Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Red Army, having seized Perekop the previous day, was surging into the Crimea, pushing the Nazis back toward Kerch. All land exits from the Crimea had been sealed, according to the Russians, after the capture of Perekop.

British troops of the Fifth Army in Italy had taken from German defensive positions a key 2,000-foot height of Massico Ridge, at Casanova, and had also occupied Matese Mountain, another part of the German defensive line dominating the Upper Volturno Valley. The new gains placed the Army within artillery range of Venafro, appearing to hasten the fall of the entirety of Massico Ridge, the occurrence of which would force the Nazis to retreat to the Garigliano River.

Hal Boyle, recounting some of the best leadership and fighting forces thus far in the war from the United States, sings the praises while providing brief impressionistic summaries of the mien and bearing of three prominent generals: Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Omar Bradley. He indicates that, while always unremittingly tough on his men, General Patton wept as a baby over the death in Tunisia of his young aide de camp, Dick Jensen.

From the Pacific came the report that Marines had landed on Bougainville at Empress Augusta Bay the day before, meeting only slight enemy resistance. Occupation of Choiseul and the Treasury Islands was said to be proceeding satisfactorily. Task forces routed Japanese contingents at Buka and in the Shortland Islands.

In this theater this date, John F. Kennedy skippered PT-59 in an operation which rescued 40 to 50 Marines of the 1^st Parachute Battalion of the 1^st Parachute Regiment from Choiseul. The Marines had been pinned down by enemy fire. As the story was related by Dick Keresey, skipper of PT-105 and veteran of the same PT-boat squadron in which PT-109 had been a part on the fateful operation in Blackett Strait on August 2, PT-59 left Vella Lavella when its skipper received word that PT-boats were needed to rescue the Marines. Because of the necessity to stand in line for half an hour to refuel, Kennedy skipped doing so and set out for Choiseul.

The boat picked up Lieutenant Keresey ten miles south of Choiseul, as Keresey had been part of the 2d Parachute Battalion which landed on Choiseul. He guided Kennedy to the trapped Marines who had already been loaded onto an LCVP, a so-called Higgins boat used as a small landing craft. Another LCVP had already departed the island, carrying some of the Marines from harm's way. The second craft, however, had stalled and was drifting toward shore and enemy positions after springing a leak from hitting coral reefs, causing the sea water to foul the engine.

Kennedy cut his engines to idle speed to enable quiet running and steered a path between the stricken LCVP and shore, risking in the process exposure to enemy fire a few hundred yards away. The men aboard the LCVP were then transferred to PT-59, arriving in the nick of time. There were so many Marines off-loaded that there was hardly room aboard the small PT-boat to move. Corporal Edward James Schnell of Willamette, Illinois had been critically wounded in the shore action. He was also brought aboard PT-59 and laid on Kennedy's bunk.

Lieutenant Kennedy then hit the throttle and PT-59 lumbered along perilously, carrying now 55 to 65 men in all, far in excess of its normal complement. PT-59 was low on gas by this time, but made it to Voza where the Marines were transferred to an LCVP for eventual transport back to Vella Lavella.

Corporal Schnell, however, was in such bad condition that he could not be moved from PT-59. Kennedy therefore was given the task of transporting him back to Vella Lavella in the company of a physician who had been among the Marines rescued. The boat started down the Slot in the Solomons after midnight, heading back toward Vella Lavella.

Corporal Schnell died at 1:00 a.m., before the boat could reach its destination.

At around 3:00 a.m., PT-59 ran out of gas and had to be towed to Lambu Lambu Cove.

The story has been related differently in other sources than that from which is taken the above account, combined from those contained in Robert Ballard's The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT-109 and Robert Donavan's 1961 PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II, both relying on eyewitness recollections of the incident from members of the crew and the Marines rescued. The variant account suggests, without proof, that Kennedy's boat ran out of fuel because of his failure to refuel before departing Vella Lavella, not for its having taken on 40 to 50 men beyond its normal capacity and then having to lug through the night for a substantial distance, the implication offered by revisionists being that running out of gas may have cost Corporal Schnell his life. (See, for instance, the cryptic account, claiming as a source Mr. Donovan's book, as related in the always reliable Wickedpedia, omitting without apology all of the crucial facts in the process.)

It did not occur that way--except in the minds of those wishing to harm the memory of the late President. Corporal Schnell died two hours before the boat ran out of fuel.

But for the actions of Lieutenant Kennedy in heading out from Vella Lavella when he did, it is probable that all 40 to 50 Marines would have died from enemy fire as the stricken LCVP drifted helplessly to shore.

Kennedy detractors seem to think that in time of war, all one had to do was to pull up to the pumps at the local Esso station and ask Gomer to fill up the tank.

As we pointed out in August, twenty years to the day from November 2, 1943, a coup was staged in the Republic of South Vietnam, resulting in the assassinations of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother and chief political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. had been appointed at the time by President Kennedy as Ambassador to South Vietnam.

The Choiseul operation had been a diversionary tactic, initiated October 27, for the landing on Bougainville by the Marines the day before on November 1, as related in some detail on the front page by an A.P. reporter, Fred Hampson, on board one of the low-flying torpedo bombers providing cover in the Bougainville operation.

In the wake of the successful Moscow Foreign Ministers' Conference, Senator Harry Truman of Missouri indicated his support for the amendment proposed by Senator Claude Pepper of Florida to the Connally Resolution. The amendment would have authorized military force to be used when necessary to prevent international aggression. Otherwise, reasoned Senator Truman, the resolution, as proposed, would not enable the United Nations to prevent aggression by such rogue nations as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Japan.

Meanwhile DNB, Nazi mouthpiece in Germany, proclaimed that the Moscow Conference had resulted in the U.S. and Great Britain kowtowing to the Soviets, allowing the Soviets to have domination over Europe. The only savior from such an untoward result, claimed the broadcast, was Nazi Germany. The result of the conference, contended the broadcast, was that the U.S. and Great Britain would soon initiate bombing raids on Germany from within Russia.

On the domestic scene, the coal mines were seized by the Government for the second time during the year, after 375,000 miners on strike refused to report to work on Monday, despite the call from John L. Lewis to do so.

The piece starts to elucidate a role in the government takeover by former Undersecretary of Interior and future Supreme Court Justice and Chief Justice-designate in 1968, Abe Fortas. Mr. Fortas, a personal friend and counsel of President Johnson, was appointed by him in 1965 to the Supreme Court and then, upon the resignation of Chief Justice Earl Warren at the start of the 1968 fall term, was nominated to be the successor Chief. Unfortunately, the nomination was derailed by Republicans and conservative Democrats who obviously preferred that Richard Nixon, detested by Earl Warren, be able to name the successor Chief, ultimately Warren Earl Burger.

Mr. Fortas, amid trumped-up controversy, resigned his seat on the Court the following year. In his stead, after two controversial Nixon nominees, Clement Haynesworth and Harold Carswell, both defenders of racial segregation, were rejected by the Senate, was appointed and confirmed Harry Blackmun, who in 1973 delivered the opinion in Roe v. Wade.

For the slow of understanding and other Republicans, we reiterate: Harry Blackmun was appointed by President Nixon to the Court, no fault of his own. President Nixon, incidentally, was a Republican, not a Democrat.

But, who knows?

Today, we opine, he would be deemed much too liberal and too level-headed for the Republican Party and its Tea Party wing.

High voter turnouts had been recorded in the Detroit mayoral election and in the Kentucky gubernatorial election, while low turnout occurred in the New York lieutenant governor’s race with one candidate backed by FDR and the other by his eventual 1944 opponent, Governor Tom Dewey. The races had been watched for potential signals of the outcome to be in 1944.

Hey, Mr. and Ms. Republican: don't get your hopes up. Especially should you continue to field some of the nuts who appeared in the ring this cycle. Nuts may play for awhile, but, eventually, they lose their sex appeal.

Always remember: Dewey won, both in 1944 and in 1948.

We note in passing that Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has suggested today that a previously planned trip to India by President Obama, to begin later in the week, is going to cost the taxpayers 200 million dollars per day, her example of waste which needs to be trimmed from government.

Two hundred million dollars per day.

She favors teleconferencing in lieu of foreign trips by the President.

Hell, why not Tweet? even cheaper probably.

She apparently obtained her factum from somewhere on the internet or from the rushing lamebrains on talk radio--apparently the location from which this Congresswoman gets most of her facts.

That was 200 million per day, a billion every five days.

Say the secret woo-ed and win 200 million dollas.

You bet your life, you just won 200 million if you said "kook".

Write Representative Bachmann for the check. She will, no doubt, sign it with the four billion dollar fountain pen she obtained from one of the contractors studying the first manned trip to Mars next year. It is in fact that valuable because it bears the actual original logo of Mickey Mouse and was said to be touched once by Elvis, in 1987.

No, Ms. Bachmann, the place where we need to start cutting waste is where all the funny money is being pumped now into the sewer of political campaigns by large corporations, completely without regulation for the first time since the days preceding Watergate, thanks to the five of the six Republican appointees on the Supreme Court last January, in Citizens United v. FEC, reversing recently established precedent and overthrowing, as an unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of speech, campaign finance reform, known as McCain-Feingold.

We heard one Republican lunatic this afternoon on the Conversationally Neutral Network shouting hosannas over the results of the 2010 mid-term election, wondering why President Obama would be talking today about pushing for more development of electric cars when all that talk of global warming was now passé.

Perhaps, this lunatic would like to visit Greenland and walk across all the remaining ice there to prove to the world just how passé the concept of global warming--the colossal hoax to too many Republicans--really is. Be our guest, loony bird.

Oh, we forgot. It's God's will that we should continue to destroy the planet with carbon emissions.

God's will be done.

Why do you think they named it "Greenland"?

On the editorial page, "The Report" provides high praise for the agreement coming out of the Moscow Conference, finds it to be of vital importance for shaping the future of the world as well as in the present settling the speculation that Russia might reach a separate peace with Germany. The document, it says, made Russia the dominant force in Europe, in replacement of both Germany and Great Britain, and offered hope for a peaceful future, one in which the principles adopted in the August, 1941 Atlantic Charter by the three nations might be realized, that is, FDR’s Four Freedoms carried over the world.

"Others See Us" chronicles the report by the New York correspondent of The London Times, suggesting that when victory finally would come in Russia and in Italy, American war production inevitably would lag.

There was also apparent concern abroad among the Allies that should FDR not be re-elected in 1944, many of his promises might be undone by his successor, thus causing some reticence in making commitments to the U.S. Government.

The editorial assures the Times correspondent that America would continue to produce as the "arsenal of democracy", so labeled by FDR in late May, 1941, and that any successor to FDR would continue the country on the course of supporting the war effort abroad.

"Freight Rates" has some fun with the First Lady's recent "My Day" entry in which she implied her dismay over the inequalities in national freight rates, relating that when she sent her daughter in Texas grapefruit, it cost less than for her daughter to send her the same amount of grapefruit, that the freight generally cost more than the grapefruit.

The piece deduces that the First Lady was more concerned about grapefruit than freight rate inequities for the South.

Samuel Grafton offers that the U.S. was still trying to resolve its problems left over from the last war, the attempt to bring into the fold of internationalism the former isolationists, rather than trying really to solve the problems to become inherent in the aftermath of the present war.

He wonders what might be accomplished between the U.S., Great Britain, Russia, and China with economic cooperation after the war and not just dry agreements for mutual cooperation in achieving and maintaining world peace. He believes the discourse ought to exceed the level of merely trying to establish an international police force to check aggression. There was too much fear of another war and not enough fear of not cooperating in the post-war world and recognizing as friends with equal rights the current Allies of the United States. Finding peace out of the war meant ultimately recognizing friends around the world.

Raymond Clapper bemoans the fact that some people in the United States delighted in the rhetoric favoring return to isolationism after the war, breaking up the United Nations. He thinks it a good idea that an amendment to the Constitution be passed to take away the necessity of a two-thirds majority vote by the Senate to approve a treaty and replace it with a simple majority vote in both the Senate and the House--that to avoid the prospect of the conclusion reached by the Senate after World War I, to reject membership in the League of Nations.

Drew Pearson begins his column by suggesting that the rumor circulating that Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina would not seek re-election was being driven by the fact that his poor-boy-from-the-sticks routine which first got him elected over the "caviar-eating" Cam Morrison would no longer play among North Carolina Democrats. For Bob was now married to wealthy twenty-year old heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean. It was Bob who now ate caviar--probably out of silk stockings.

He next turns to the suggestion by a United Press reporter that the debate between Senators Bridges, Ball, and Pepper, all in their forties, and Tom Connally, 66, regarding the strength of the resolution to authorize U.S. membership in a post-war United Nations organization, was one of youth versus age. Senator Connally took issue with the reporter and retorted that the conflict was characterized instead by good sense versus nonsense.

Dorothy Thompson explores the various ways which could not lead to the ouster of Hitler, as he occupied both roles of president and prime minister in Germany, as well as the third as party chieftain, with ultimate control over the S.S. There was no established procedure under the Weimar Constitution, still in effect, to appoint a successor upon the death of Hitler, the only way in which he could practically be removed without his own consent. The generals thus could not effectively demand Hitler's resignation and an end to the war, as in the days of the Kaiser at the end of World War I; nor was there a king as in Italy to do so.

Although elaborately well-reasoned, the piece would be purely academic by war's end, made so by the ultimate outcome: a self-inflicted bullet to the temple in lieu of a letter of resignation. The brief successor was only for the purpose of surrendering to the Allies, encroaching on Berlin. It would be the Allies, not the German generals, who would dictate the terms of Nazi Germany's surrender.

The Reverend Herbert Spaugh counsels that it would be "The Faith of Our Fathers" which would lead to victory in the war. He cites a poem, "God of Battles" by General Patton, to illustrate his point.

The poem, written as a prayer in 1943, reads as follows:

From pride and foolish confidence,
From every waking creed,
From the dread fear of fearing,
Protect us, Lord, and lead.

Great God, who, through the ages,
Has braced the bloodstained hand,
As Saturn, Jove, or Woden
Has led our Warrior band.

Again we seek thy counsel,
But not in cringing guise,
We whine not for thy mercy,
To slay; God make us wise.

For slaves who shun the issue
Who do not ask thy aid,
To Thee we trust our spirits,
Our bodies, unafraid.

From doubt and fearsome bodings
Still Thou our spirits guard,
Make strong our souls to conquer.
Give us the victory, Lord.

The Reverend might have added that General Patton no doubt prayed this prayer every goddamned day.

Whether General Patton ever wrote lines similar to these, we don't know, but we can imagine:

And when I slapped the soldier in Sicily for being Yellow,
It never occurred to me that the dirty little bastards would
Jump up and down and bellow
For my scalp and my stars and all that went with them,
Nay, even for my soul, exhibiting a passion for its filching.

So I stood there as a damned fool and to all assembled apologized,
Never having thought that the young man had the fever.
But, you know, it turned out to be not a fool's fall but wise,
Something akin to history's Greater Lever,
The Everlasting Fulcrum upon which all of Mystery daily turns,
Finally to enable me to get those Nazi bastards
And to send them back to Hell infernally,
Where, eternally, they all deserve to Burn.