply, of course, to households which have been stricken, but only to the tens of thousands of other homes that have been spared. In these the steadily mounting casualty lists have little significance.
It is time for everybody to recognize the fact that with each day’s fighting on this tremendously accelerated scale the number of troops wounded is on the increase. Ultimate victory is levying a heavier price upon our fighting forces with every advance.
These men who are struck down in battle need the best of care if their lives are to be saved. The miracles of sulfa drugs and penicillin, the marvelous skill of our surgeons, alone cannot do this. Nursing still must be depended upon to complete the job. More and more nurses are needed at the front.
If they are to take up their burdens more women will have to take nurse training. It is said that 60,000 cadet nurses are needed immediately. As they complete their courses and are prepared to care for the sick at home nurses with greater skill and more rounded training may be released for the battlefronts.
The need is for large numbers of volunteers. Any girls or young woman with average schooling and in good physical condition is eligible. Surely Wilmington, which has done well in training nurses, aides and cadets will not fail in this increasing emergency. Inquiries addressed to Red Cross headquarters will bring all information promptly.
Editorial: Get the robot coast
The taking of Paris is not the major objective of the Allied campaign in France. The real object is to destroy all enemy forces therein.
At the same time the capture of Paris is not to be sneezed at. It will represent another major victory in the Battle of Europe and impress the German people and the German Armed Forces with the impossibility of halting the Allied juggernaut, now that it is rolling steadily toward Berlin.
Another advantage, which cannot be overlooked, is that with Paris taken, U.S. and British forces will be freer to concentrate heavier forces upon the robot front, which seems to have its focal point at or near Calais but probably extends from the Low Countries to La Harve. England must be saved as quickly as possible from these destructive robot raids that have levied so heavily upon human life and property in recent months.
England is the Allied base for supplies and troops in combat with the enemy in northern France. Its importance cannot be overestimated. Allied supply must function from England without interruption or interference. But supply cannot function at par as long as German robots continue to pour across the Channel. They must be stopped and the only way they can be stopped is to drive the Germans away from the Channel coast.
This, naturally, will be among the undertakings to be launched by some section of Gen. Montgomery’s forces with the fall of Paris. In view of the magnificent leadership Gen. Patton has displayed in the sweep toward Paris the job might fall to his lot.
Editorial: Joke wore too thin
The political censorship section of the Soldier Vote Bill was good for some laughs, but the joke was beginning to wear thin. So now the inevitable modification of the measure has been voted by Congress.
The Senate amendments do just what should have been done in the first place. They make certain that the soldier or sailor will get the same sort of reading matter available to him at home, limited only by the exigencies of war. They are going to let him see what movies and plays are available, listen to the radio, and receive his private mail – including political literature – without interference.
And they are going to dispel some unflattering undemocratic inferences that existed in the original measure as drafted by Senator Robert A. Taft. It was hard to escape the conclusion, under Army execution of the original law, that Congress regarded a citizen as radically changed when he put on the uniform of his country. Congress seemed to think that he abandoned all independence of judgment with his civilian clothes. It appeared, at least under the law’s application, that the man fighting his country’s battles should be protected from any writing inclined to excite discussion. Congress apparently felt that the servicemen’s diet of information should be extremely bland – no roughage, no condiments, and not much quantity.
Senator Taft consented to and cooperated in the Senate amendments to the political censorship law, which is to his credit. But in doing so he blamed the War Department for failure of the first measure, and suggested that the Army’s overliteral application of the law had been deliberately ridiculous, designed to discredit Congress and sway the election.
This seems unlikely. If the original law had not been vague, flexible and ill-advised, its interpretation would not have been so silly. If the original law had not carried some stiff penalties for violation, the Army probably would not have been so zealous.
Senator Taft also voiced some doubts about the War Department’s political impartiality. This also seems unlikely. The War Department is headed by a distinguished, respected Republican statesman. The Army Chief of Staff has never voted. Its officers are drawn from men of both parties.
No, the sad truth seems to be that Congress pulled a legislative boner.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 22, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
On the Western Front, France – (by wireless)
I would like to tell you in detail the remarkable story of the wounded RAF pilot whom we released after he had lain unnoticed in the wreckage of his plane for eight days on a battlefield.
Several American soldiers sprung out of somewhere a few moments after we arrived. They grasped the situation instantly, and began tearing at the sides of the plane with pliers and wire clippers. They worked as though seconds had suddenly become jewels.
The tough metal came off in strips no bigger than your fingers, and only after terrific pulling and yanking. It seemed as if it would take hours to make a hole big enough to get the pilot out.
The ripping and pounding against the metal sides of the hollow plane made a thunderous noise. I peered inside and asked the pilot: “Does the noise bother you?”
He said:
No, I can stand it. But tell them to be careful when they break through on the other side – my leg is broken, you know.
But the American boys worked faster than we believed possible. They tore their fingers on the jagged edges of the metal; they broke strong aluminum ribs with one small crowbar and a lot of human strength. Soon they had a hole big enough so that I could get my head and shoulders inside the cockpit.
Somebody handed me a canteen of water and I shoved it through the hole to the pilot. He drank avidly. When he put the canteen down, he set it on his bare chest and held it with both hands.
“By God, I could drink a river dry,” he said.
Somebody outside said not to let him drink anymore right now. The pilot said, “Would you pour some on my head?”
I soaked my dirty handkerchief, and rubbed his forehead with it. His hair was nut brown in color and very long. His whiskers were reddish and scraggly and he had a little mustache. His face seemed long and thin, and yet you could tell by his tremendous chest that he was a big man and powerful.
His eyes were not glassy, but I was fascinated by his eyeballs. They didn’t protrude; it was just that they were so big. When he turned them toward you, it was as though he was slowly turning two big brown tennis balls.
He had complete command of his thoughts. The half-delirium you would expect of a man trapped for eight days without food or water, just did not exist in him. He was
His face was dirty from much sweating, but the skin of his body was white and clean. There was a small scab on his forehead and there were some light bruises on his arms.
Inside the plane, the stench was shocking. My first thought was that there must be another man in the plane who had been dead for days. I said to the pilot: “Is there someone else in the plane?”
And he answered, “No this is a single seater, old boy.”
What I had smelled was the pilot himself. We couldn’t see the lower part of his left leg, but we judged it must be gangrenous and in a horrible shape.
“I can move my right leg,” he said, “it’s all right. In fact, I’ve had it out from here several times and moved it around for exercise. But the left one I can’t move.” I asked, “Where did you get the cigarette you were smoking when we got here?”
He said:
Your chap gave it to me. The one who came first. He lighted it for me and stuck it in through the hole, and went searching for the rest of you.
I was wondering if it wasn’t dangerous for him to be smoking inside the wrecked plane. I mentioned something about his being lucky that the plane hadn’t caught fire when he crashed. And he said:
I’ll tell you about that. Do you see that woods a little way north of us?
There were several small woods but I said, “Yes.”
He said:
Well, that first night they set fire to that woods. I could tell it by the glow in the cockpit. And here the plane was soaked with hundred-octane gasoline. I thought the fire would spread right across the field. But it didn’t.
Actually, what he had thought was the woods afire was the little town of La Detinais, which had been set afire by shelling. I didn’t bother to tell him, for he was alive, and after all what could the technicalities matter?
Reading Eagle (August 22, 1944)
Pegler: Bold conduct
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
If I have any ear for the language of the USA, RAdm. Husband E. Kimmel is calling Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate a liar when he writes a letter to Senator Harry Truman saying:
Your innuendo that Gen. Short and I were not on speaking terms is not true. Your statements alleging failure to cooperate and coordinate our efforts are equally false.
Any way you read that Kimmel is accusing Truman of intentional falsehood. He doesn’t say Truman is mistaken or misinformed. And when a man trained in the code of either of our service academies, as Kimmel was, tells another man that he lies, that means that he is willing to go to the floor with him. In this case, of course, Kimmel is not expecting a fistfight with Truman but he certainly does put it up to him to submit to a public examination of his statements and the facts.
This is very bold conduct for an admiral. He knows he is addressing a man who hopes to become Vice President of the country and who is now a member of the Senate. If there is any precedent for such impious language to a Senator from an officer of our Army or Navy, I have never heard of it and you have Kimmel daring not merely Truman but President Roosevelt to open the record and let the public judge who was most at fault in the greatest naval disaster in all history. He is willing to take his chances in a court-martial, knowing that if he were found guilty, he might be disgraced forever and deprived of his pension.
The Roberts Committee, which Mr. Roosevelt himself appointed to make a quick survey of the case, did not exonerate the President, and although it was shrewdly restricted in its mission so that it could not accuse any of the high civilians, its report leaves both the late Frank Knox, as Secretary of the Navy, and Mr. Stimson, as Secretary of War, in a doubtful position. Certainly, in the findings of his own commission, the President, as Commander-in-Chief, as he is so fond of calling himself, must have some responsibility for the kind of orders that were sent to Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short. Their orders were to take precautionary action and to avoid alarm and publicity and the program which they did adopt was the only one that could meet that restriction.
As to whether they were guilty otherwise of neglect or incompetence, Kimmel asks only a trial in which he can present all the evidence and cross-examine witnesses.
In the meanwhile, although this is a very dangerous political issue, Mr. Roosevelt has had all the best of the propaganda. I believe this is one of the very few discussions of the Pearl Harbor disaster which has recognized the possibility that a fair inquiry might blame the President himself.
Nevertheless, his partner on the Democratic ticket comes out with a magazine story again blaming Kimmel and Short although both men have asked to be tried and no fair judgment can be had without such trials.
Of course, the President can’t be tried whatever his error may have been unless you are thinking of impeachment which, of course, is out of the question. The Senate could make an investigation but there, politics would interfere and the verdict could not be clear and conclusive. But a court-martial, which Kimmel continues to demand, could reveal the degree of the failure and the error in the Navy Department, the War Department, and the White House.
To anyone who studies the Roberts Report, it becomes apparent that the committee permitted itself to be used for tawdry political business. It had no moral right to say as it did, in the end, that these officers were guilty of dereliction when it had refused them facilities for the defense of their reputations and had no legal authority to try them anyway. Although it couldn’t avoid revealing some obvious failures in Washington contributing to the disaster, the only men it actually condemned were the two commanders. In this war, it became a political document and now Adm. Kimmel is actually defying the President himself to let the people know the entire truth so that they may consider whether he did his own job well or made a horrible mess of it, in making up their minds whether they want four years more of him as Commander-in-Chief.
NORMANDY TRAP TO NET 100,000 NAZIS
Patton opens new drive along Seine
1,200 German tanks destroyed since D-Day; four Allied armies hammer foes
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
At least 100,000 Germans will be accounted for in captured, killed and wounded when operations are completed in the Argentan-Falaise trap in Normandy, it was estimated today.
Indications were that Lt. Gen. George S. Patton had launched a new drive along the Seine toward the English Channel in a new operation to cut off the survivors of the Nazi debacle in Normandy.
It was not clear at Supreme Headquarters on which side of the meandering Seine that the drive was being launched, but it is probably on the south. Patton has established a bridgehead above Paris in the Mantes area.
Heavy fighting was reported around Étampes, 22 miles south of the Paris outskirts. Orléans was under German shellfire.
Fighting was also reported around Rambouillet, 15 miles from the edge of the capital.
1,200 Nazi tanks destroyed
It was announced that the Allies since D-Day had destroyed or damaged 1,200 German tanks in western France. This is the equivalent of the equipment of 8½ German tank divisions at present strength.
Four Allied armies in slicing offensives gaining up to ten miles rolled disorganized Germans back upon the bridgeless lower Seine River today, fashioning a vast new pocket between Falaise and the American bridgehead flung over the river northwest of Paris.
Canadian, British and U.S. armies struck eastward in this enveloping push, and the U.S. 3rd Army crunched in from the other flank in a drive toward the sea. The heavily-bled German 7th Army struggled frantically to pull across the looping Seine River by boat.
Front dispatches declared the enemy was so disorganized he had been unable to make any coordinated stand or launch strong counterthrusts.
The U.S. 3rd Army was hitting westward and northward from the bridgehead at Mantes, 25 miles northwest of Paris. Here it could also strike above the Seine into the rocket-gun Pas-de-Calais coast.
The Canadian 1st Army advanced four to ten miles on a broad front between the sea and Argentan, Belgian units took Cabourg on the Dives estuary, 16 miles across water from Le Havre. Dutchmen fought in the outskirts of Houlgate. British troops, gaining ten miles, seized Gacé, 15 miles east of Argentan. The U.S. 1st Army was also pounding in toward the Seine.
Foe surrenders ‘by platoons’
Germans trapped in the new pocket were surrendering “by platoons,” a Canadian officer declared.
Thirty thousand prisoners had been taken in the Falaise trap, with thousands more throwing up their hands. The dead were yet uncounted. Pocketed Germans had been virtually wiped out.
Front dispatches said Field Marshal von Kluge had presumably pulled put a large part of his forces but they were by no means saved as yet. “They have taken a thorough shellacking, and they know it,” said one U.S. officer.
Supreme Headquarters gave no news of the bridgehead at Mantes-Gassicourt, or the one southeast of Paris near Fontainebleau, where U.S. forces were but 30 miles from the historic Marne.
The Germans lost 30 tanks and 16 planes trying to protect forces fleeing north of the Seine above Mantes, front reports said. The Americans strengthened their grip here, and patrolled southeastward toward Paris. Substantial gains were scored southeast of Paris.
Patriots’ resistance increases
Reports that French patriots were seizing city after city in central and southern France, including Lyon, gave a clear indication that the Gestapo-dominated German High Command was capable of offering organized resistance to the Allies only in northwestern France.
But this was precisely the Nazi defenses in that section of France which the U.S. 3rd Army’s Seine bridgeheads northwest and southeast of Paris were threatening, including the flying bomb coast in the Pas-de-Calais.
In the area of Dreux, 45 miles southwest of the heart of Paris, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s troops also tightened their flank positions against the Germans, shaving them back toward the sea and the Seine. The Germans had thrown up flank protection and were fighting vigorously along the Avre in that area.
A front dispatch said there are indications that the total enemy killed and captured may run much higher than recent estimates, although the number of Germans still in the bag is a matter of guesswork.
The British 2nd Army and the U.S. 1st Army were busy wiping out the last Germans in the pocket and there was a prospect that another 24 hours may see the end of the pocket entirely.
The Canadian push on a front of about 50 miles from the sea toward Argentan where it meets Patton’s forces was virtually squeezing out the British 2nd and U.S. 1st Army in present operations.
The Canadians outflanked Cabourg along the coast and were within a mile of the important road hub of Lisieux, about 20 miles inland. Farther south, an advance of ten miles from Chambois took Gacé driving another deep salient in the German rearguards.
Some remnants of the German 7th Army were crossing the Seine – using in a few cases the very barges in which in their days of victory they hoped to invade England.
GEN. PATCH: STAGE SET FOR DECISIVE WIN
Encirclement of Toulon is completed
U.S. general urges men forward regardless of fatigue or food shortages
Rome, Italy (UP) –
Allied assault forces completed the encirclement of the big naval base of Toulon, thrust to within eight miles of Marseille and drove 60 miles inland today in a series of fast-breaking advances that Maj. Gen. Alexander Patch proclaimed had set the stage for a “decisive” victory.
Radio Cairo and the clandestine station Atlantic said the French had captured Toulon. A London broadcast recorded by CBS placed the Americans within a little more than six miles of Marseille.
Patch, in an order of the day at the end of the first week of the invasion of southern France, ordered his forces forward “with the utmost speed and effectiveness regardless of fatigue or possible shortages of food or equipment.”
Enemy perplexed, stunned
He said:
We have achieved a great initial victory. The enemy in our area are perplexed and stunned. Except for his coastal defense forces, he is in full retreat. The opportunity for decisive results is in front of us.
Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander, announced in his daily communiqué that the bridgehead in southern France now comprised more than 2,000 square miles – an average of 285 square miles a day liberated in the past week.
French tanks and infantry, covered by a barrage from two battleships, six cruisers and swarms of bombers, completed the encirclement of Toulon with the capture of Bandol, on the Mediterranean coast 7½ miles west of Toulon.
Doomed to death or surrender, the German garrison of perhaps three Army divisions and assorted Marine units nevertheless was putting up a back-to-the-wall fight for the naval base and stalled advancing French infantry in the northern and western outskirts with a heavy artillery and mortar barrage.
The Germans deflected their anti-aircraft guns and added their fire to that of coastal batteries ranging up to 340 mm in caliber and the guns of crippled French warships in the harbor. Swept by murderous crossfire, the French dug in temporarily along the railway skirting the northern edge of Toulon.
Batteries deeply emplaced
Front dispatches disclosed that the Toulon batteries were so deeply emplaced that a direct hit scored by a French warship on one of the base’s heavy gun turrets failed to silence it. Some of the turrets or casements were protected by six feet of steel and concrete.
Northwest of Toulon, U.S. forces driving along the main highway to Marseille stabbed into the outskirts of Aubagne and fanned out either side of the town to within eight miles east of Marseille, France’s largest port and second largest city.
Fifteen miles north of Marseille, U.S. forces cut the main escape route from the big port with the capture of the communications hub of Aix after a two-day battle.
Aix, with 45,000 people, was the largest French city yet captured in the southern invasion. Quickly exploiting their success, the Americans fanned out north toward Avignon and the Rhône Valley, west toward the large salt inlet of the sea Étang de Berre and south toward Marseille. Latest reports placed the Americans at least two miles west of Aix.
Pertuis, 11½ miles north of Aix and 37 miles southeast of Avignon, was also captured, while other forces thrusting inland through the inland hills and mountains along the northern perimeter of the bridgehead seized Grambois, six miles northeast of Pertuis; Manosque, 17 miles northeast of Pertuis; Saint-Julien, 27 miles north of Draguignan, and Barrême, nine miles west of Saint-Julien and 60 miles from the coast.
Americans cross Durance
U.S. forces made a second crossing of the Durance River, a tributary of the Rhône, to seize Barrême. They were already across the Durance at Pertuis.
The Americans were advancing so rapidly inland that in many places they had outrun their ration trucks and were subsisting chiefly on cantaloupes and tomatoes taken from gardens along the roads.
Patch was believed to have had this in mind when he urged the troops in his order of the day to press on “regardless of fatigue or possible shortages of food or equipment – so that the enemy may not have time to recover.”
Gestapo seizes Pétain, say French reports
Reliable sources aver aged marshal arrested by force at Vichy
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Normandy mayor-druggist believes Rommel is dead
By Edward W. Beattie
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Vienna, Upper Silesia hit by U.S. bombers
London, England (UP) –
U.S. bombers, probably from Italian bases, raided Vienna and parts of Upper Silesia in Germany today, the DNB News Agency reported in a Berlin broadcast.
The enemy report said bombers also flew over Czechoslovakia, where they were engaged in furious combat by German fighter planes.
The raiders were apparently from bases in Italy as the Channel weather, officially described as “frightful,” virtually halted aerial operations from Britain and Normandy for the second straight day.