Witness tells of brutal attack made by foe on 3,700 liberated after 3-year ordeal
By Royal Arch Gunnison, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Major adrift 5 days on life raft
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Gore says military government in Germany is second hardest task
By Daniel M. Kidney, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Would use force to prevent war
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By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS (delayed) – In my long career with the United States Army, I’ve made a hobby of cultivating the very best people in it. And for some strange reason, the very best people usually turn out to work in the kitchen. Isn’t that odd?
My latest acquisitions are a Mutt & Jeff team known as Mickey and Bill. They serve the food in our mess hall. They have to work like dogs and they dash around in such intent haste that you think they are mad at everybody all the time.
But they aren’t. That’s just a look of concentration on their faces. Whenever we give them time to relax, they’re the best-natured pair you ever saw.
These two boys are Sgt. Thomas Bill of St. Louis, and Cpl. Mickey Rovinsky of Edwardsville [Luzerne County], Pennsylvania. They’re as different as day and night, but they work together like cogs in a gearwheel.
Sgt. Bill is tall and thin and white-skinned and has curly black hair and a sensitive face, and he doesn’t say much. Mickey is so short he could stand under Bill’s arm, and his skin is dark. His eyes are almost shut and he talks all the time – and such talk.
Mickey is unquotable, because you couldn’t possibly remember things the way he says them. His colloquialisms are not sectional, they’re pure Rovinsky.
Special favorite
The boys’ special favorite among all the fliers is my friend Capt. Bill Gifford. He’s always giving them things, and sits up and talks with them in the mess hall after supper, and as a result they’d stay up all night for him if he merely suggested it.
By good fortune, I fell in with this trio, and every night Giff and I would stay away from supper until everybody else had finished and the two boys had their tables all cleaned up and set for breakfast.
Then we’d wander over through the dark and the four of us would have a banquet – such as steak and French-fried potatoes. The boys would cook it and then we’d all sit down and eat, and the talk would start to fly.
The first Tokyo mission was a highlight in Mickey’s life. The pilots are always tense the night before a mission, and Mickey has his troubles.
Mickey says:
They took off six times for Tokyo. I mean they was scheduled to go every day for six days, and they’d all be short-tempered and wanting things just go at night, and then next morning the mission would be postponed.
It was their first mission up there and they’d heard a rumor there was to be 1,300 Jap fighters lined up across the sky just like a wall, and they was nervous and grumpy.
Like Capt. Gifford here, I can always tell when he’s going the next day. He don’t say much at supper like he usually does. He just wants that sharp attention and keep your mouth shut and leave him the hell alone.
Tense and worried
Well, them pilots was tense and worried and they didn’t drink any beer or anything for five nights and then finally on the sixth night they was up half the night yellin’ around, and then next morning they really did take off. Boy, they didn’t feel good either.
It’s a good thing they finally went or I was gonna mutiny. I got sick and tired of puttin’ grub in them damned airplanes. I was gonna refuse the seventh time. I said I’d take a court-martial before I’d put grub in them planes a seventh time. But they went that time.
Then Capt. Gifford took up.
You should have been here that morning. The mission was called so fast there wasn’t time to warm up the engines a few at a time, so they ran them all up at once all over the field. This whole island shook from the vibration.
When I took off, I had to weave around through bulldozers and between jeeps and across cane patches and I kept thinking about those 1,300 fighters we’d heard about. I sure was put out about ever getting into this business in the first place. But it turned out all right.
“When Capt. Gifford gets back,” Mickey went on, “he’s a changed man. He’s still full of nerves but he wants to talk and he wants me to keep the beer comin’ out of the icebox.”
Sgt. Bill sits and listens and smiles and enjoys it and says almost nothing. He and Mickey are both married men, although they’re only 24 and 23 respectively.
The boys have to get up at 5 a m. and their work isn’t finished till about 9 at night. They don’t even get to go to the movies, for they don’t get through work in time. But they don’t seem to care. They feel they’re pretty lucky to have things as nice as they are.
The day I was to leave, they gave me what Mickey called my “farewell breakfast” – three fried eggs! There’s nothing in this Army like knowing the very best people.
Appointment viewed as blow to labor
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
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By Gracie Allen
I just read where Field Marshal Montgomery’s mother had written him telling him to wind up the European War by March 23. I knew those silly Germans would fool around until they got the women good and mad at them.
I think that “Monty’s” mother, Lady Montgomery, really has an idea there. The habit of obeying mother is very strong and if all our generals were to receive similar letters from their mothers, they might just polish off those Nazis that much faster.
I can just see a dazed von Rundstedt surrendering as Gen. Eisenhower says: “Sorry to rush you like this, Von, but Mom says hurry home.”
And we don’t have to worry about Mrs. Shickelgruber writing to Adolf. They can’t even find an incubator that will claim him.
Free world information held need to guard against any dictatorship
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What’s more, fans like them, too
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The fuck is ‘White elephant’?
Führer HQ (March 9, 1945)
In Ungarn drangen eigene Kampfgruppen beiderseits des Plattensees in das tiefgegliederte feindliche Hauptkampffeld ein und warfen die Sowjets aus mehreren stark befestigten Abschnitten, die sie gegen zahlreiche Angriffe neu herangeführter bolschewistischer Kräfte behaupteten.
Im slowakischen Erzgebirge halten unsere Sicherungen in zähem Abwehrkampf die Talengen um Altsohl gegen anhaltend starken feindlichen Druck. Beiderseits der Hohen Tatra wurden Aufklärungsvorstöße der Bolschewisten zerschlagen.
Grenadiere und Jäger brachen nördlich Ratibor in sowjetische Bereitstellungen ein und verlegten trotz zäher Gegenwehr unsere Hauptkampflinie vorwärts.
Gegen Küstrin trat der Feind von Norden und Süden nach starker Artillerievorbereitung erneut zum Angriff an. Erbitterte Kämpfe sind im Gange.
An der äußeren Verteidigungszone des Brückenkopfes Stettin brachen die anhaltend starken Angriffe einer sowjetischen Panzer- und zweier Infanteriearmeen in schweren, für den Feind verlustreichen Kämpfen zusammen. Deutsche Seestreitkräfte unterstützten mit guter Wirkung die schweren Abwehrkämpfe des Heeres am Stettiner Haff.
Im Brennpunkt der großen Abwehrschlacht in Westpreußen drangen feindliche Panzerverbände trotz unserer verbissenen Gegenwehr zwischen Berent und Preußisch-Stargard in unsere Stellungen ein und gewannen weiteren Raum nach Norden. Ihre Spitzen wurden zwischen Karthaus–Schöneck zum Stehen gebracht, über 50 sowjetische Panzer in diesem Raum vernichtet.
In Kurland stehen unsere Verbände östlich Frauenburg in erfolgreichem Abwehrkampfe gegen die von starken Schlachtfliegerkräften unterstützten Durchbruchsversuche sowjetischer Kräfte.
Sicherungsfahrzeuge eines eigenen Geleits schossen vor der norwegischen Westküste im Zusammenwirken mit Jagdfliegern sechs angreifende feindliche Flugzeuge ab, fünf weitere wurden durch Luftverteidigungskräfte der Kriegsmarine über der Deutschen Bucht zum Absturz gebracht.
Am Niederrhein haben unsere Truppen in tapferer Haltung auch gestern starke feindliche Angriffe im Raum von Xanten abgewiesen. An den übrigen Fronten des Brückenkopfes von Wesel kam der Feind nach geringem Vordringen in unserem Feuer zum Stehen und verlor zahlreiche Panzer.
Im Abschnitt Köln konnten die Amerikaner unsere Kräfte auf das Ostufer des Rheins zurückdrücken, während die Besatzung von Bonn in den Ruinen der Stadt heftigen Widerstand leistet. Im Rhein-Mosel-Dreieck gewannen die feindlichen Panzer vor allem gegen die untere Mosel hin Boden. Zwischen der Ahr und der westlichen Eifel stehen unsere Truppen in schweren Abwehrkämpfen gegen die hauptsächlich von Westen andringenden gegnerischen Verbände.
Der östlich und südlich Trier wie bei Fraulautern angreifende Feind brach in unserem Feuer zusammen.
Aus Italien werden keine größeren Kämpfe gemeldet.
Nordamerikanische Terrorflieger warfen am Tage Bomben auf Städte im Rhein-Main-Gebiet sowie im rheinisch-westfälischen und südostdeutschen Raum. Hamburg und Kassel waren in der Nacht das Ziel britischer Terrorangriffe.
Das Vergeltungsfeuer auf London wird fortgesetzt.