Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 12, 1994 TAG: 9401110166
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In recognition of the sacrifice of the region's veterans, we take the following look at a selection of World War II headlines from the South Pacific, Europe and the home front for the week of Sunday, Jan. 9, through Saturday, Jan. 15, 1944:
The Russian Second Ukrainian army captured the railway bastion of Kirovograd, putting 100,000 Nazi troops into retreat and the Red Army within 33 miles of the main German escape railway between Odessa and Warsaw.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that railway conductors, firemen and switchmen would get the same 5-cent hourly raise and week's paid vacation awarded trainmen and engineers, provided they cancel and not merely postpone their strike order. The unions accepted.
American submarines destroyed another 10 ships of the steadily dwindling Japanese merchant fleet. The losses were significant because the Japanese fleet had been so badly hit it was using barges to move men and material between the Pacific Islands.
Associated Press correspondent Don Whitehead, a native of Coeburn in Wise County, was with the Fifth Army in Italy as it made its way toward the town of Cassino in a tremendous tank and infantry battle.
A giant postwar program of 2,100 miles of limited access highways at a cost of $400 million was proposed by Henry "Good Roads" Roberts of Bristol, who said the state's current primary and secondary system could be set aside for local traffic.
Sam Morris, radio evangelist and prohibition advocate, charged at a temperance meeting in Roanoke that 17 allied military leaders were holding a "drunken party" in Jerusalem when the German air force raided the Italian port of Bari on Dec. 2. Congressman Joseph Bryson of South Carolina, speaking at the same meeting, called liquor a menance to men in the service.
Over a period of two days during heavy fighting in Italy, Billy Miller, a 5-foot, 5-inch private from Peoria, Ill., convinced his 19 German captors that American troops had them surrounded and talked them into surrendering. Miller then marched his prisoners across 600 yards of no-man's land to the American line.
In a fire-side radio chat, an ailing President Roosevelt asked the nation to support a sweeping win-the-war program - which he had laid before Congress earlier in the day. Included in his proposal was a national service law that would prevent strikes and with some exceptions draft every able-bodied adult into an all-out effort on the home front. Reaction to Roosevelt's call was mixed.
Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, and others were executed for treason for their vote six months earlier to oust the Italian dictator. Ciano had been Mussolini's right-hand man.
In one of the greatest air battles of the war, 700 American bombers made a daylight raid on German aircraft plants. Fifty-nine bombers were lost, and 100 defending German planes were shot down.
A story out of England featured Lt. Joe Bowles, a gunnery officer at a base of the Eighth Air Force. Bowles as a turret gunner on a bomber had shot down two German planes on one mission before being wounded by enemy anti-aircraft fire. He was awarded the Purple Heart, Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Dismounted Texas cavalrymen, fighting as infantry and supported by artillery, attacked Japanese positions east of the Arawe peninsula on the southwest coast of New Britain Island.
Speaking in Richmond, Eric A. Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, predicted "almost insurmountable" problems for business at the end of the war, including some that might test the free-enterprise system to its limit.
A special note to veterans who are planning to attend D-Day ceremonies in Normandy this June: The Defense Department is issuing identification badges for those who want to attend the airborne ceremony at St. Mere Eglise on June 5 and ceremonies at Point Du Hoc, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach and the Colleville Sur Mer U.S. cemetery on June 6.
Applications for the badges, which will be used to give veterans priority for available space, can be obtained by writing: World War II Commemoration Committee, Attention: Veteran Identification Program, 5001 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, Va. 22333.
by CNB