Saturday, February 5, 1944

The Charlotte News

Saturday, February 5, 1944

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Nazis were now striking British troops north of Aprilia, twenty miles southeast of Rome. The German 26th Division, one of the most experienced of the Wehrmacht fighting in Italy, had been brought up to reinforce the sector. Fighting was confused along serpentine lines. At one point, a German guard captured a hundred British prisoners, but then proceeded to march them into the Allied lines, at which point not only were the prisoners freed but 40 German prisoners seized.

The Nazis continued to pour fresh armament into the Cassino front and the town had exchanged hands twice, with half now in Allied hands and half under control by the Germans. Fighting continued house-to-house. American troops pushed west to rid Mt. Maiola of the enemy.

On the Russian front, it was announced that with the prior taking of Lutsk, 70 miles inside old Poland, and Rovno, 30 miles inside the old border, the Red Army was within 50 miles of the inception point of the June, 1941 German invasion of Russia.

Fighting continued in the sector west of Leningrad, with the Baltic Army having advanced to the mouth of the Narova River and, thirty-five miles to the south, to the edge of Lake Peipus.

To the south in the Dneiper Bend area, the First and Second Ukrainian armies, now conjoined, continued to encircle approximately 100,000 German troops, as the Nazis sought to evacuate by air.

A million and a half refugees, mostly transplanted Germans, were trying to escape Eastern Poland and the Balkans in the shadow of the Russian advance, clogging roadways in the process.

American planes struck targets in France, including six airfields, among them airfields in southwestern Paris, hit for the first time since December 31.

A British Mosquito night raid had struck undisclosed targets in Western Germany.

On Kwajalein, the Seventh Army Division, veterans of the fighting in the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska, continued to clear the reticulum of Japanese pillboxes in the southern sector. In the north, the Fourth Division Marines took seven more small islands with light opposition. Later reports indicated that all thirty of the islands comprising Kwajalein Atoll were in Allied hands.

The heaviest bombing raid yet on Wewak, off New Guinea, dropped 200 tons of bombs and destroyed 72 Japanese planes on the ground, as eight were knocked from the air.

Hal Boyle tells of a surgeon in the town of Cervaro in Italy. The Allies had taken the town a few days earlier but shelling continued. Another soldier at the field hospital explained that most wounds were to the arms and legs as it was difficult to protect those appendages from fire.

The soldiers spoke of the tremendously concentrated population on Sicily and how to disperse it. One soldier advocated birth control, made retroactive.

On the editorial page, "See Here" greets the premiere of "See Here, Private Hargrove", the film based on the book of the same name, consisting of pieces written daily on Army life by Private Marion Hargrove, formerly of The News.

"A Team" celebrates the new unity being demonstrated by the Charlotte City Council and posits that it was likely the result of the actions of Mayor Baxter to that end.

"Sales Tax" defends the state tax on the basis that if, as some legislators sought, the tax would be abolished, the needs of the public treasury ultimately would have to be borne by some other area of taxation.

"Comeback" applauds the House and Senate for finally allowing a roll call vote on the soldier-vote bill, and the Senate for breathing new life into the bill by defeating a substitute States' Right proposal to send the matter back to the states.

"First Round" hails the apparent victory in the Marshalls, achieved far more rapidly than envisioned despite the heavy Japanese fortifications of the islands. The piece issues the caveat, however, that subsequent victories on the road to Tokyo would not come so easily or with so relatively little loss of life.

Whether the cat o' nine tails at the end of the column, anent that durned cat, necessarily meant that the alley in question was within the Black Hills of South Dakota, whether as addition to Rushmore or to finish Crazy Horse, was, doubtless, not the case.

Springing from a comment made by Walter Lippmann in the process of lionizing William Allen White, who had died a week earlier, Samuel Grafton urges his fellow citizens not to become Martians or hermits, taking the notion of freedom to mean that any conception of the world was acceptable, that living within the society of mankind necessarily provided some scope to the limits of freedom of conception. He urges therefore a responsible freedom, not one seeking to retreat to isolationism or advocating war with Russia or abolition of all labor unions after the war.

The people, he opines, had charted a course between the extreme visions of the world planned by either the right or the left, and the promise of that world along the middle of the road was not one which was without interest.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the plan enunciated by Foreign Commissar Molotov before the Supreme Soviet to divide the Soviet Union into 16 republics with the ability to negotiate foreign relations independently and to administer their own separate armies. She finds this move not to suggest a grab for greater power within the post-war United Nations organization, as Russia was pragmatic enough to realize that the power behind any given entity determined its weight at the conference table of nations, one large country wielding as much weight as sixteen smaller ones. Instead, the proposal was by design to foster the movements begun during the war toward democratizing change within the Soviet Union. By dividing the nation into more autonomous republics, the cohesion of the U.S.S.R. would be rendered greater for its stimulation to greater individual self-determination among the republics and enabling of trade with nations more proximal to each widely dispersed geographical area of the country.

Drew Pearson devotes his entire column to the prospect of a dark horse nomination by the Republicans of Senator Harold Burton of Ohio, former Mayor of Cleveland, future Supreme Court Justice, to be appointed by President Truman. He would be a striking contrast, as a taciturn, bland personage, to FDR, suggests Mr. Pearson, the nation growing tired of the President's dash and panache, the cigarette holder, the badinage with the press, the irrepressibly cheery disposition. The country was ready for another Calvin Coolidge, says Mr. Pearson.

Of course, Thomas Dewey was nominated by the Republicans, along with Ohio Governor John W. Bricker as the vice-presidential candidate.

Nevertheless, the country would eventually get its Cal II.

Raymond Clapper, in the third of his posthumously published columns after his death February 2, tells of his time on Munda in the Solomons, talking to members of the oldest existing Marine torpedo-plane squadron in the South Pacific, veterans of the action at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in the late summer and fall of 1942.

One 24-year old pilot from Dallas told of his narrow escape from death when he had to land his bomber alone after an armed bomb became stuck in the bomb bay doors. One landing gear was inoperable and his hydraulics were out; nevertheless, with the crew having already bailed safely into a grove of cocoanut trees, he was able to land the plane without a blow up, albeit with the detonator four inches away from striking the drop doors. The following day, the former Burroughs adding machine salesman who had been in service since April, 1942, flew a mission over Rabaul.

A naked airman drinking a beer told Mr. Clapper that he had landed three times with his tank on empty, including once five days earlier. Flying by the seat of the pants was the way of it with the airmen.

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