The Charlotte News
Wednesday, February 21, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that approximately 3,650 Marines, including 150 officers, had been killed within the first two days of the battle for Iwo Jima. Advances by the Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions were made this date of distances up to a thousand yards on Motoyama Airfield No. 2, moving against heavy enemy fire. Motoyama No. 2 was 700 yards from already captured Motoyama No. 1. Other Marines made agonizing progress of a hundred yards up the slopes of Suribachi Yama.
In Manila, a state of siege was ongoing against the Intramuros District in which the remaining Japanese holdouts were positioned, maintaining approximately 7,000 civilians as hostages. General MacArthur announced that the enemy had suffered 24,000 casualties during the previous week in the fight for the capital.
On Corregidor, both entrances to the fortress had been blocked by American firepower. The troops were searching amid the rubble for the only air vent to the facility with the intent to block it.
Enemy casualties had mounted to 92,000 for the six-week campaign on Luzon, begun January 9. American casualties numbered 12,929, of whom 2,676 had been killed, and 10,008 wounded, with 245 missing. There had been during the previous week 3,246 American casualties.
On the Western Front, the 94th Armored Division of General Patton's Third Army punched a hole through the Moselle-Sarr triangle and advanced 5.5 miles to within seven miles of Trier and within two miles of Saarburg through disorganized resistance, inflicting heavy German casualties. More than 2,500 Germans surrendered during the prior two days, as the Third Army struck along a 55-mile front inside the Siegfried Line, in the Eifel Mountains from the area of Prum to Moselle.
To the south, the Seventh Army advanced to within three miles of Saarbrucken, capturing half a dozen towns and breaking into the rail center at Forbach.
The Scottish troops of the Canadian First Army in the north captured Goch between the Rhine and Meuse. The Canadians were held without gain, two miles from Calcar.
Clear skies permitted tactical air strikes along the front in support of these operations.
More than 1,200 heavy bombers, escorted by 650 fighters, attacked rail targets at Nuernberg for the second consecutive day.
The day before, American rocket-firing Thunderbolt fighters out of Italy had struck Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountain hideaway, for the first time during the war. The attack centered on rail transportation, possibly carrying documents and staff being evacuated from Berlin. There was no indication whether the Hitler retreat at Obersalzburg was hit.
In Italy, American forces of the Fifth Army captured Mount Belvedere in steep terrain, along with several villages.
On the Eastern Front, the Russians had cut the German lifeline from Frankfurt to Berlin, 38 miles east of the capital. Most of Frankfurt's population had evacuated. Pravda reported that the Red Army was 34 miles from Berlin, without stating the position.
The Second White Russian Army had captured Czersk, an important communications center on the main Danzig-Berlin railroad.
The Germans trapped in the East Prussian capital, Koenigsberg, were attempting a breakthrough at Pillau.
Six officers or key personnel of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus were sentenced in Hartford, Connecticut, to terms of two to seven years in prison for involuntary manslaughter in connection with the circus fire the previous July, which took the lives of 168 persons. Execution of the sentences was stayed until April 6 to permit the defendants to start the 1945 circus, which would benefit the civil claimants against the defendants.
In Charlotte, a prominent banker and businessman, R. A. Dunn, passed away at age 82.
On the editorial page, "30th and 42nd" tells of the building of Camp Sevier, near Greenville, S.C., in the spring of 1917 as the birthplace for the
As an outgrowth came the idea for an All American division, comprised of men from all over the country, formed at Camp Mills, Long Island, becoming the
The outfits had never fought in close proximity during the prior war but had each performed their tasks admirably.
They continued in the present war to do likewise.
"Ban Fireworks" reports of the efforts of county legislators to obtain a ban in Mecklenburg County on fireworks sales, just as there was already within the city of Charlotte. The legislators were seeking public comment, without which, it would be unlikely that they could obtain the ban.
The editorial takes a solid stand in favor of it and against the attractive nuisance which resulted in numerous injuries, including a tragic injury the previous Christmas within Charlotte involving a boy and his young sister.
"No. 2 Spot" comments on the positioning of North Carolina, for a change, in a high rank among the states, albeit based on less than a reputable practice, the amount of moonshining. Fully 1,072 stills had been seized during the prior year, an increase of 362 over 1943. Only Georgia had more, 1,465, a decrease of fifteen from the prior year.
The editorial then lists the next states in order.
It begs off trying to assess the meaning of the rank, except that it pointed to the fact of such a determinedly unquenchable thirst among the citizenry that they would not be deterred by the law at turning "corn into kickapoo juice."
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has a member of the House from Arkansas, name indiscernible, telling of the Congressional delegation visiting the cemeteries of the fallen soldiers at LeCambe and St. Mere Eglise in France, observing that the crosses spread across the fields were not segregated by rank or religion. Jews were buried with Christians; Lt. General Leslie McNair was buried near men who were sergeants and ordinary infantrymen.
Drew Pearson continues his look at the Pan American Conference beginning in Mexico City, commenting that those countries participating would be completely on the side of the Allies and against the Axis, at least on the surface. But underneath the facade, there was plentiful irritation at the United States and its policy toward Latin America.
Chief among the concerns were the perceived intention of the U.S. to maintain bases after the war in Latin America and the manner in which FDR had summoned six Good Neighbor countries, including Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Ecuador, to come into the war, giving them essentially an ultimatum of joining or facing non-recognition by the U.S., as with Argentina.
The countries believed that the President was acting at the behest of Stalin who had set forth the adamant position that no country still classified as a non-belligerent could sit in the United Nations Councils. They also felt betrayed in the assurance by the State Department that they only needed to sever relations with the Axis and not declare war upon it.
The previous month, the Spanish Cortez, the old Spanish Parliament, in exile since the coming to power of Franco in Spain in 1939, had sought to hold a meeting in Mexico City. But the State Department had refused visas to two members of the Cortez to pass through the Panama Canal from their undisclosed location to the south. Assistant Secretary of State James Dunn had made the decision, preventing a quorum by the Cortez and thus ending the prospect for the meeting.
Yet, in all likelihood, the Pan American Conference would consider the question of Republican Spain.
Congressman John Coffee of Tacoma, Washington, had discovered a document showing that Franco was being used by Germany to disseminate anti-American propaganda.
Finally, Mr. Pearson tells of the threat by Republicans to block approval of the Bretton Woods agreement to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, should Henry Wallace or Sidney Hillman be named a director of the Export-Import Bank.
Representative Jesse Wolcott of Michigan complained that the President had not gone to the right of the political spectrum since the election and, for the sake of national unity, it was expected that he would, in deference to business interests.
To that, Representative Adolph Sabath of Illinois responded that Messrs. Edward Stettinius, Will Clayton, Joseph Grew, Nelson Rockefeller, James Dunn, and Brigadier General Julius Holmes, appointed as heads of the State Department, were not to be considered exactly liberals.
Samuel Grafton writes of two forms of isolationism still ongoing within the country, one being the lower form of hurling insults at Russia and Britain, the other consisting of more sophisticated criticism, such as that by the Bankers Association against the Bretton Woods agreement, to establish the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stabilize world currencies and promote international trade after the war.
While the latter critics might find it surprising to be classified as isolationists, Mr. Grafton offers that to be unwilling to risk money to stabilize world economies was, in a sense, even more isolationist than to wish not to risk human lives to defeat the Axis. These higher isolationists wanted a planless America in a planned world, one without economic planning while implementing the international peace organization agreed upon at Dumbarton Oaks.
Marquis Childs, still in Paris, discusses the leadership of Charles De Gaulle in France, having taken over a country in August which had been occupied by the Nazis for four years and which was beset by internal troubles even among the liberated groups, the Communists being desirous of a major role within the Provisional Government for their contribution to the underground. Many of these splinter groups had refused initially to surrender their weapons upon liberation and the roving armed bands through the country proved a source of initial embarrassment to De Gaulle's leadership.
Following De Gaulle's visit to Russia, however, a turning point took place and the Communists agreed to disarm, taking their cue from Moscow, solidifying De Gaulle's place as a shrewd and adept leader.
He remained, however, suspicious of Russia and fearful that, should Russia move into Germany and its influence spread through Europe, France could be threatened with Communism.
Hal Boyle, in Germany, tells of a snowy nightfall having enshrouded 30 wounded Americans following a day-long battle, preventing their comrades from getting them aid, as Company F was caught in heavy German artillery fire amid snowdrifts, had to fall back. Most of the men made it back to the lines, but the thirty were caught in the fire, wounded, unable to move without assistance. Their prospects for survival until morning in the cold of the night were slim to none. There was no way practically to reach them in the dark of night as enemy artillery fire continued to hit the area.
But a captain could not sleep for thoughts of his men dying of their wounds in the bitter cold. He thus determined to set out alone to locate them in the complete darkness, with only luminous snow to guide his way along the path of gains made by the company during the day. He located the men one by one and was able to summon medics or deliver aid himself until stretchers could arrive to transport them back to the lines to receive medical attention and food, eventually, by dawn, finding all thirty. Twenty-four had been found personally by the captain and treated by him.
But there was no rest for the
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