U.S. ready to seize hard coal mines
UMW members go out on strike
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Truman defenses OPA, warns of shortages
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Sugar rations cut one-third
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Truman warns of ‘great job’ AFTER V-E Day
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New Superfortress will honor Pyle
NEW YORK (SHS) – William Pyle, father of the late Ernie Pyle, will christen a new Boeing Superfortress at Wichita, Kansas, this afternoon, naming it the Ernie Pyle. In the ceremony he will swing a bottle of water from the old family well in Indiana.
The bomber was purchased through sale among Boeing employees of $600,000 in Seventh War Loan bonds. It is being dedicated to Ernie’s memory at the request of the employees.
Mr. Pyle was accompanied by his Dana, Indiana, pastor, Rev. H. L. McBride.
Pose as a drunk fails –
Last hours of Mussolini described by witnesses
‘We have come to liberate you,’ Patriots tell Duce – and execution follows
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
GIULINO DI MEZZEGRA, Italy – Mussolini and his young mistress spent the last 14 hours of their lives together locked in a room of a mountainside villa here, overlooking Lake Como.
The details of how Mussolini and Clara Petacci died side by side were told to me by Partisan eyewitnesses of their execution.
After their “People’s Tribunal” trial, the couple was brought to this tiny hamlet of 150 and put in a room in the mountainside house. That was at 2 a.m. Saturday.
Mussolini depressed
There they remained until 4 p.m., disturbed only by the serving of meals.
When a guard entered the room Saturday afternoon, Mussolini was fully dressed and wearing hat. Clara was in bed, wearing a silk slip.
“You must go away now,” the guard told them.
Clara began to dress slowly. The guards told her to hurry. Mussolini seemed very depressed.
The guards drove the couple 500 yards in an auto, then made them walk another 500 yards.
‘Come to liberate you’
“We have come to liberate you,” one guard told Mussolini.
Il Duce seemed to believe it, and for the first time he smiled.
The small group walked down the narrow “24th of May” Street, which has a stone wall on either side. They stopped in front of No. 14, from where Mussolini could see the snow-tipped Swiss Alps to which he had tried to flee. The couple stood with their backs to a stone wall.
Then a Partisan proclaimed: “By order of the General Command of Comrades of Volunteers, I am charged with rendering justice for the Italian people.”
Clara grows hysterical
Clara threw herself across Mussolini’s chest as a shield and cried hysterically, “You shouldn’t kill him.”
“Then we’ll kill you first,” the Partisan said.
The couple was pulled apart and one Partisan – according to villagers, he was a Milan man – fired several pistol shots into Mussolini’s chest and several more into Clara’s chest.
Mussolini squirmed on the ground, so they fired a shot through his head.
“Mussolini didn’t die immediately probably because he twisted just as the shots were fired, making the bullets miss his vital organs,” said a witness.
Rain falls on bodies
The bodies were left there for several hours until it began to rain.
The rain washed away the bloodspots and now the historic spot is marked only by a silvery splotch on the black, iron grill which runs along the stone fence. That splotch is where a bullet, which passed through Mussolini’s or Clara’s body, smacked into the grill.
The Partisans told me that Mussolini was first spotted at a roadblock at the town of Musso, just south of Dongo on Lake Como. He was lying under a blanket in the back of a truck in a German convoy of 32 vehicles. He wore the overcoat of a non-commissioned Luftwaffe officer and a pair of dark glasses.
Posed as drunk
Partisan Negri Giuseppe lifted the blanket and looked down at Mussolini. A German soldier said, “That’s just a drunk.” But the ruse failed.
Mussolini was taken from the truck, and after some negotiations, the Germans were permitted to continue toward Switzerland, minus an armored car which was part of the convoy.
When the convoy was first stopped, the Germans had moved the armored car to the rear of the column, under pretext of towing a truck. The Partisans thought Mussolini first was in the armored car and that he used that opportunity to slip into the truck and hide under the blanket.
He was taken at 6:50 a.m. last Friday.
Duce’s nemesis says –
‘One jackal gone to pitiful end’
Violinist Spalding reveals spy work
WASHINGTON (UP) – Violinist Albert Spalding, revealed today as the Allies’ contact man with the Italian Partisans, said he was glad the Partisans killed Mussolini.
“There’s one jackal that is gone,” the Chicago-born musician commented. “A pitiful end to a miserable career.”
Mr. Spalding returned here several months ago after directing Partisan activities in Italy as spokesman for the Allied High Command.
Until now, however, he refrained from revealing his work which the Office of War Information hails as a propaganda job “unbeaten by any individual in any theater.”
Mr. Spalding missed the incident in which the Partisans shot Mussolini and symbolized an end to Italian tyranny, but he was not surprised it happened.
“I’ve heard them say they’d like that opportunity many, many times,” he said.
Bases hope on Partisans
Mr. Spalding bases his hope for a democratic Italy on the Partisans, whom he considers “the true emblem of a nationalist movement and the real symbol of unity for the Italian people.”
“They come from the homes of the humble instead of the seats of the mighty,” Mr. Spalding said.
He predicted that they would seek political expression in an effort not to return to the rule that suffocated them.
“I look to them for the rejuvenation of Italy,” he said.
Garibaldi recalled
If some wear red shirts, he added, they are not flaunting an allegiance to Communism, but are harking back to the era of Italy’s own short-lived republic of 1849 – and Garibaldi.
They’ve worked heroically at breaking enemy communications, removing and replanting enemy mines and piloting Allied forces through mined territory, Mr. Spalding said.
Mr. Spalding left his violin at home while he was on his eight-month mission in Italy.
“You know, music is a pretty absorbing job,” he explained.
In Washington –
Senate death predicted for nurse draft
Opposition warning keeps it pickled
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Senate snags ‘secrets’ bill
By Douglas Smith, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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On Okinawa –
Naha outpost under fire of U.S. tanks
Americans within 2 miles of capital
GUAM (UP) – U.S. troops swept within two miles of Naha, capital of Okinawa, today and brought its northeastern outpost of Shuri under direct tank fire.
The two-pronged drive, supported by an air-land-sea bombardment, was paced by the 27th Infantry Division which overran Machinato Airfield and pushed into the strong Jap defenses on the northern outskirts of Naha.
Sherman tanks of the 96th Infantry Division pushed down the center of the island to shell Shuri, the second largest city of Okinawa.
Japs fight bitterly
Elements of the 7th Infantry Division, pushing down the eastern coast, were closing in on Yonabaru Airfield, five miles across the island from Naha.
The Japs were still fighting bitterly from strong defenses clustered around Naha. An estimated 1,000 Japs were killed in Southern Okinawa in the last 72 hours.
The Japs have also placed expert riflemen in strategic spots. One regimental officer said Jap sharpshooters shot five Americans through the head with five shots last Saturday.
B-29s again active
Tokyo radio, meanwhile, reported that U.S. Superfortresses raided Kyushu, southernmost of Japan’s home islands, for the fifth consecutive day today in an attempt to neutralize the bases from which the Japs have been launching suicide aerial attacks on the Okinawa area.
The report was not confirmed, although the XXI Bomber Command announced that the big B-29s started huge fires yesterday in the Tachikawa Army Air Arsenal near Tokyo and at Hamamatsu, 60 miles southeast of Nagoya.
It was the first Superfortress raid on Hamamatsu, which was picked as an alternate target when weather closed in over Tachikawa during the attack.
A part of Monday’s Superfortress force also raided airfields on Kyushu, and the XXI Bomber Command announced that the three operations were carried out without loss.
At least nine cargo vessels and a number of smaller craft were sunk or damaged by American planes in attacks through the Ryukyus to as far north as Kozu Island, just south of Tokyo.
Tortured, starved and insane –
Nazi camp’s walking dead comprised mostly of women
Three pits filled with 5,000 bodies each – raging typhus still killing 700 a day
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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250 massacred by Nazi sadists
Political prisoners are mowed down
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Congressmen to visit more horror camps
PARIS, France (UP) – A U.S. Congressional group has returned to Germany to visit more concentration camps, among which probably will be the newly-liberated “extermination” camp at Dachau.
“We are anxious to get complete information by visiting camps immediately after liberation instead of several weeks later as at Buchenwald,” Sen. Alben Barkley (D-Kentucky) said before leaving yesterday.
Eighth Army joins with Tito’s forces
Allied pincers peril Brenner Pass
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Fascist army surrenders
ROME, Italy (UP) – The German-controlled Italian Ligurian Army surrendered unconditionally to the Allies today.
The Fascist Ligurian Army had been fighting alongside the Germans in Northern Italy under command of Marshal Graziani, who was taken prisoner by the Partisans and turned over to the Allies.
Graziani signed the unconditional surrender proclamation ordering his troops to lay down their arms.
Ban on Germans urged
WASHINGTON – Rep. John L. McMillan (D-South Carolina) yesterday introduced a bill to forbid any German citizen from becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States for 25 years after the close of the European War.
‘Will and wits’ win battle in Nazi prison
Freed 110,000 still maintain discipline
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Reporter laughs at Nazi threats
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