Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 23, 1994 TAG: 9403220131
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Two American submarines were reported lost in Japanese-controlled waters, bringing to 22 the number of submersibles lost since the war started.
As allied bombers plastered the German positions around the Anzio beachhead in Italy, fighting continued to rage in the rubble that once was the town of Cassino. A group of British Gurkha troops, knife-wielding fighters from the Himalayas, was marooned on a hill above Cassino and was being supplied by the air.
The armed services and production agencies reached an agreement whereby about 40,000 men under 26 who had key jobs would be deferred from the draft.
The two-cent postage stamp was set to become history with the three-cent stamp to take effect in the coming week. Air-mail rates were going up from 6 cents to 8 cents an ounce, but air-mail postage for letters mailed to members of the armed forces would remain at 6 cents per half ounce.
Arthur Richardson of Axton and Earl G. Robertson, John V. Barnes Jr. and James B. Glenn Jr., all of Roanoke, were commissioned as officers in the Army Air Corps.
Army Sgt. "Dutch" Harrison of Greensboro, N.C., maintained his lead in the Charlotte Open golf tournament.
Rep. Clifton Woodrum, D-Va., was expected to be picked as a chairman of a House Committee that would draft a national postwar military policy founded on the idea of compulsory military training.
War Food Administrator Marvin Jones said the nation would be able to meet essential military and civilian food needs but warned that it could not be expected to carry the load of postwar relief feeding.
Russian troops captured an east bank German base and rail junction on the Dniester River and hurled aside two Roumanian divisions trying to bar a Soviet surge into pre-war Rumania.
Declining to be blindfolded and himself shouting the order to fire, Pierre Pucheu, former interior minister of the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France, died at dawn after being sentenced to death by a special French military tribunal in North Africa.
Mount Vesuvius erupted with an explosion that buried two villages and stopped traffic in Naples seven miles away.
American heavy bombers with a fighter escort struck at Berlin for the fifth time in 19 days. Along with the bombs came leaflets telling the German people that peace was the only way to spare German cities.
Major Gen. Alexander M. Patch was given the command of the U.S. Seventh Army, which Gen. George S. Patton Jr. had commanded in Sicily. Patton was given a new command, the War Department said.
Staff Sgt. Julius M. Schultz of Blacksburg, the tail gunner on the flying fortress Dot's Goot, shot down one German fighter plane and helped fight off several others despite being wounded in his arms and left leg with shrapnel during a bomb run over Germany.
by CNB