Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 1, 1994 TAG: 9406030001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
American armored forces fought their way past the town of Artena and moved 21/2 miles to the strategic Casilina highway, the main escape route for the German forces toward Rome. Before week's end U.S. forces had taken the towns of Velletri and Valmontone, key German strongpoints before Rome. As evidence of the desperate situation for the Germans, they threw the battle-weary Herman Goering division back into the fight against the Allied advance.
In the last days before the June full moon, Field Marshall Karl Von Rundstedt's army of the west had taken up defensive positions on the French coast from which the Nazis admitted they dare not budge even to avert a disaster in Italy. Also fearing an invasion through Scandinavia, the Nazis were stepping up their reign of terror in Norway and Denmark with arrests and executions.
U.S. Labor Secretary Harold Ickes released anthracite and bituminous mines in the southern Appalachian coalfields from government to private control after the collapse of mine-owner resistance to the United Mine Workers' 1943-45 wage agreement. In other labor news, roughly 40,000 workers were on strike around the country in the lumber, transportation, automotive and pharmaceutical industries.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was expected to go abroad soon to talk with British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and other Allied leaders about a postwar security agreement. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Cordell Hull said he was ready to open negotiations with Britain, Russia and China on the establishment of an international peace and security organization.
Veteran U.S. infantrymen forced a landing at Biak Island in the Schootens against strong Japanese resistance and battled their way toward airfields that would be used in the Allied assaults on the Philippines.
The public was shocked to hear that students in an Air Corps survival school near Maitland, Fla., had eaten Willie, an alligator considered a pet by Lake Lily visitors. Their rage was tempered, though, when it was revealed that Willie had eaten a fox terrier belonging to Miss Stella Waterhouse.
Allied warplanes disrupted Germans plans for an attack on Marshall Tito's Yugoslav partisans in northern Bosnia, by raiding two German airfields.
Hopes for good postwar relations between France and Great Britain and the United States hinged on Gen. Charles DeGaulle's forthcoming visiting to London.
Mr. and Mrs. E.E. Crockett of Bishop had five sons the service, two in the Air Corps and one each in the Navy, Army and Medical Corps.
Melvin Manning of Bent Mountain was the winner of the city-county marbles tournament and a $50 war bond. Elsewhere in sports, the 3-year-old filly Twilight Tear ran her string of victories to seven with a win at Belmont Park.
The 88th and 85th Divisions, the first U.S. all-draft divisions to go to the front lines, were getting their first taste of real combat in Italy.
Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel charged that a commission report on Pearl Harbor did not tell all and publicly demanded a public trial on charges that he was derelict in his duty at the naval base at the time of the Japanese sneak attack.
DDT powder used by American troops to check the spread of typhus in Italy was expected to rid the United States of fleas, flies and other insects after the war.
Women employees of Roanoke City Hall complained about a policy that prohibited women from smoking in the offices but allowed men to.
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation is selling commemorative bumper stickers for $1 and enameled pins for $5 as fund-raisers. Write the foundation at 2551 Sweetbrier Ave. S.W., Roanoke, Va. 24015, or call 774-7045.
by CNB