Site Ed. Note: Reports the front page, while a lull in the fighting extended along the Fifth Army front in Italy, Canadian troops of the Eighth Army made small gains, capturing new heights overlooking Ortona, guarding the roads to Chieti and Pescara on the Adriatic coast, as other units engaged in fighting extending along a front from Ortona through Orsogna to Guardiagrele in the Matella Mountains, keeping the German defenders pinned down.

To try to ward off the approach of the Eighth Army to the junction of the trans-peninsula road to Rome at Pescara, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had amassed now three full divisions in the area, the 90^th Armored Grenadiers, guarding the coast, the 20^th Armored Division in the center, near Orsogna, and the 65^th Infantry further inland in the vicinity of Guardia.

The Wolf, however, remained in one of the many bunkers strewn across Germany.

"Roma o Morte," read the slogan on the side of the American military transport vehicle carrying some smiling Italian soldiers to the fighting front of the Fifth Army, as captured in a photograph on the page.

After several weeks of Russian fighting on the defensive in the area of the Kiev bulge, both German and Russian communiques indicated a shift in the fighting, placing the Germans on the defensive, as the Red Army closed in from the west, the northeast and southeast on Kirovograd, partially isolating the city.

The Saturday American raid on northwest Germany was declared to be against Emden, as the Germans lost 138 fighters with no reported loss by the American forces. Another raid had proceeded against undisclosed targets in the same area on this day.

Balkan tensions continued in Bulgaria and were spreading to Rumania and Hungary, also appearing to champ at the Nazi bit.

In the House of Lords in London, Lord Strabolgi, Labor leader in the House, stated that the ensuing hundred days in the European war could be as decisive as the victory at Waterloo over Napoleon, provided the Allies acted boldly and peremptorily.

On his way back from the last Cairo Conference, President Roosevelt, after already meeting with General Eisenhower in Carthage, stopped off in Sicily where he met with both General Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army, and General Patton, still in command of the remnants of the Seventh Army, that not yet absorbed into the Fifth Army, as recently reported the main body of it had been.

The President appeared with General Eisenhower, General Patton, and General Clark to award medals to several officers, including the Distinguished Service Cross to General Clark for his stand on September 14 at Salerno against a German counter-offensive to the bridgehead established after the September 9 landing.

It was the first indication of the whereabouts of General Patton since August.

Expressly stated was that no report provided what, if anything, FDR said to General Patton regarding his recently disclosed slapping incidents and the investigation pending before the Senate Military Affairs Committee.

Meanwhile, Secretary of War Henry Stimson disclosed to the Senate Committee that the War Department had concluded its investigation of General Patton and found that, in addition to the two slapping incidents, the one involving Private Charles Kuhl on August 3, the soldier later determined to be suffering from malaria, and the other of an unnamed soldier on August 10, both in Sicily, General Patton had "spoken threateningly and with undue harshness" to a soldier engaged in combat duty for his failure to adhere to the military dress code by not wearing leggings, the result of swollen ankles.

It was disclosed that on the eve of the landing in Sicily on July 10, a combined British and American naval task force ran interference by feigning an invasion of Norway from the sea north of the Arctic Circle, seeking futilely to draw out the German battleship Tirpitz and to engage the Luftwaffe. Despite two such feints, the Germans did not bite.

Mr. Sinatra might yet get his chance to fight the Marines, young ladies, as the Selective Service announced that 4-F'ers might yet become eligible within the pool of draftees, delaying the call-up further for pre-Pearl Harbor fathers. Save your tears, as Frankie wanted it that way.

Wait, he was a pre-Pearl Harbor father; it looks like he gets the boot again.

In an unusual twist, a former law student from Nashville was sentenced in Federal court in Louisville to be executed for a kidnaping in 1934 after a jury found him guilty, and also found that he had inflicted serious bodily injury on the victim by permanently impairing her hearing during the course of the kidnaping. (Perhaps, thusly?) The jury recommended the death sentence.

Originally, Thomas Robinson had pleaded guilty to the offense in a plea bargain under which he received life imprisonment. Six and a half years into his sentence, however, he sought successfully on habeas corpus to have the plea overturned on the basis of improper coercion of it by the FBI and for ineffective assistance of counsel in entering the plea. His defense at trial was insanity. Quite obviously.

Perhaps, sometimes, it is better to be a smart, if incompetent, attorney than to be stupidly competent and get your client fried in the process.

No doubt, the competent attorney would appeal the sentence and conviction. He could do no worse than he already had.

Take heed, young criminal defense attorneys; we have seen the like.

Hal Boyle tells of suddenly meeting his own brother, Neil, on duty at a bomber base somewhere in the Mediterranean. Neil had been through Australia, Bombay, and Cairo before reaching his present destination. He had a cut on his cheek and bruised and swollen right knuckles, something about a disagreement with some Italians over the quality of the Italian soldier. They didn’t mind the argument, he said, but the hand signals were more than they had wished to accept.

On the editorial page, "A Climax" reports of the chef d'oeuvre in propaganda promulgated recently by the Japanese, eclipsing all efforts at the craft practiced by Herr Doktor Goebbels. They had put out the story that, in a decisive and dramatic naval battle which they had won in the area of the Gilbert Islands, their Fleet had sunk the 50,000-ton battlewagon U.S.S. Wisconsin.

The problem with the story was that the ship was still being fitted for service in a United States Navy yard.

"Generosity" thanks the Charlotte Boxing Commission for its ample contribution to the News-sponsored Empty Stocking Fund, to provide Christmas gifts for needy children of Charlotte, as well as to the Fresh Air Fund.

The Boxing Commission was a perennial provider to the Empty Stocking Fund and had been recognized in previous years for its contributions.

"Butch O'Hare" laments the passing in air battle of the first Navy Air Force Medal of Honor recipient in the war, for his derring-do over the Pacific.

Young Mr. O'Hare would later have Chicago’s airport named in his honor.

"A Split" returns to the story of Senator Josiah W. Bailey's threat to bolt the Democratic Party along with other Southern Democrats and form a third. It explains statistically, however, the tremendous lock and power which the South had over the Democratic Party historically, and thus why the bloc protested too much in its threat to revolt.

Nevertheless…

Raymond Clapper writes on his seeing an advanced showing of the new War Department film about the progress of the war, suggesting that it was yet far from over in both Europe and Japan, but especially in the Pacific. It would serve as a wake-up call to the manufacturers of the country, says Mr. Clapper, who were already starting to prepare for the post-war return to manufacture of civilian goods.

Mr. Clapper then reports of the rebuke given the manufacturers by Charles Wilson, who had resigned his post as president of G.E. to assume an $8,000 per year job heading production for the War Production Board. Despite not having been a Roosevelt supporter himself, Mr. Wilson criticized his fellow manufacturers for placing their hatred of the President ahead of the good of the country and succumbing to the efforts of special interests to divide the land politically for their own private benefit.

Two days after taking mildly to task Raymond Clapper for his scolding of the President for allowing the press to be mistreated and shunted away from the Cairo and Tehran conferences, Samuel Grafton carps, lovingly, he insists, at Dorothy Thompson's editorial appearing Thursday, regarding the anti-climax of the Tehran Declaration, after it had been held up for five days until December 6, following the end of the historic meeting December 1. Mr. Grafton finds it petty of her to gripe at something so monumental as this first meeting of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. He begs to differ.

Among the many items covered by Drew Pearson, including flagging production of aluminum for airplanes at Ford's River Rouge plant and the gadabout expensive hearings anent Government expense being regularly conducted by Senator McCarran of Nevada, he tells of Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Jimmie Davis, author of "You Are My Sunshine", having recommended in salutary manner that all candidates in 1944 conduct their campaigns as drives to raise funding for war bonds.

Goodnight, Chet...

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