Spanisch-französischer Zwischenfall
…
What? The japanese are losing to the Chinese? Big oof moment.
1 Like
Yes! You give me
1 Like
Because the congress was actually working?
1 Like
Address by Gen. Eisenhower Before Joint Session of Congress
June 18, 1945, 12:31 p.m. EWT
Broadcast audio (NBC):
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen:
There is a message that I should like to bring to you from the fighting front this morning. There is so much I would like to say, so many subjects I should like to cover that as the only way of saving an unconscionable trespass upon your time I have tried to reduce my thoughts and notes and therefore I ask your permission for me to break my invariable custom and for once to use notes in addressing an audience such as this.
My imagination cannot picture a more dramatic moment than this in the life of an American. I stand before the elected federal lawmakers of our great Republic, the very core of our political life and a symbol of those things we call the American heritage. To preserve that heritage, three million American citizens, at your behest, have faced resolutely every terror the ruthless Nazi could devise. I come before you as the representative of those three million people – their commander – because to them you wish this morning to pay the tribute of a grateful America for military victory. In humble realization that they, who earned your commendation, should properly be here to receive it, I am nevertheless proud and honored to be your agent in conveying it to them.
This does not seem to be the moment in which to describe the great campaigns by which the victory in Europe was won. They will become the substance of history, and great accounts they will be! But I think you would want from me some brief estimate of the quality of the sons, the relatives and friends that you – all America – have sent to war.
I have seen the American proved on battlegrounds of Africa and Europe over which armies have been fighting for more than two thousand years of recorded history. None of those battlefields has seen a more worthy soldier than the trained American.
Willingly, he has suffered hardships; without a whimper he has made heavy sacrifices. He has endured much, but he has never faltered. His aggressiveness – his readiness to close with the enemy – has become a byword in the embattled armies of Europe. You have read many reports of his individual exploits, but not one-tenth of them ever has been or ever will be told. Any one of them is sufficient to fill a true American with emotion – with an intense pride of his countryman.
Never have soldiers been called upon to endure longer sustained periods of contact with a vicious enemy nor greater punishment from weather and terrain. The American has been harassed by fire and automatic weapons, pounded by hand grenades, by artillery and rocket shells, attacked by tanks and airplane bombs! He has faced the hazards of countless mines and booby traps and every form of static obstacle. He has conquered them all!
The tempo of battle has increased tremendously during the span of this conflict. When the Germans launched their blitzkriegs through Poland, the Low Countries and France, featuring tactical use of airpower with mechanized units on the ground, it seemed to a fearful world that at last there had been achieved the ultimate in destructive force – that nothing could stand against the German armies.
When America entered the war arena the Nazi machine was at the zenith of its power. In 1940 it had overrun practically the whole of western Europe, while, a year later, in the East, it had hammered back the great Red Army into the far reaches of its own territory.
The Allies met this challenge with vision, determination, and a full comprehension of the enormity of the task ahead. America brought forth her effort from every conceivable source. New techniques of war were developed. Of these the most outstanding was the completely coordinated use of ground, air and sea forces. To his dismay the German found that far from having achieved perfection in the combined employment of all types of destructive power, his skills and methods were daily outmoded and surpassed by the Allies.
Through tactical and strategic unification the Allies successfully undertook the greatest amphibious landings yet attempted in warfare. Following each of these, forces were swiftly built up on the beaches, and sustained by our naval strength. The next step was always a speedy advance, applying to the astonished enemy an air-ground teamwork that inflicted upon him defeat after defeat.
The services of supply, by their devotion to duty, performed real miracles in supporting the battle lines. America, and her Allies, sent finally into Europe such an avalanche of aggressive power by land, by sea, by air, as to make the campaigns of 1939 and 1940 seem puny in contrast. The result was the unconditional surrender of an arrogant enemy.
All this America and her Allies have done.
The real beginning, for us, was in December 1941, when our late great war leader, President Roosevelt, met with his friend Prime Minister Churchill and forged a definition of Allied organizational and directional method for the prosecution of this war.
During most of my three years in Europe these two God-given men were my joint Commanders in Chief. Their insistence on making common cause the key to victory established the pattern of the war in Europe.
To those two all of us recognize our lasting obligation. Because no word of mine could add to your appreciation of the man who, until his tragic death, led America in war, I will say nothing other than that from his strength and indomitable spirit I drew constant support and confidence in the solution of my own problems.
In Mr. Churchill he had a worthy partner, who had led his country through the blackest hour, in 1940. The Prime Minister’s rugged determination, his fighting spirit and his singleness of purpose were always a spur to action. Never once did he give less than full cooperation in any endeavor necessary to our military objectives. And never did he hesitate to use his magnetic and powerful personality to win cheerful acceptance from his countrymen of the great demands he was forced to make upon them.
It was no small test of the hospitality and generous understanding of the British people to have 2,000,000 strangers moved among their already limited and crowded facilities. The added confusion imposed by the extensive gear of a great army was accepted with a cheerfulness that won the admiration of us Americans.
In critical moments Mr. Churchill did not hesitate to cut Britain’s already reduced rations to provide more shipping for war purposes. Their overburdened railways had to absorb additional loads until practically all passenger traffic was suspended and even essential goods could be moved only on an emergency basis. For the hospitality the British offered us, for the discomforts they endured on our behalf, and for the sacrifices they made for the success of operations, every American acquainted with the facts will always carry for them a warm and grateful place deep within his heart.
Under these two great war leaders were the combined British American Chiefs of Staff who were my direct military superiors and the channel through whom I received all my orders. Their unwavering support, their expressed and implied confidence, their wise direction, and their friendliness in contact, were things to which I am happy to bear witness. They devised the machinery by which huge Allied forces were put together as a single unit, and through them were implemented the great military purposes that America and Great Britain agreed upon to further the political objectives of the war.
The spirit of unison that they developed was absorbed by the forces in the field.
In no place was this vital unity more strikingly evidenced than among the individuals that served as my principal commanders and on my staff. British and Americans forgot differences in customs and methods-even national prejudice-in their devotion to a common cause. Often have I thanked a kind Providence for these stanch Allies, from highest commander to the newest recruit, and for their readiness to serve within the team.
From our first battle associations with the British air forces in England, with her Navy in the African invasion, and with the British armies in North Africa, we have measured their quality through many months of war. We well know and respect the fighting heart of the British, Canadian and French soldiers and their leaders.
This teamwork was equally strong among the several services, air, ground, Navy and supply. The Navy’s task in gaining our first European footholds was a staggering one. Without wearying you with tactical details I ask you to take my word for the truth that in all the brilliant achievements of the American Navy, and of her sister service in Great Britain, there is none to excel the record that was written in the great and successful invasions of Africa, Sicily, Italy and France. With the Navy was always the Merchant Marine, in which Americans have served with a devotion to duty and a disregard for danger and hardship that defy any attempts to describe.
To the air forces, without whose services all else would have been futile, all of us – owe similar debts of gratitude. Perhaps it is best for me merely to say that in every ship, on every plane, in every regiment, was a readiness to give life itself for the common good. And in this statement I must include the men that have been responsible for the tactics of the battle itself.
As an Allied commander, I have tried in London and in Paris to record something of the debt the United Nations owe to the fighting leaders of the British Empire and of France. Today as an American I would like to give you the names of our own officers that will always rank high in any list of those noted for service to their country. But any enumeration would necessarily be incomplete, so I must content myself by saying that, in great numbers, these battle leaders of the Army, the Navy and the air have served loyally, devotedly and brilliantly in my commands in Europe and Africa. Particularly I think you would like to know that, without exception, their first concern, their first care, has been the welfare – spiritual and physical – of their men – your sons, relatives and friends. You have as much right to swell with pride in the quality of the battle commanders you have sent to Europe and Africa as you have in the conduct of the millions they have led so skillfully and devotedly.
I have spoken mostly of Americans and British, because troops from this country and the British Empire always formed the bulk of my own command. But the campaigns of the Red Army, crushing all resistance in the East, played a decisive part in the defeat of Germany.
The abilities of the Soviet leaders and the courage and fortitude of their fighting men – and women – stir the emotions of anyone who admires soldierly virtues. The Soviet people have been called upon for terrible sacrifices in their own land, ravished by the bestial excesses of the German. Driven back to Stalingrad, their calm refusal to acknowledge the possibility of any other outcome than victory will be honored in history for all time to come. Finally when the Russian armies and ourselves started the great drives that met on the Elbe, the end was merely a matter of days the Allies, east and west, linked up and Nazi Germany was no more.
Here at home you played a very special part in the Soviet victory. Large quantities of American equipment, sent over the Arctic route to Murmansk and up from the Persian Gulf, furnished vital material of war to assist the Russians in mounting their great drives. The production of our people has won high praise from the Soviet leaders, as it has from other leaders in the Allied nations. There is not a battlefront in Europe where it has not been of decisive importance.
The liberated countries of Europe have played a part in fashioning the victory.
Following upon our invasion of Normandy, the breakthrough last summer permitted the swift liberation of most of France and gave that people an opportunity to begin resumption of normal conduct of their own lives. France’s own resistance forces, and some of her own divisions, took a notable part in driving out the enemy.
Every American soldier has seen the toll that war has exacted from France. Towns have been destroyed. Broken bridges make difficult road and river transport. The destruction of rolling stock or its allocation to military needs has denied its use to carry needed civilian goods, particularly food and fuel. Even now, although the guns are silent, the urgent necessities of our redeployment to the Pacific make it impossible to do all that we would wish toward improving the trying conditions in which the French people live.
This feeling extends also to Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, which endured four years of German tyranny, and which supported effective resistance movements in the Netherlands, during the last few months of conflict, real starvation prevailed in certain sections, where the German garrisons refused assistance. Our sympathy was aroused and tons of food were dropped by parachute to alleviate their suffering. Those countries still need, and deserve, our help.
And, now, because this meeting typifies, for me, the spiritual unity of the American home and battlefronts, I address a word to that relationship.
The American fighting man has never failed to recognize his dependence upon you at home. I am grateful for this opportunity to stand before the Congress and express my own and the thanks of every soldier, sailor and airman to the countrymen who have remained devoted to their tasks.
This feeling goes beyond the tangible things – guns, ammunition, tanks and planes, although in these things you have sent us the most and the best. It extends to such intangibles as the confidence and sympathetic understanding which have filled the letters written by families and friends to the men up front. For a few moments, simple words of affection and cheer blot out the danger and loneliness and hardship which are the soldier’s life. They send him back with renewed vigor and courage to his inexorable task of crushing the enemy.
I hope you realize that all you have done for the soldier has been truly appreciated. Never have they felt absent from your anxious care and warm affections. The Red Cross – to name just one outstanding organization – stands high in their admiration. The Red Cross, with its clubs for recreation, its coffee and doughnuts in the forward areas, its readiness to meet the needs of the well and help minister to the wounded – even more important, the devotion and warm-hearted sympathy of the Red Cross girl! The Red Cross has often seemed to be the friendly hand of this nation, reaching across the sea to sustain its fighting men.
The battlefront and the home front; together we have found the victory! But even the banners of triumph cannot hide from our sight the sacrifices in which victory has been bought. The hard task of a commander is to send men into battle knowing some of them – often many – must be killed or wounded in order that necessary missions may be achieved.
It is a soul-killing task! My sorrow is not only for the fine young lives lost or broken, but it is equally for the parents, the wives and the friends who have been bereaved. The price they pay is possibly the greatest. The blackness of their grief can be relieved only by the faith that all this shall not happen again! Because I feel this so deeply I hope you will let me attempt to express a thought that I believe is today imbedded deep in the hearts of all fighting men.
It is this. The soldier knows how grim and black was the outlook for the Allies in 1941 and '42. He is fully aware of the magnificent way the United Nations responded to the threat. To his mind the problems of peace can be no more difficult than the one you had to solve more than three years ago, and which, in one battle area, has been brought to a successful conclusion. He knows that in war the threat of separate annihilation tends to hold Allies together; he hopes we can find in peace a nobler incentive to produce the same unity.
He passionately believes that, with the same determination, the same optimistic resolution and the same mutual consideration among Allies that marshalled in Europe forces capable of crushing what had been the greatest war machine of history, the problems of peace can and must be met. He sees the United Nations strong but considerate; humane and understanding leaders in the world to preserve the peace he is winning.
The genius and power of America have, with her Allies, eliminated one menace to our country’s freedom – even her very existence. Still another remains to be crushed in the Pacific before peace will be restored. The American men and women I have been so honored to command, would, I know, say this to you today:
In our minds and hearts there is no slightest doubt that our people’s spirit of determination which has buoyed us up and driven us forward in Europe, will continue to fire this nation through the ordeals of battle yet to come. Though we dream of return to our loved ones, we are ready, as we have always been, to do our duty to our country, no matter what it may be. In this spirit we renew our pledge of service to Commander-in-Chief President Truman, under whose strong leadership we know that final victory is certain.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 18, 1945)
THIRST-CRAZED JAPS ENCIRCLED
Yanks lunge for knockout on Okinawa
3,000 enemy troops left in pocket
Down the last miles went U.S. troops today as four divisions, two Marine and two Army, compressed the 3,000 Jap survivors on Okinawa into a seven-square-mile area.
GUAM (UP, June 19) – U.S. Tenth Army troops encircled disorganized thrust-crazed Japs on the southeastern coast of Okinawa today.
The Yanks lunged forward in a frontal assault against isolated pockets of resistance that promised a quick end to the 80-day-old campaign.
Four U.S. divisions advanced in a coordinated offensive against crumbling opposition from 3,000 beaten enemy troops. Late battle reports said individual groups of Jap soldiers were losing contact with one another in a death pocket of less than seven square miles.
The 7th Infantry Division on the eastern flank closed in a trap on decimated Jap remnants fighting along the coast and moved in for a mop-up.
The 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, now fighting abreast on the western flank, exploded a headlong attack against a series of ridges south of Mezado, scarcely two miles from the cliff-lined tip of the island.
The 96th Infantry Division, fighting in the center of the American line, killed 115 grenade-throwing Japs who infiltrated its positions in a suicidal counterattack.
80,459 killed
Of the original Jap garrison of 85,000, U.S. troops at least 80,459 and captured 1,680 in the first 77 days of the campaign through Saturday.
Now enemy units were giving way under a heavy bombardment from land, sea and air, and before the Tenth Army’s push. The remaining Japs were expending their ambition with undiminished ferocity, but their resistance was expected to collapse at any hour.
The invasion-jittery Tokyo radio reiterated its warning to the Jap people that a new American invasion could be expected soon. But the Japs admitted they did not know in which direction the blow would be aimed.
Little optimism
Tokyo said:
Whether the enemy will devote his fullest effort toward a landing operation on the China coast, aim at a direct attack against the homeland by following one island to another, or take some other method, it does not give us any reason for optimism.
Tokyo said preparations for the next American invasion were already underway in the Okinawa area.
The American drive toward the southern tip of Okinawa has carried halfway or more across Yaeju-Dake plateau. A front dispatch said the battle line was fluid.
Can’t get water
Lt. Col. Daniel A. Nolan of Los Angeles, executive officer of the 96th Infantry Division’s 381st Regiment, revealed the last surviving Japs were suffering from a severe water shortage.
“They haven’t been able to get rainwater for some time,” he said. “We captured one prisoner who was desperate from thirst. Another had only a small quantity of brakish water in his canteen.”
Also plaguing the remaining enemy was an almost constant rain of fire and explosives from the sky. Tokyo said 10-odd American battleships and other warships were bombarding the southern tip of the island.
Rockets rip Japs
Thirty-six Marine fighter-bombers added to the flaming death and destruction with 19,000 pounds of bombs, 206 five-inch rockets and more than 21,000 rounds of 50-caliber machine-gun bullets yesterday.
Overrun in the U.S. advance was a cleverly-camouflaged enemy fighter strip. The airstrip had been built to resemble a rice field and had several movable houses on it.
The 7th Infantry Division, on the east coast, cleared up bypassed enemy pockets on Hills 153 and 115 and punched across the plateau from the southeast within a mile of a junction with the 6th Marines in the west.
1,500 a day killed
The latest enemy casualty toll of 80,459 dead announced by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz represented an increase of 12,756 for the previous eight days – an average of 1,500 Japs killed every day.
Among the enemy dead, it was revealed, was Adm. Minoru Ota, commander of the Jap naval base force, and five of his officers.
The six bodies, their throats neatly slit from ear to ear, were found in a row against a wall in their cave headquarters just below the south shore of Naha Bay and east of Naha Airfield.
SUPERFORTS RAIN FIRE ON FOUR CITIES
Shadow plants ripped in new air offensive
450 B-29s hit 500-mile front in Japan
…
IKE DEMANDS WORLD PEACE
Hero delivers victory talk to Congress
General lauds G.I.’s, Allies, home front
Capital assembles greatest crowd
WASHINGTON – Authorities today estimated the crowd at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s homecoming at between 800,000 and 1,000,000, the largest ever here.
Other crowds:
- The late President Roosevelt’s funeral procession two months ago – nearly 450,000, largest until today
- President Roosevelt’s return from Hyde Park after his fourth-term election – about 300,000
- Reception for Charles A. Lindbergh, June 11, 1927 – 250,000
- President Woodrow Wilson’s homecoming from Paris in 1919 – 100,000
- Gen. John J. Pershing’s reception in 1919 – 100,000
WASHINGTON (UP) – Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a conquering hero come home, told the world’s leaders today that the combat soldier of this war expects them “to preserve the peace he is winning.”
He 54-year-old Texas-born Kansan, given perhaps the most tumultuous and heartfelt homecoming reception in this capital’s history, declared in an address before Congress that “the problems of peace can and must be met.”
The grief of those who mourn for the dead, he said, “can be relieved only by the faith that all this shall not happen again.”
The tanned and smiling Eisenhower went before Congress after perhaps the greatest reception and parade ever given here to a returning hero.
Capital’s greatest crowd
Police Inspector Harvey G. Callahan estimated that the crowds totaled between 800,000 and 1,000,000. He said it was “definitely the biggest… ever in the capital’s history.” The population of the metropolitan area is slightly less than 1,500,000.
Speaker Sam Rayburn had to bang away with his gavel several times to quiet the House chamber.
Below him in the well were Gen. George C. Marshall, Army chief-of-staff; Adm. Ernest J. King. commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet, and Adm. William D. Leahy, President Truman’s chief of staff. They were grinning at Eisenhower and applauding.
Jammed into the House chamber also were the Supreme Court Justices, the Cabinet, and a host of foreign ambassadors, ministers and charges d’affaires. The galleries were packed.
Speech is read
Gen. Eisenhower began by saying he would deviate from a “long-established custom” of speaking extemporaneously. He then put on his glasses and calmly read the speech he had prepared – without oratorical flourishes and as matter-of-factly as though he were briefing his staff.
It was “Eisenhower Day” for everybody from President Truman down, and – in the words of Secretary of War Stimson – it was “a proud day for America.”
Gen. Ike flew home with 55 other returning warriors in four-engined Skymasters which were escorted on the last 50 miles of their trip to the National Airport here by a roaring armada of bombers and fighters.
Smiles galore
The man who engineered the defeat of Germany’s western might had a long speech for Congress, a shorter one for the Pentagon’s 32,000 workers, and an inexhaustible supply of smiles for the hundreds of thousands who greeted him with shouts of “Welcome Ike.”
But all he could say when he stepped on his home soil for the first time in a year and a half was: “Oh, God, it’s swell to be back.”
For long seconds after he stepped from his plane, following a 21-hour flight from Paris, Gen. Ike held his wife in his arms and gave her a kiss that she should remember.
Then he gave himself up to the crowds of hero-worshippers who had been gathering along Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues for hours.
From the airport and the Pentagon, where he exchanged tributes with the War Department’s thousands, Gen. Eisenhower and his men rode through the city in open reconnaissance cars past jammed thousands along flag-banked streets to the District Building. That is Washington’s “City Hall.”
There the reception reached its noisy climax. There also he received the key of the city.
At the Pentagon, 77-year-old War Secretary Stimson paid him this brief tribute: “You have served us with the highest honors.”
With characteristic modesty, Gen. Eisenhower told the assembled workers, “I bring you the thanks of three million fighting men.”
At the District Building, District Commissioner J. Russell Young hailed him “as a great and brilliant leader.”
‘Very proud of you’
“We are very proud of you and of what you and your men have done,” Mr. Young said. “God bless you and keep you for America.”
Gen. Eisenhower said, “I’m very happy and very proud. This is indeed the high spot in my life.”
All long the parade route were cheering and clapping crowds. Government girls squealed and jumped up and down trying to glimpse him. In the cloudless sky, processions of planes paced the parade.
At the Navy Building, an excited WAVE squealed, “I’ve got goose pimples.”
Ike salutes veterans
The brief stop at the District Building over the parade, moved on to the Capital where the general solemnly saluted 600 wounded veterans who had fought under him in Europe.
After his address to Congress and a civic luncheon, at which the people of the District presented him with a silver service, Gen. Eisenhower went to the White House where, in the Rose Garden, President Truman gave him his third Distinguished Service Medal, the nation’s second highest award.
The general said he would “rather have the distinction of receiving this from the President than any other honor I know of.” Mr. Truman replied: “I’d rather have this medal than the Presidency of the United States.”
Nearly 150 persons, including Mrs. Eisenhower, witnessed the presentation of the DSM, which Mr. Truman said was for “conspicuous service to the United States and to the peoples of all the United Nations.”
Gen. Eisenhower is not eligible for the Congressional Medal of Honor as that highest of U.S. awards is given for exceptional bravery above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy.
At the luncheon, Gen. Eisenhower made many an eye moist by describing “the feelings of a soldier on returning home.”
Pointing to the officers and men who came back with him, he said that they had been “in France where we didn’t understand the language” and in Germany where “the people were sullen.”
He said:
Now, we have come home. Coming home means seeing friends, seeing those who speak our language. All in all, it means America.
All of the three million fighting men [Americans in Europe] have just one longing – to return home to you.
He said that if his reception here indicated the feeling of Americans for their fighting men, he had “no fear of the future of my soldiers.”
But when he faced the Congress, General of the Army Eisenhower, the hero of as great a military campaign as was ever fought, had nothing to say about himself except:
I am summoned before you as the representative – the commander of those three million American men and women to whom you desire to pay America’s tribute for military victory. In humble realization that they, who earned your commendation, should properly be here to receive it. I am nevertheless proud and honored to serve as your agent in conveying it to them.
Speaking for those millions, Gen. Ike said there was “no slightest doubt that our people’s spirit of determination, which has buoyed us up and driven us forward in Europe, will continue to fire this nation through the ordeals of the battle yet to come.”
He said:
In this spirit, we renew our pledge of service to our Commander-in-Chief, President Truman, under whose strong leadership we know that final victory is certain.
Gen. Eisenhower talked of the American soldiers who faced every hazard the Nazis could conjure up and “conquered them all.” He talked of our Allies, the magnificent fighting men of Russia, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg.
Tribute to Roosevelt
And he paid a special tribute to the late Franklin D. Roosevelt and to Prime Minister Winston Churchill – “these two God-given men.”
“To those two all of us recognize our lasting obligation,” he said.
Gen. Eisenhower said much of the U.S. ground, air, naval supply, and merchant marine forces.
He thanked civilian America on behalf of the millions he led for the weapons and the “confidence and sympathetic understanding” which he said made victory possible.
But he spoke at even more length about the Allied unity which never faltered when the fighting was hardest.
“Often,” he said, “have I thanked a Kind Providence for these staunch Allies.”
He thanked the British for their hospitalities and the sacrifices they made for the common cause.
He especially lauded the struggle of the peoples conquered by the Germans and said, “Those countries still need, and deserve, our help.”
Plea for future
But Gen. Eisenhower’s real message, a message he said was “imbedded deep in the hearts of all fighting men,” was this:
The soldier knows how grim and dark was the outlook for the Allies in 1941 and ’42. He is fully aware of the magnificent way the United Nations responded.
To his mind the problems of peace can be no more difficult than the one you had to solve more than three years ago, and which, in one battle area, has now been brought to a successful conclusion.
He knows that in war the threat of separate annihilation tends to hold allies together; he hopes we can find in peace a nobler incentive to produce the same unity.
He sees the United Nations strong but considerate; humane and understanding leaders in the world to preserve the peace he is winning.
This is the capital’s day to let Gen. Ike know what it thinks of him. Tomorrow will be New York’s turn.
On Thursday, Abilene and Kansas – his hometown and state – will welcome their best-loved son.
Because he is what he is, Ike Eisenhower couldn’t take today alone. In Europe recently, he said he looked forward to his homecoming “with fear and trembling.”
So winging home with him today were 55 other returning warriors, 26 of them enlisted men, to share his honors.
Before coming here, Gen. Eisenhower had been feted and honored by the British, the Russians and the French.
London made him an honorary citizen and gave him a sword. Britain’s King George VI awarded him the rarely-bestowed Order of Merit. He was the first American to receive it.
Soviet Marshal Gregory Zhukov presented him the Order of Victory, a view of the Kremlin framed by a star of rubies and diamonds. Gen. Charles de Gaulle gave him France’s highest honor, the Cross of Liberation.
Rapid rise
The triumphs that have come to Gen. Eisenhower have come in a brief span of years. Less than four years ago he was a colonel, hardly known outside the Army.
He was a major general when he went to Europe on June 16, 1942.
The story of his subsequent rise to supreme command of Anglo-American forces in Europe is a familiar one.
‘Son of America’
The consequences of his military genius, his organizing skill and tact, his decision and calm confidence – these are history.
Prime Minister Churchill said last week that Gen. Eisenhower had proved “not only his capacity to organize and regulate movements of armies but to stir men’s hearts; he also has shown a capacity for making great nations march together more truly united than they have ever been before.”
But it was the Russian Zhukov who captured the Kansas farm boy most completely in the fewest words.
“Ike Eisenhower,” the Russian said, is “a son of the American people.”
86th Division home for rest after 42 tough days of war
Hardened by four major battles in Europe, outfit is anxious for chance at Japs
…
Deportation fight won by Bridges
Supreme Court grants stay in 5-3 decision
…
AP again loses antitrust suit
…
Suicide raid sinks another U.S. ship
GUAM (UP) – The Japs, powerless to stop the slaughter of their men on Okinawa, struck back from the air with suicide plane attacks on American fleet units offshore, a communiqué said today.
One light American unit, possibly a destroyer, was sunk Saturday.
An Army announcement revealed that Black Widow night-fighters have moved into Guam to take over the air defense of the fleet at night.