America at war! (1941–) – Part 4

2310

Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (October 4, 1944)

FROM
(A) SHAEF FORWARD

ORIGINATOR
PRD, Communique Section

DATE-TIME OF ORIGIN
041100A October

TO FOR ACTION
(1) AGWAR (Pass to WND)

TO (W) FOR INFORMATION (INFO)
(2) FIRST US ARMY GP
(3) ADV HQ 12 ARMY GP
(4) FWD ECH (MAIN) 12 ARMY GP
(5) AEAF
(6) ANCXF
(7) EXFOR MAIN
(8) EXFOR REAR
(9) DEFENSOR, OTTAWA
(10) CANADIAN C/S, OTTAWA
(11) WAR OFFICE
(12) ADMIRALTY
(13) AIR MINISTRY
(14) ETOUSA
(15) SACSEA
(16) CMHQ (Pass to RCAF & RCN)
(17) COM Z APO 871
(18) SHAEF MAIN

(REF NO.)
NONE

(CLASSIFICATION)
IN THE CLEAR

Communiqué No. 179

Allied troops advancing north of the Antwerp-Turnhout Canal have reached a point eight miles northeast of Antwerp on the road to Breda. North of Turnhout, we have taken Baarle-Nassau. East of Turnhout, our forces are in the village of Reusel.

Between the Meuse and the Waal, the villages of Wamel and Dremnel have been freed. In the area of Overloon, a German counterattack was repulsed by our troops with an estimated 50 percent loss to the enemy.

Allied forces attacking in the area north of Aachen are advancing slowly against varying resistance from German artillery and small arms, and from pillboxes. Our troops have penetrated to Ubach three miles south of Geilenkirchen and have advanced against heavy resistance in the area immediately southwest of Ubach. Gains have been made in the vicinity of Meckstein, north of Kerkrade.

Just south of Aachen, intense tank and mortar fire has been directed against our units, and in the area west of Hürtgen small enemy counterattacks were repulsed at three points.

Fighters and fighter-bombers supported ground forces and attacked transportation targets in Holland and the Rhineland.

In southeastern Luxembourg, our troops have gained high ground just west of Echternach and Grevenmacher. Farther south, high ground was taken in the vicinity of Maizières-lès-Metz, on the west side of the Moselle River northwest of Metz. Five miles southwest of Metz, our forces have entered Fort Driant after a successful assault.

East of Nancy, the enemy has been forced back to the Forêt de Parroy by our advance which has gained more than a mile in some sectors. Our armored elements repulsed a counterattack by enemy infantry and tanks in the vicinity of Anglemont, five miles southwest of Baccarat.

Northeast of Épinal, our troops, favored by clearing weather, made new gains and occupied several villages. These included Grandvillers, Deycimont and Lepanges.

Farther south, resistance was more stubborn and enemy counterattacks have been more frequent. Limited progress was made in one area northwest of Belfort.

The sea dyke near Westkapelle on the Dutch island of Walcheren was breached yesterday in a two-hour attack by waves of heavy bombers escorted by fighters. A gap 120 yards wide was made in the dyke and extensive flooding of enemy positions resulted. None of the aircraft is missing from this operation.

More than 1,000 heavy bombers, with a strong fighter escort, attacked the Daimler-Benz factory at Gaggenau, tank works at Nürnberg and airfields at Lachen-Speyerdorf and Giebelstadt. The escorting fighters also strafed airfields in Germany. Eleven bombers are missing.

COORDINATED WITH: G-2, G-3 to C/S

THIS MESSAGE MAY BE SENT IN CLEAR BY ANY MEANS
/s/

Precedence
“OP” - AGWAR
“P” - Others

ORIGINATING DIVISION
PRD, Communique Section

NAME AND RANK TYPED. TEL. NO.
D. R. JORDAN, Lt Col FA Ext. 9

AUTHENTICATING SIGNATURE
/s/

U.S. Navy Department (October 4, 1944)

CINCPAC Communiqué No. 140

Further reducing the remnants of enemy troops still resisting on Peleliu and Angaur Islands, Marine and Army troops destroyed the occupants of a number of enemy‑held caves on October 3 (West Longitude Date). Mopping-up operations on Angaur continued. The bodies of more dead Japanese soldiers have been counted, a total of 9,878 on Peleliu and 1,109 on Angaur.

Search Venturas of Fleet Air Wing Four bombed Paramushiru in the Kurils on October 2. Meager anti-aircraft fire was encountered. All our planes returned.

Seventh Air Force Liberators on October 1, scored a direct hit on an enemy cargo vessel near Chichijima in the Bonin Islands. Two enemy planes were in the air, but did not attempt interception. Shipping in Chichijima Harbor was attacked by 7th Air Force Liberators on October 2. Anti-aircraft fire varied from moderate to meager.

Buildings, gun emplacements, and docking facilities at Pagan Island were bombed and rocketed on October 2 by Thunderbolts of the 7th Air Force. No anti-aircraft fire was encountered.

Seventh Air Force Liberators bombed the runway and installations on Marcus Island on October 2. Anti-aircraft fire was meager.

Corsairs and Venturas of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed communications facilities and gun positions at Jaluit Atoll on October 2. Anti­-aircraft fire, which was moderate, damaged one Ventura. All our planes returned safely. Dauntless dive bombers of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing flew through meager anti-aircraft fire to bomb installations at Taroa Island in the Maloelap Atoll.

2311

White House Statement on the Death of Al Smith
October 4, 1944

The nation mourns the death of The Happy Warrior. Al Smith had qualities of heart and mind and soul which not only endeared him to those who came under the spell of his dynamic presence in personal association but also made him the idol of the multitude.

To the populace he was a hero. Frank, friendly and warmhearted, honest as the noonday sun, he had the courage of his convictions, even when his espousal of unpopular causes invited the enmity of powerful adversaries.

During his tenure as Governor of the great State of New York, he attracted national attention by his skill as an administrator. It was a natural sequence that he should become the candidate of his party for the highest office in the land. In a bitter campaign, in which his opponent won, Al Smith made no compromise with honor, honesty, or integrity. In his passing the country loses a true patriot.

2312

The Pittsburgh Press (October 4, 1944)

STRIKE HITS 20 DETROIT WAR PLANTS
35,000 men already idle; spread feared

Chrysler and Briggs factories crippled

…

2313

Tanks join drive to Rhine

Gen. Hodges’ armor cuts Siegfried Line; Metz fort stormed
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer

…

2314

Yanks on Metz fort repel sallies by Nazis from inside

By Robert Richards, United Press staff writer

…

2315

Al Smith dies at 70 with prayer on lips, conscious to last

‘Man in Brown Derby’ rose high to fame

New York (UP) –
Alfred E. Smith, “the Happy Warrior” who cut a leading figure in national Democratic politics from 1920 until 1932, was four times Governor of New York State, and ran for President in 1928, died at 6:20 a.m. ET today.

A solemn requiem mass will be celebrated for Mr. Smith at 11:00 a.m. Saturday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with burial in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery, Queens. The funeral will be simple. There will be no honorary pallbearers, and no flowers.

The “Man in the Brown Derby,” who rose to power and fame from the poverty of a New York City slum, took his last breath with a prayer on his lips, fully conscious it was his last, just as the Rev. John Healy, his Parish priest, entered his room at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital.

His physician, Dr. Raymond P. Sullivan, came down to the hospital lobby where reporters were waiting and, wet-eyed, announced his death.

“This is the last of a great man,” he said. “He was a real man, a great father, a great American.”

Dr. Sullivan said Mr. Smith had had “a severe relapse” at 5:30 a.m., “accompanied by acute heart failure.”

Hospital authorities sent at once for Father Healy and Mr. Smith’s children. Father Healy arrived just as Mr. Smith died and the children – Mrs. John Warner, Mrs. Francis J. Quillinan, Walter Smith and Arthur Smith – came a few minutes later.

Mr. Smith’s sister, Mrs. Mary Glynn, and his old friend, John J. Raskob, the motor magnate who helped him finance the world’s tallest structure – the Empire State Building – was with them. A third son, Alfred E. Smith Jr., is on duty with the Army in the South Pacific.

Seventy years old, Mr. Smith had been ill most of the summer, following the death of his wife, Catherine, on May 4. He was transferred from St. Vincent’s Hospital to the Rockefeller Institute Hospital three weeks ago and had been at the point of death since Saturday.

Among the scores of floral tributes arriving at the hospital last night were a dozen American Beauty roses and the card from President and Mrs. Roosevelt.

Dr. Sullivan said “the immediate cause of death was the lung congestion which developed Monday night and acute heart failure.” The cause of Mr. Smith’s long illness, he continued, was “intestinal and liver disturbances.”

Those who had known Mr. Smith intimately over the years said that he never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. Mrs. Catherine Dunn Smith, the woman who bore him five children and watched his political career build up from a Tammany leader to the Governors chair at Albany and reach its eminence as his party’s presidential candidate, died May 4, 1944, of pneumonia after a five-week illness.

Born in 1873

Al Smith was born Dec. 30, 1873, in an Irish community on New York’s Oliver Street. His birthplace was only a short distance from the 14th Street Tammany wigwam, home of the political creed that there always would be coal-in-the-cellar for a vote-on-the-line.

In parochial school, Mr. Smith found a stage for his inherent love of dramatics. If there was a fat comedy party in a school play, the sister in charge of dramatics knew unerringly whom to cast in it. Young Al played the tragedian with equal success. He still had acting on his mind when at 14 he quit school to help out at home after his father’s death.

He made a brief try at running his father’s teamster business, then found a job in the Fulton Fish market before deciding that politics was his field.

Wed Oliver Street ‘belle’

At 21, he went on the public payroll as clerk in the office of the New York Commissioner of Jurors. Shortly afterward, he met and began courting Catherine Dunn, the belle of Oliver Street and daughter of a moderately prosperous ship’s chandler.

Mr. Smith was warning $75 a month when he married Miss Dunn. They moved into a small flat and began their life together that continued until her death.

Mr. Smith traveled political upward fast as far as he could go.

His ability and wide acquaintance brought him the Democratic leadership of the New York State Assembly in 1911. He reached the Governor’s mansion in Albany in 1918. His defeat for reelection as Governor in 1922 set the stage for his doomed presidential aspirations.

As a member of the Legislature and as Governor, Mr. Smith introduced dozens of broad social, economic and political reforms.

The Manhattan State Hospital fire in 1923, which destroyed an old wooden building and killed 25 patients, promoted Mr. Smith to propose a $50-million bond issue to improve state hospitals.

Safety laws rewritten

The famous Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York was Mr. Smith’s opportunity to write sweeping safety laws into the statutes. He liberalized workmen’s compensation laws, amended the domestic relations law to provide for the support and education of illegitimate children and signed a bill providing $2,500,000 in bonuses to the next of kin of World War I dead.

Mr. Smith in 1923 fought for amendments to civil service rules and regulations so that women could compete for certain civil service jobs. He promoted the construction of Sing Sing Prison, new state office buildings, a state health laboratory and many schools, hospitals and parks.

Families divided

In 1928, the presidential nomination fell into Mr. Smith’s lap, and the nation promptly settled down to one of the most partisan campaigns in years – Hoover vs. Smith.

Families were divided on the issue, and religious feeling hit a fever pitch. Al Smith was a devout Catholic. Mr. Smith’s bandwagon was noisy, but weak in the axles. He carried only eight states.

Mr. Smith reorganized the Democratic National Committee and was making strides in the 1932 campaign when he realized that Mr. Roosevelt was traveling a separate road.

The 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago made everything clear. Mr. Smith arrived with a scattering of support and instantly assured leadership of the “Stop Roosevelt” movement. Mr. Smith’s cloture forced a nightlong session of the convention which remained deadlocked until the following day when William G. McAdoo steered California’s votes to Mr. Roosevelt.

Mr. Smith left the convention, and his departure presaged his action in 1936 when he joined a coalition of wealthy Democrats in the American Liberty League to stop Mr. Roosevelt.

He ignored the Democratic National Convention that year, and supporter Alfred M. Landon, the Republican nominee. That “walk” was in reality Mr. Smith’s first strides into the long corridor of political obscurity. He was through.

Roosevelt: Al Smith ‘a true patriot’

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt said today that in the passing of Al Smith, the “Happy Warrior” whom he twice nominated for the Presidency, “the country loses a true patriot.”

“Al Smith had qualities of heart and mind and soul which… made him the idol of the multitude,” Mr. Roosevelt said in a statement issued at the White House shortly after he had been informed of Mr. Smith’s death in New York early today.

The statement said:

The nation mourns the death of the Happy Warrior. Al Smith had qualities of heart and mind and soul which not only endeared him to those who came under the spell of his dynamic presence in personal association but also made him the idol of the multitude.

To the populace he was a hero. Frank, friendly and warmhearted, honest as the noonday sun, he had the courage of his convictions, even when his espousal of unpopular causes invited the enmity of powerful adversaries.

During his tenure as Governor of the great State of New York, he attracted national attention by his skill as an administrator. It was a natural sequence that he should become the candidate of his party for the highest office in the land. In a bitter campaign, in which his opponent won, Al Smith made no compromise with honor, honesty, or integrity. In his passing, the country loses a true patriot.

2316

americavotes1944

Dewey urges lowered and simplified tax

Administration waste assailed in speech

Albany, New York (UP) –
Governor Thomas E. Dewey continued his attack on the Roosevelt administration today as he placed before the voters a six-point victory tax program “under which America once again may live and grow.”

The Republican presidential nominee proposed the tax revision program last night in a nationwide radio address from the state executive mansion.

Assailing “waste and extravagance” of the present administration, Governor Dewey said personal income levies must be lowered and the nation’s tax structure simplified if the country is to prosper in the post-war era.

The Roosevelt tax policies, he said, have discouraged business and high wages and were responsible for prolonging the depression. The “highest New Dealers,” he continued, “at last admit this administration has created an impossible condition which urgently needs repair.”

Governor Dewey’s program included:

  • Revision of personal income taxes “so that a man who makes as little as $11 a week no longer has an income tax taken out of his pay envelope.”

  • Lowering of personal income tax rates to “speed recovery along.”

  • Revision and lowering of income taxes on incorporated businesses until the tax “no longer acts as a drag upon production and a barrier to jobs.”

  • Elimination of all so-called excise or “nuisance” taxes, except those on alcoholic beverages, tobacco and gasoline.

  • Complete overhauling of our “existing, confused and complicated tax laws.”

  • Establishment of a “consistent, national tax policy – one directed toward achieving full employment and a rising national income – one that will assure use of a solvent nation and the ultimate reduction of our national debt.”

The Governor’s next campaign speech will be delivered at Charleston, West Virginia, Saturday night.

2317

Roosevelt pledges supplies to Italy

Nation to be rebuilt to increase war aid

…

2318

americavotes1944

Probe demanded in hotel brawl

Naval officers agree on fight story

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2319

I DARE SAY —
The need is now

By Florence Fisher Parry

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2320

J&L Counsel claims union forfeits right

Tells WLB that USW violated pledges

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2321

Perkins: GMC hands conflict between servicemen and labor to WLB

Brief declares union asks extension of seniority which would hinder veterans
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer

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2322

Allies 15 miles from gateway to Po Valley

Drive through stiff defenses in mud
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer

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2323

750 bombers hit Munich, rail lines

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2324

Navy’s chief may go to Pearl Harbor

King to move closer to fighting front

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Roosevelt: U.S. aid to China epochal effort

Planes carry in more than Burma Road

…

2325

Gracie Allen Reporting

By Gracie Allen

Hollywood, California –
It’s wonderful how the World Series baseball games are being broadcast to our fighting men everywhere – on South Sea Islands, in Alaska, on ships at sea. Even in tanks and planes they’re listening – and loving it.

And the Germans no doubt are listening too, but I’ll bet they’re pretty confused. I can imagine a scene something like this:

GERMAN SPY: Herr General, our fifth column has captured half of Amerika. The Amerikan radio announcer admits that the Yanks of New York were defeated, Detroit was blasted, and now a great battle rages in St. Louis. And, Herr General, they did it all with baseball bats!

GERMAN GENERAL: We’ve been using the wrong weapons. Tell our soldiers to throw away their guns. For now on it’s bats to fight the Amerikans.

GERMAN SPY: Ya, that’s what I say – it’s crazy.

2326

44_mlbplayoffs

Browns and Cards battle in Series

Americans get no hits in three innings

Sportsman’s Park, St. Louis, Missouri (UP) –
The Cardinals and Browns were in a scoreless deadlock in the third inning of the opening game of the World Series this afternoon.

A crowd of 35,000 watched the two St. Louis pennant-winners in their first world championship in history.

Big Mort Cooper, the Cards’ star righthander, had not allowed a hit up to this point, the Browns getting two men on bases through walks. His mound rival, Denny Galehouse, had been nicked for three hits, including a double in the second by Martin Marion.

Mort Cooper blazed through the first inning, striking out Mike Kreevich and Chet Laabs after Don Gutteridge had lifted an easy pop fly to Marty Marion at short. The big righthander’s fast ball was working well.

Galehouse also retired the side without damage in the last of the first inning, but yielded a hit of Stan Musial – a drive that Stephens got back of second too late to make a play. Hopp had lifted to Laabs in left center and Ray Sanders had fanned before Musial reached first. Walker Cooper then flied to Kreevich in short center.

Marion doubles

A base on balls to Gene Moore after Stephens had topped the ball in front of the plate and had been tossed out by Walker Cooper, was all the action in the Browns’ second. McQuinn then flied to Litwhiler in short left and Mark Christman was Morton Cooper’s third strikeout victim.

The Cards made their first serious threat with two out to their half. After Kurowski had flied to Moore and Litwhiler fanned, Marty Marion lined a two-bagger to left and went to third and took third on Emil Verban’s infield scratch to Gutteridge. Galehouse struck out Morton Cooper to end the budding rally.

Galehouse walks

In the Browns’ third, Hayworth grounded to Kurowski before Galehouse waited around for a base on balls – Cooper’s second of the game. There were two down when Gutteridge flied out to Hopp, and Kreevich followed with a high bounder to the box and was thrown out by M. Cooper.

GAME INCOMPLETE AT PRESS TIME.

2327

americavotes1944

Girl says union fired her for backing Dewey

…

2328

U.S. bombers rip Borneo oil center

Balikpapan pounded with 74 tons

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2329

Belgians branded, whipped, in Breendock torture camp

People intend to preserve place after war as reminder of German atrocities
By Frank Fisher, United Press staff writer

…