Site Ed. Note: The front page reports of the sinking of the U.S.S. Turner outside New York Harbor at Ambrose Light in Sandy Hook, N.J., through several unexplained violent internal explosions beginning at 6:18 a.m. A hundred and thirty-nine men died and one hundred and sixty-four survived the explosion.

Among the dead was Ensign H. R. Briggs. We mention him because we knew his widow for many years as our next door neighbor, a lady with whom we broke bread on many an occasion, and who related the story tearfully, even after four decades and more since the loss of her first husband in this tragedy.

Indeed, had it not been for the unexplained fate of Ensign Briggs aboard the Turner, the edifice from which we write these words would never have been. That is another story.

We thus provide a special salute to the dead and the survivors of the Turner, and especially to Ensign Briggs.

We shall not disturb the above, as sometimes mistakes in assumption occur for a reason. But we have mistaken the case, as we find upon further research. The first husband of our former and deceased neighbor was properly Lieutenant, j.g., Gail Shadinger, who died February 28, 1942 on the U.S.S. Jacob Jones, reported in The News March 3, 1942. The Jacob Jones had its bow and stern blown away off the coast of Cape May, New Jersey, by two torpedoes from U-578, subsequently sunk August 6, 1942 in the Bay of Biscay at St. Nazaire.

The note we wrote for March 3, 1942 takes on a poignant quality as we did not realize at the time that it was this ship which took the life of Lieutenant Shadinger. For, in summer, 1997, we attended, with our former neighbor's now deceased long time companion, a performance of The Taming of the Shrew in San Francisco by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Thus, we extend our salute to all of them, the survivors and dead of the Jacob Jones, to Lieutenant Shadinger, and of course to our former two elderly neighbors. We make further our salute, as well, to the Royal Shakespeare Company for an excellent performance.

We find, on yet further research in the New York Times, that the predecessor ship bearing the name Jacob Jones was sunk in December, 1917 by a German submarine. That ship was commanded by Lieutenant-Commander David Worth Bagley, brother of Addie Daniels, the wife of then Secretary of the Navy and future Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels, FDR's first boss in government service. Mrs. Daniels was related, as a distant cousin, to Mary Bagley Ross, who eventually, in the early hours of Christmas, 1940, became the wife of W. J. Cash.

Forgive us. As we believe we have mentioned, more or less, hereinbefore, our publisher, sometimes editor, occasional writer, came into this life on the afternoon of Twelfth Night.

In Italy, heavy fighting took place north of Ortona as Canadian troops inched their way to within nine miles of Pescara. Rain, snow, and high winds limited other ground activity to patrols.

Two more large raids, estimated at 1,000 tons each, had been delivered to Berlin via the RAF, hitting the new Chancellery on Wilhelmplatz and Tempelhof Airdrome. Twenty-eight planes were lost in the most recent raid, taking unusually heavy flak, and in other raids on Western Germany and Northern France.

In Russia, the First Ukrainian Army advanced to within fifteen miles of the old Polish border by taking Novograd Volynski, forty miles northwest of Zhitomir.

The entire German line, from south to north, was said to be crumbling as the Baltic Army moved to within 45 miles of the Latvian border, continuing to encircle Vitebsk, while other forces moved toward Zhmerinka, less than 50 miles from the Rumanian border.

On New Guinea, American troops landed at Saidor, a hundred miles north of Finschhafen, captured in October by Australian troops. The landing was thought to have as objectives an abandoned civilian airstrip and a nearby 300-acre rubber plantation with 10,000 acres of coconut trees. The raid complemented the December 15 landing on Arawe Peninsula and the December 26 landing to the north of Arawe on Cape Gloucester, both on New Britain.

President Roosevelt stated that the railway and steel controversies over wages, threatening for a time strikes, was fueling enemy propaganda and bolstering enemy morale.

In Falbo v. U.S, 320 US 549, the Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 opinion delivered by Justice Hugo Black, upheld the conviction of a man for failure to report for duty in the armed forces, despite the fact that he had been classified a conscientious objector, leading to his having been ordered to perform non-combat duty. The man had been sentenced to five years imprisonment for the refusal to report.

Once he had registered and been classified for the draft, the Court held, he had a duty to report when ordered. His contention in defense, that he was a minister for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and thus exempt from the draft, had been excluded from his trial as irrelevant to his absolute duty to report once classified and all administrative appeals on the classification, as in that case, exhausted. The Court upheld this order of the trial court as being within its discretion.

The lone dissenter, Justice Frank Murphy, opined that depriving the petitioner of his right to present a proffered defense was contrary to Due Process by denying him a full and fair hearing, requiring therefore reversal of the conviction.

In another case on which a piece appears, U.S. v. Hark, 320 US 531, Justice Owen Roberts delivered a 6 to 3 decision, reversing an order quashing an indictment for alleged violations of Office of Price Administration regulations. The defendants had contended in the court below that the regulations had been abolished, that therefore they could not be held accountable under them.

The majority held, however, that the regulations were still in effect when the alleged violations occurred; thus, notwithstanding their later abolition, the allegation that the law had been violated was properly to be adjudicated, and the defendants could be brought to trial.

The three dissenting justices, led by Justice Murphy, joined by William O. Douglas and Wiley Rutledge, set forth the opinion that the appeal had not been timely brought by the Government and thus should be dismissed.

Hal Boyle reports of the many writers and readers in the Army now setting down their voluminous memoirs for future generations, some vowing to get back at particularly obstreperous superiors by leaving them out of the field of activities recounted.

One particularly copious writer, a lieutenant, had been maintaining a diary for eight years, since 1935 when he was 13. Daily, he had written at least 300 words.

While good practice, we trust that he had the discretion not to try to publish his ramblings as a teenager. We would shudder to read our own should we have ever been quite so industrious as to have daily placed our thoughts to paper in that period of development--even if, no doubt, we would today find from such ramblings some revelations elucidatory and instructive to ourselves, even if probably also quite scary.

An inside page we neglected to include from Saturday, incidentally, tells of the premiere to come in Charlotte in February of the film version of the book by former News reporter Marion Hargrove, "See Here, Private Hargrove".

On the editorial page, "The Dirge" examines the speech provided by Hitler to the Germans on New Year's Eve and finds its mood and atmosphere to be essentially funerary, that Herr Hitler was writing the last scenes of the last part of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

"The Poles" looks at the issue of the post-war boundary of eastern Poland, whether that territory ceded to Russia in 1939 would go to Russia or Poland at the end of the war. Poland was insistent that it belonged to Poland, while Russia appeared equally intractable that the area belonged to the Soviets, along with the three Baltic States, equally problematic in determining post-war territorial interests, with Russia demanding both sea access in the north and buffer zones against future incursions to its territory.

"Caution" finds Admiral William Halsey more in company with practicable probability at the end of 1943 than a year earlier when he had predicted victory over Japan within the year. Now, he refrained from predicting any time parameter on victory in the Pacific but nevertheless provided an optimistic picture. The editorial concludes that this time, the assessment was more realistic and thus offering of greater hope for actual victory in the year to come, building on the momentum of successes achieved in the Solomons, at Guadalcanal, on Rendova and New Georgia, landing on Bougainville; successful drives in New Guinea, in the Gilbert Islands, and setting the stage for the taking of the Marshalls.

Raymond Clapper writes of his many previous travels to the war fronts and his consequent scarce need for preparation this time, as he headed off for his last such trip, to the Pacific, where he would meet his death tragically in early February during the Battle for the Marshall Islands.

Drew Pearson asserts that the offensive against the Continent would begin without question during the winter, probably February, as spring would be too late. He indicates that a high official had informed that the mission would take three months and twenty days to accomplish, meaning that the end of the European war would occur by late June.

Such prediction, even if inaccurate, was not folly; indeed, it may have been encouraged by the War Department to confuse the Nazis.

He next reports on General Mark Clark's encounter with a soldier in the field in Italy, disgruntled over the poor service of the Post Office, as he had not received a love letter in five whole days. General Clark stated he would forward the complaint and did so.

General Patton likely would have told the soldier to join BOC.

Mr. Pearson comments on the distinguished service, both in Italy and in the Pacific, being performed by Japanese-American members of the Army, primarily from Hawaii.

The currently most senior United States Senator, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who served on the 1973 Ervin Senate Select Committee on Watergate, was such a distinguished Japanese-American soldier who fought in Italy, winning the Medal of Honor for his brave action while critically wounded on April 21, 1945 at Terenzo in Northern Italy.

Also points out Mr. Pearson, only eight states would hold legislative sessions in 1944 at which they could provide procedures for absentee voting by soldiers, significant to the ongoing debate whether a Federal law should be passed to do so or whether, as promoted by many Southerners and Republicans, the matter should be left to the states.

Samuel Grafton finds it ironic that the nation had become enmeshed in talk and writing of minor stories during the previous year, stories relegated, he predicts, to the ashcan of history: for instance, whether General Marshall or General Eisenhower would direct the invasion of the Continent; the failure timely to disclose the results of the Cairo Conference; and whether FDR was running for office among Arabs for handing out lapel buttons bearing his likeness. Meanwhile, the press and public had, he says, largely overlooked three critical stories: the decision in March to open a second front; the rise of General De Gaulle in the French command structure, eclipsing the formerly pervasive command of General Giraud; and the rise of the Partisans under Tito in Yugoslavia, their now occupying the attention of greater numbers of Germans than even the Americans and British combined were doing in Italy.

Incidentally, we have discovered another broken bone, in our note associated with December 25, 1942. That "number" is now here.

If we told you once, we told you twice, Pat: you can't fool us. We've got your number. And we don't lie. Sooner or later, you're going to die.

Louise Cozine, (whose name used to be Irene), indicated, as director of WABOC, the Women's Auxiliary Brush-Off Club, that membership was starting to blossom in Santa Monica, where 28 members had enlisted. Chapters were quickly starting to form elsewhere abroad the country, to complement the BOC's, the original men's version.

And, in the process of the reference, we discover that Pat is at it yet again, rendering useless two broads from December 4. Pat, Pat, Pat, you superannuated adolescent pig. When will you learn?

That underlying "preference" is here. And that which was under "over" is now here. We don't write these down; we don't need to do so. We remember them. What do you do, Pat?

Try sewing instead of chasing down supposed copyright violations which aren't. You will be much happier at the end of the day, rather than ripping to shreds the work of others diligently performed. We're going to hunt you down and take care of you, Pat, should you not desist in such abnormal and anti-social behavior.

Final warning.

We're on your trail. And we are just a little faster on the draw than you, buddy. Besides, you gunned down Holly, practically in cold blood, that time last summer. We witnessed it. And Holly was a friend of ours, even if he did have a mite of a drinking temper, especially when he got around the infectious influence of Lemuel. But then, of course, you knew that. And you exploited it to the hilt. Cold blood.

Tenth Day of Christmas: Ten gourds a-seeping, a-reaping, a-threping.

Good night and good luck.

By the way, J.E. Broyhill, of Broyhill Furniture Company of Lenoir, wrote a letter appearing this date regarding an earlier editorial on the renegotiation of government contracts with civilian war industry to scale down excess profits occasioned by the war. Mr. Broyhill, not totally opposed to the practice, nevertheless questioned the law's justification.

While we were not planning to do so, as we did not see this letter until today, we should comment that Lenoir Hall, on the University of North Carolina campus, shares with the town of Lenoir, as with the county in a separate part of the state, a common eponym, General William Lenoir of the American Revolution, who lived with his wife in a house they dubbed "Fort Defiance".

Lenoir Hall was the dining facility for the campus beginning in 1940 and thus served as such for many a person who served in the war, and many, no doubt, who lost their lives there.

In 1970, the upstairs portion was taken over by the Art Department, wherein, on occasion, we understand, live nude models, males and females--we mean really naked--appeared, for the sake of art for its sake, to pose for sculptors and painters honing their crafts.

The basement to this day is a dining facility, known from 1970 as the Pine Room. We only ate there ourselves a couple of times, but we have a tendency to remember things.

We shall be down there waiting for you, Pat, should you have the unmitigated nerve, which we doubt, to face your fear, that is to say, we, alone, at high noon.

To the left of Lenoir Hall, incidentally, out of the picture, is Greenlaw, home, at least as we recall it, of the English Department. Behind that is Murphy Hall. And then diagonally to the right of the east side entrance to Murphy Hall stands Manning Hall, wherein the law school resided until 1968.

Manning was where we took our two fateful courses under Professor E. Maynard Adams in philosophy, as we have previously made comment, two courses which changed our outlook on life forever during the fall of 1971 and the following spring.

We understand that Gerald Ford took summer courses in law at Manning.

We used to give campus tours. So, excuse us, Pat. We intend to give you a tour you will never forget for the rest of your very short, insignificant, and totally corrupt life--should you, that is, continue your recalcitrant ways, unrepentant of your course in unseemly behavior conducted against the free flow of music and other information of note. Our tour, should you not have noticed, has already begun.