Eisenhower orders 30-day G.I. mourning
All flags in France at half-staff
PARIS (UP) – Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered a 30-day mourning period for U.S. troops throughout the European Theater today in memory of President Roosevelt.
Gen. Eisenhower flashed back the order to Supreme Headquarters from the front, where he was conferring with his generals on the final phases of the Battle of Germany.
The battle was drawing to the end long ago envisioned by President Roosevelt. And it was under the direction of the man he picked to be supreme commander on the Western Front.
News spreads rapidly
Word of the death of the president spread rapidly through Supreme Headquarters and Paris, leaving sadness and grief in its wake.
Gen. Charles de Gaulle, provisional president of France, cabled President Truman that the French government learned of Mr. Roosevelt’s death with “great emotion and deep sadness.”
He ordered flags lowered to half-staff throughout France.
In the cabarets, at the Red Cross Rainbow Corner and along the boulevards swarming with khaki the reaction was heartfelt.
Band silenced
At fashionable Ciro’s, the band was silenced and the leader read a brief announcement of Mr. Roosevelt’s death. All Allied troops left immediately.
A tank brigade sergeant on furlough tried to get through to his commanding officer to arrange to return to the front.
“I voted for him four times for president,” he said. “Since I can’t vote for him a fifth time, the least I can do is to go back up there and fight for him.”
At the Scube Hotel, headquarters of war correspondents assigned to Supreme Headquarters, a klaxon sounded three blasts – the signal reserved for major announcements. Then an officer read a United Press flash reporting the death.
‘He was a real guy’
Dumbfounded, sad-eyed American soldiers clustered about the radio in the Rainbow Corner’s big reception hall seeking further details.
Cpl. Joseph Koval of Boonton, New Jersey, was closest to the radio when the first flash was broadcast.
He leaped from his chair and screamed, “Good God, the president’s dead!”
“He was a real guy,” Sgt. Larry Buzin of Elizabeth, New Jersey, said. “We never had a guy like him.”