Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 18, 1995 TAG: 9501200012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Marshall Stalin announced that the Red Army had opened its eagerly awaited winter offensive on the Eastern front. The Soviets broke l25 miles toward the heart of Germany on a 27-mile front in southern Poland. Berlin radio reported more than 2.5 million Soviet troops were on the move.
Allied armies opened a massive offensive to wipe out the Ardenne bulge and gained up to three miles in a two-way drive as they sought to cut off Field Marshall Karl Gerd von Rundstedt's panzers.
Industrial production in the Cleveland area returned to full wartime tempo with army officers now in charge of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. plants that they had seized to terminate a strike of 400 coal passers and maintenance men.
The Navy confirmed that 500 sailors had been swept to their deaths when a typhoon capsized three destroyers of the Pacific Third Fleet as they were trying to refuel. The U.S. destroyers Hull, Monaghan and Spence were lost.
Seven sons of Emmet Howery of Floyd were seeing action in various
theaters of the war.
Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten were starring in "Since You Went Away" at The Grandin Theatre.
The development of Mill Mountain into a memorial park with a monument tower dedicated to the men and women of Roanoke who had served and were then serving in the nation's wars was one of several proposals being considered by Roanoke City Council's special committee.
Tech Sgt. Clarence Beamer of Roanoke was awarded the Silver Star for wiping out two German machine guns as he led an attack of a squad of the 85th Division in Italy.
An armada of nearly 4,000 Allied warplanes plastered Germany's oil and communications resources and scourged the enemy's line of retreat in Belgium, knocking down at least 232 fighters while losing 14 planes.
American GIs on leave in Paris were finding the French capital one of the world's most expensive places to have a good time. Things were expensive for the French too with inflation up 300 percent since 1939. The dollar was bringing 50 francs.
The Allied line in Belgium was being restored as U.S. First and Third Army troops joined forces near the town of Houffalize.
President Roosevelt said that the need for men in the armed forces and war factories was so extreme that voluntary controls would no longer work. Roosevelt planned to send Congress national service legislation that would empower the government to assign men to important war work.
The Soviet Red Army captured the ravaged city of Warsaw in a brilliant encirclement maneuver.
U.S. Sixth Army troops had widened their invasion beachhead on Luzon to 62 miles by advancing 17 miles to the northwestern tip of the Lingayen gulf coast.
by CNB