Saturday, March 10, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, March 10, 1945

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the First Army troops crossing the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, 6,000 having crossed in the first 24 hours by Thursday afternoon, had repulsed a tank-supported Nazi counter-attack. German radio reported that the Americans were also crossing by boat four or five miles downstream from Remagen and were entering the east side also by way of Honnef.

The bridgehead across the Rhine at Remagen had now been expanded to eighty square miles from its 50 square miles reported the previous day. Despite 150-mm. and 210-mm. shell fire hitting the bridge, the troops were continuing to cross, in support of the established bridgehead and occupying the highlands east of the river.

Said Major Ben Cothran, former city editor of the Knoxville Journal, "There's no time to fool around. As soon as a man steps on the bridgehead he's got to start fighting."

Four planes of the Luftwaffe had approached the bridge Thursday night, over 24 hours after the start of the crossing, but were shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Three more planes dropped bombs on Friday out of low-hanging clouds.

The Ninth Air Force provided plentiful air support for the Lumberjacks.

Berlin also reported that Americans were crossing the Rhine five miles upstream from Remagen at Honnef and that the town had changed hands more than once, sort of akin to a pineapple. Honnef was on the autobahn leading to the Ruhr. The report also indicated fierce fighting near Linz on the southern end of the bridgehead, upstream from Remagen. The bridgehead, it assured the good little Germans, had been sealed nicely shut.

Have no fear. The bad Americans and British will be shut out. The Fuehrer once again has consulted Blondie and has a plan.

We would suggest, however, as we have been here before, that you Nazis consider either giving up now or running for your lives, if you can. But, suit yourselves. Have it your way. It's only a hamburger and chips, after all. If you've no soul to begin with, what bother it you should you lose your head and body, such that only your shoes come floating along as part of the flotsam.

A late report stated that the Germans had blown the road and railroad bridges at Wesel the night before.

German reinforcements, in a column with all its lights glaring, were reported headed toward the bridgehead as the Nazis fired heavy artillery shells at the Remagen Bridge.

Either these idiots were going to the front or hoping first for interception by the nighttime RAF bombers to save the Allies the trouble of inflicting a more painful death.

To the south, the Third Army moved to within two miles of Coblenz from the northwest, seizing Ruebenach. Further northwest, the Third and First Armies had joined at the Rhine, drawing shut a rat trap on 20,000 little rats, survivors of five or six divisions which had been in the Eifel Mountains.

Some 1,350 American bombers, supported by 500 escorts, had struck along the Western Front, some within artillery range of the American guns, as well as at rail yards at Dortmund, 30 miles beyond the Rhine, and at bridges, viaducts, and rail sidings near Soest and Paderborn.

The RAF Mosquitos the night before struck Berlin for the 238th time during the war, depositing more than 1,200 tons of eggs on the Nazi capital.

Hope you liked the yokes.

The Fifteenth Air Force out of Italy hit the Paronal rail bridge across the Adige River three miles northwest of Verona. Whether any gentlemen were present at the time is doubtful.

Hope you liked the yokes.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians had taken some streets within the eastern Oder suburb of Stettin, Altdamm, on the east side of Lake Dammscher, while possibly gaining some positions on the west side of the lake, part of the Oder, two and a half miles wide. Artillery fire was now striking Stettin, as well as the German defenses of Danzig.

German reports stated that the Russian forces had penetrated Danzig. Moscow dispatches, however, placed the troops still six to eight miles from Danzig following capture of Rheinfeld, nine miles southwest of Danzig and ten miles from Gdynia

The Germans also stated that the Russians were making progress on both sides of Kuestrin.

A map on an inside page shows the encroaching Allied forces from East and West, tightening the noose on Berlin's little neck.

Hope you like the yolks.

Premier Stalin had, in fulfillment of the armistice terms of September 12 with Rumania, returned from Hungary the region of Northern Transylvania, ceded by Hitler to Hungary in 1939 from Nazi-occupied Rumania.

In Italy, the Fifth Army had moved to within a mile of Vergato, southwest of Bologna.

In a record raid, B-29 crewmen reported that a successful night attack by more than 300 Superfortresses on Tokyo, dropping more than 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, had left a "hellish sea of fire" stretching to the edge of the Imperial Palace grounds. "It was the greatest show on earth," contended Brig. General Thomas Power, inflicting more than 50 times the damage of the previous largest raid on Tokyo which had destroyed 240 city blocks on February 25. General Power reported to the head of the 21st Bomber Command, General Curtis LeMay, that a 500-block area had been completely engulfed by flames. Over a million Japanese lived in the impacted area. Tokyo reports contended that the fires from the incendiary bombs reached the Emperor's stables.

Only two B-29's were lost in the raid.

Premier Koiso, referring to the "cruel and barbaric" Americans, warned the Japanese that soon an invasion of the home islands would come.

Hey, idiot, talk to the Emperor and Empress who started the whole damned thing. It's time to surrender.

No? Okay. Have it your way.

Hope you like the yokes.

About 40 B-29's hit Kuala Lumpur railroad yards on Malaya Peninsula.

Indian troops of the 19th Indian Division had captured Mandalay Hill, a key height in the northeast corner of Fort Dufferin in Mandalay, a garrison of 60,000 Japanese troops. Hand-to-hand fighting was ongoing in three sections of the city. The Second and 20th Indian Divisions were fighting along the east bank of the Irrawaddy River 20 miles away, on the road to Mandalay.

On Iwo, units of the Third Marine Division had reached, the previous day, the northeast beaches of the island, 1.25 miles from Kitano Point, splitting the enemy forces—as reported the previous day had already occurred, perhaps jumping the gun a bit or perhaps in forecast or perhaps in advance of this retarded report.

The Fifth Division on the northwestern beach was within 1,100 yards of Kitano Point, the northernmost tip of the island.

The Fourth Division on the right flank, having already repulsed heavy Japanese counter-attacks, again held off a thrust, killing 564 enemy troops supported by heavy mortar and sniper fire.

A few Japanese planes approached the Marine positions the previous day but left without attacking, as the Japanese reported that they had heavily struck American positions. Perhaps, the pilots had so radioed headquarters in Tokyo, figuring that now it was the better part of valor to lie to the home front and risk beheading by a Samurai sword than to be true to the little Emperor on his horse and his little poetaster Empress, and reserve thereby for themselves a burning place in Nirvana by seeking to decapitate the enemy, with obviously superior ack-ack now in place.

But that's just our opinion.

Hope you will like the yokes, come August. It's all invisible, right now, i'n't?

Care for some flounder?

In Philadelphia, a hosiery knitter, father of nine, expecting his tenth, with a stitch in time, not named McKenzie, but Huston, had refused to go to work in war industry but had chosen to remain on his $70 per week job, had been reclassified by his draft board as 1-A, from his previous 2-A status, and, in consequence, had been accepted for limited Army service.

Call it the Huston Plan.

In New York, the curfew police, enforcing the midnight closure order on nightclubs and other places of entertainment, raided three speakeasies and arrested 76 persons, spreading their brains from here to White Plains.

The owners were charged with violations of liquor laws and the patrons with disorderly conduct.

On the editorial page, "The Soft Pedal" compares, in reverse, the debacle of the Nazis at Remagen Bridge to the predicament of General Custer at the Little Bighorn River in June, 1876.

Allied Communique No. 335, from which the piece quotes, was straightforward and simple, hardly conscious of the importance of the objective just taken, the Remagen Bridge and its eastern bridgehead established across the Rhine. It was just another objective in the haze of war for these men. It had been done. It had been reported in dramatic understatement.

"Push and Pull" comments again on the divergence between the House and Senate in approaches to the manpower problem, continuing the dichotomy evident in the drafting of nurses approved by the House while the Senate had turned down the work-or-fight bill for men, this time the Senate approving heavy penalties for employers who hired more workers than allowed by quotas, while the House imposed the burden on the workers, allowing that they could be drafted and assigned wherever needed if so employed and subject to prosecution for draft dodging if avoiding that assignment.

Senator Richard Russell of Georgia had described the effect of the Senate measure as the equivalent of "a resolution passed by the ladies sewing circle of Squeedunk".

"600 Grand" seeks to figure a manner in which Charlotte could pay as it went rather than issue bonds anew to pay for the desired municipal improvements slated for the post-war period. It finds that $1.30 per hundred dollars was the tax rate on 122 million dollars worth of assessed assets with expectancy of a 90 percent collection rate. That meant that 1.427 million was anticipated revenue. Another $79,300 might be had from increasing revenue collections by one percent from their actual total of 94 percent. Another $241,800 could be added by increasing the tax rate by 20 cents per hundred dollars, not unduly burdensome to anyone's pocketbook.

Moreover, tax valuations would rise rapidly after the war as new homes and buildings would be built on unimproved property. So, projected valuations would be 150 million dollars. That would produce $400,000 in new revenue. If only half were devoted to the capital improvements sought in the community, voila, fully $521,000 of new revenue annually.

And added to those factors would be the prospect of reducing annual debt service, from likely lower interest rates, by as much as $100,00 by fiscal year 1949-50.

So, the editors had put forward a practical plan for the community having its cake and eating it, too.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Senator George Aiken of Vermont engaged in debate on the work-or-fight bill asking that Senator Happy Chandler's words be inserted in the record, as quoted February 10 in the Washington Post, to the effect that he would waste no time in telling the American fighting men that democracy had failed were he in the shoes of Herr Doktor Goebbels. Senator Chandler consented to the insertion.

Senator Aiken then quoted the story further that Senator Chandler had obtained the notion from Secretary of War Henry Stimson who had stated that democracy had failed in the work-or-fight bill.

Senator Chandler added that he regretted that Secretary Stimson had made the statement.

Senator Aiken informed further that Star and Stripes, having ostensibly published an editorial in support of the bill, subsequently complained that the piece had been authored by a lieutenant colonel who had invaded the ranks of the enlisted men. The colonel had been inspired supposedly by a cable from Undersecretary of War Patterson. The Senator concludes that, rather than replacements for the Army, the replacements be made in the War Department at the Pentagon.

Drew Pearson discusses the treatment of American prisoners of war by the Nazis in relation to his getting corn in from the fields to fill his silo, utilizing German prisoners supplied to local farms in Maryland from Camp Meade to do it. He had ten of the 100 prisoners so assigned who so worked, rotating farm to farm.

One American soldier stood guard as they worked the corn after stowing their lunches where the risen sun didn't shine. The prisoners worked efficiently and needed few directions. The guard paid little attention, hanging about the barn and silo a half mile away, explaining that such nonchalance improved the prisoners' attitudes. Few sought escape and when they did, they had nowhere to go, could be easily caught.

Mr. Pearson knew from his personal experience at the end of World War I as a soldier that the guard's statement was valid, having conducted his own guard duty of 100 Bulgar prisoners, leaving them alone in groups of five or six to work on rebuilding Serbian houses.

At noontime, the German prisoners ate lunch and sang songs while the guard remained apart. After an hour, they promptly returned to work.

Mr. Pearson paid the Government $3 per hour for the ten. The prisoners, each of whom had been captured in Normandy, each received 80 cents per day for their work, the rate of pay set by the Geneva Convention.

Then, a week later, he received a second set of ten prisoners to work his farm and get in the corn for his silo, this group having been captured in North Africa in 1943 from Rommel's Afrika Korps. These prisoners proved lazy and insolent and more trouble to manage than worth. They performed half the work of the first group at the same task. The guard could do nothing to improve the situation as he said they would only malinger worse were they to be ordered.

At one point, the guard had placed his rifle on the truck, from which it fell, during a ride across the cornfield. A prisoner picked it up and checked to see if it was loaded. When he realized that it wasn't, he threw it back on the truck.

The German captives quit early for lunch and were ten minutes late in resuming work post. They complained of wormy apples provided them by Mr. Pearson. At the end of the day, they knocked off early. Some had spent the afternoon lying in the shade, refused to provide their names to the guard. Eighty cents was the pay; eighty cents was the worth of work they intended to provide.

Mr. Pearson complained to Camp Meade, but they whitewashed the matter, defending the prisoners, acting as if the malingering had been Mr. Pearson's fault.

While he had been counseled by fellow farmers to keep mum so that the Government would not terminate the program, needed by local farmers, he felt his blood boiling whenever he read afresh reports of Nazis gunning down or mistreating American prisoners in Europe. So he wondered aloud whether there was not something wrong with the Provost Marshal at Camp Meade.

Maybe he had turned into a goddamned Nazi—or had taken a Bribe.

Marquis Childs, still reporting from Belgrade, instructs of the city's three blights, that inflicted by the German military, then the Nazi occupation, and finally the Allied bombings to liberate the city from the grip of the Nazis. The war had ravaged the land and less sturdy people than the war-accustomed Serbs and Croats could not have endured. The Germans had sought to purge the country of all national culture and supplant it with Nazism. They had burned the University and the National Library—much as rightwing groups of the United States seek, through censorship, to do figuratively in this country, including the present efforts, premised on supposed copyright infringement, to limit the internet.

SOPA is DOPA on a ROPA, you dopes.

Sorry. Hope you liked the yokes.

Use the creativity of others, provided your fat, lazy, royalty-collecting backsides for work performed ages ago when you still had a brain with which to think, before you shredded it in fat laziness, to continue to sell otherwise forgotten and mostly mediocre products, most of which were already culled from others or remade or repackaged anyway. No offense to genuine artists intended. But nothing is original, unless you are too stupid to realize that you are not, any more than anyone else. Rather than cutting your precious little work of "art" from Youtube, simply insert some ad over top of it, if you insist on being such a mercenary, preferably one which will not blabber before the song or other product starts rolling. Try to maintain your self-control for once. We are tired of hearing your mindless ads, which not only brainwash but often get people killed in fact.

Otherwise, if you cannot be the least bit creative, appearances are quite evident that the wish is simply to stultify the creativity of others who upstage you. Hey, if you don't want the public seeing it or hearing it or reading it, don't write it, record it, or put it on film in the first place. It's one thing if someone is actually stealing, that is charging the public for someone else's work or product not properly licensed. But otherwise, when no admission charge is obtained directly or indirectly, it is the same as tv, radio, or libraries, where the works are available for free anyway, always have been. You can take it home, record it, scan it, copy it and distribute it from there to your friends.

You keep this up and you will get what you deserve, no one buying any of it any more. For, what, pray tell, is the difference? You tell us and then we shall both perhaps have some limited understanding of the problem. But if these mega-billion dollar entertainment industry conglomerates really believe that a few harmlessly uploaded videos and recordings are going to render broke the artists or, more to the point, the industries which distribute as middle men the absurdly priced products, then you must really realize that the public will get mad and simply organize and boycott the attendance of those high-priced theaters and purchase of those absurdly high-priced disks, most of which are good for only one viewing or listen anyway. Get the picture, dummy? You are not royalty, far from it. Most of you are not artists, either, not in any real sense. Most of you are not even very good craftsmen.

We try to be eclectic in that which we reference herein, utilizing that which we respect for its art, as well as its craft, not to suggest that there are not other quite as good exemplars which just happen not to dovetail too well with that which appears on the page on a given day, or might dovetail so well and the work be so obvious, at least to us, that we think it needs no further annotation.

Anyway, you may continue reading of precisely what the bribe-taking Nazis did to Rumania.

Perhaps, that was Yugoslavia, too.

Samuel Grafton discusses the blunted attempts by OPA director Chester Bowles to obtain more power from Congress to restrict prices in a continued effort to prevent runaway inflation in the latter stages of the war and its immediate aftermath, prices having gone sky high after World War I. Mr. Grafton suggests the effort to be every bit as important as that to come at San Francisco beginning in April, to effect the United Nations peace organization proposed at Dumbarton Oaks in August through October.

Dorothy Thompson addresses the fall of Cologne, a few days behind obviously the more au courant news on the front pages of the prior two days and this one, stating Cologne's taking as one of the most significant events thus far in the war for its signal of the fall of the Westliche Wand. Beyond the Rhine, she informs, were only improvised fortifications, built up recently.

She further reports of problems reiterated at Muenchen-Gladbach from the experience of the AMG at Aachen following its occupation in September, that there had been no discrimination between Nazi and non-Nazi German officials in placing in charge of the town's civil administration German liaisons. It required correction by Steve Early, the President's press secretary, who ordered the AMG on behalf of the President to remove the Nazis.

She again suggests that it was entirely possible that the mood of Germans had tended toward anti-Nazism and that it was time to test and tap such sentiments if they existed, just as the anti-Fascist tendencies, discovered among Italians in Sicily and Southern Italy following the respective invasions of July and September, 1943, had been employed to advantage in Italy.

She counsels therefore organizing, as had the Russians, the pro-democratic German forces in advance of taking further territory in Germany and then deploying those turned personnel as administrative officials in the occupied towns.

Dick Young tells of tall tales told by Detective Razz Huneycutt, who related of the clock which was so old that its pendulum swinging, like pendulums do, two by two, had worn the back completely of the clock from it.

Then, Detective John Severs told of the storm at sea which had been aroused by the ship's passengers watching of the moompicter wherein the actors became seasick at the feel of the ship being rocked so violently. Whether the moomie was "Lifeboat" or else, Mr. Young does not impart from Mr. Severs's severed report, sans asseverations, no doubt, of both actors and passengers alike, for the fact of the Hays Office, being gabby as it was.

Not in our pool, you won't.

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