Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 20, 1994 TAG: 9407280016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
\ Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the Germans that French forces of the interior, fighting behind German lines, were regular army units of the Allied armies and that Nazis who had illegally executed them would be brought to justice.
A wide-open battle over the vice-presidential nomination was expected at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Democratic Chairman Robert E. Hannegan was reportedly carrying a letter bombing Japan.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reported that the bureau had investigated 16,295 cases of suspected sabotage, found 1,736 cases of deliberate destruction and obtained convictions against 51 people for sabotage, none of it enemy directed.
A million dollar addition to the Radford Army Ammunition plant that would require the hiring of an additional 3,000 workers was nearing completion.
One of 14 liberty ships under construction at a Houston, Texas, shipyard would be named after Frederic H. Haetjer of Winchester, a pioneer in the development of the X-ray.
The New York Yankees increased their lead over Boston with a 9-7 victory over the Red Sox and closed to within one and a half games of the American League-leading St. Louis Browns.
Alfred T. Lavinder, 19, of Salem was featured in a story about how the Army medical department flew wounded soldiers back from the invasion coast of Normandy to Woodrow Wilson hospital in Staunton within 18 hours. Lavinder was wounded in the leg by shrapnel on his sixth day in France.
Soviet armies captured the fortress city of Grodno, 45 miles from the border of East Prussia, Germany's easternmost province. And in Italy, German defenses guarding the approaches to Florence had crumbled before an attack by the British Eighth Army.
Maj. John Sours of Roanoke, 42, who had been a member of the National Guard for 24 years before the guard was activated in 1941, was reported killed on June 6, the first day of the invasion of France.
The race issue, which was at the heart of the Democratic Southern revolt, erupted at the Democratic national convention as Negro organizations, claiming 6.5 million members, demanded a platform plank assuring voting rights in the North and South unencumbered by ``poll taxes, white primaries and lily-white party conventions.''
Word was received that the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division and formerly of the Virginia National Guard had received a presidential unit citation for its role in the D-Day invasion. At the same time word began to pour into towns like Bedford, Martinsville and Roanoke of men of the 116th killed on D-Day.
Behind a 14,000-ton aerial bombardment, British troops burst wide open the German line at Caen in Normandy and swept across a wide plain toward Paris. Elsewhere on the Norman front, U.S. troops captured St. Lo, a vital road crossroads controlling the Cherbourg peninsula. The two actions threatened to trap up to 25 German divisions.
The explosion of two naval ammunition ships at Port Chicago, Calif., had killed as many as 350 people.
Premier Gen. Hideki Jojo and his entire Japanese cabinet had resigned, and Emperor Hirohito called on Koichi Kido, a leading civilian, to form a new government. It was regarded as a sign that the emperor felt Japan was losing the war.
Adolf Hitler revealed that a group of generals, revolting in an attempt to get Germany out of the war, had attempted to assassinate him with a bomb. Some of the coup leaders had reportedly committed suicide, and others had been shot.
President Roosevelt accepted nomination by the Democratic Party to a fourth term as Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia received 89 delegate votes in a protest move against Roosevelt's domestic policies.
Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri was named Roosevelt's running mate on a second ballot after he had trailed Vice President Henry A. Wallace for the post on the first ballot. Wallace said his defeat was not a loss to the cause of liberalism.
by CNB