Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9410120019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Six Allied columns raced headlong for the borders of Germany and captured the fortresses of Verdun and Sedan, where Adolf Hitler's troops cracked through the Maginot line in 1940.
Four U.S. war correspondents and a GI jeep driver arrived at the French-Swiss border well ahead of the U.S. 7th Army after driving 200 miles through territory held by the French resistance from the Riviera beachhead.
A Gallup poll showed American farmers in the Midwest were defecting from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in greater numbers than most other occupation groups. Southern farmers, however, continued to give Roosevelt their support.
The first American vehicle believed to have entered Paris after the city's liberation was driven by Capt. Sachal Bollas of Los Angeles, who was born in Paris.
Thousands of Parisian women headed for the countryside on bicycles in search of food following the fall of the city to the Allies.
Cigarette makers said the outlook was better for civilian smokers who were having a hard time finding the brand of their choice. The next month might prove the peak of the cigarette shortage, they said.
The heirs of Adolph S. Ochs, the late owners of the New York Times, put up $200,000 to underwrite the cost of publication of all of Thomas Jefferson's papers as a memorial to Ochs.
The family of John W. White of Galax had six sons in various branches of the armed forces.
Three Roanoke lieutenants - Frank Hancock, Gerald Long and Keith Willis - who were interned in a German prison camp in Poland, Oflag 64, were continuing their studies, according to a letter to their families.
Gen. Charles DeGaulle's victory parade into Paris ended in chaos as snipers aligned with French fascist factions began sniping at the cheering crowds and were answered by the gunfire from the French Forces of the Interior.
The National Labor Relations Board was asked to conduct a union certification election for the workers of the Clinchfield Coal Co. in Southwest Virginia.
Four German prisoners of war told a Russian-Polish atrocities commission how half a million people of 22 nationalities had been killed during the three-year operation of the Majdanek concentration camp.
President Roosevelt proposed a world peace agency that was designed to have more power than the defunct League of Nations. The agency was under discussion at Dumbarton Oaks by the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.
On Aug. 29, the War Department released the names of 62 Virginia men who had been killed in action: one in the Pacific, 57 in Europe and four in the Mediterranean.
American submarines had sunk 17 more Japanese ships, including two destroyers, bringing the total bag for August to 52 enemy ships, the largest for any month of the year.
Red Army troops captured the great Romanian oil refinery city of Ploesti, depriving Hitler of Europe's richest oilfields.
Lawrence Michael, an independent candidate for Congress from Virginia 8th District, asked Gov. Colgate Darden to call a special General Assembly session to repeal Virginia's poll tax. He was among a number of state politicians in recent days calling for an end to the practice.
by CNB