Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 28, 1994 TAG: 9412280061
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Land-based American heavy bombers and fighters, in their first major attack on the Manila area in more than three years of war, destroyed or damaged almost 100 Japanese warplanes in a surprise raid on Clark Field.
Several Virginia Tech professors were called to answer before their deans for their part in a row with the Montgomery County school board.
A heavy fog had lifted, and for the first time in three days Allied bombers and fighter-bombers struck at Nazi columns and supply depots in an effort to halt the eight-day-old German counter-offensive.
Eighty-four percent of Americans believed Japanese military leaders should be punished after the war, some even advocating torture, a Gallup poll reported.
Left-wing ELAS forces challenged the right of the British to "restore law and order" in Greece and demanded the establishment of a Greek government "of common confidence" as a prerequisite to laying down their arms.
A British patrol discovered 1,800 pounds of fused and wired dynamite in a sewer beneath the entrance to the Great Britain Hotel in Athens. The charge was believed aimed at British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Massed Soviet tanks and infantry made a 25-mile-deep breakthrough in Nazi-Hungarian defenses and captured key bastions around Budapest. Other Soviet forces moved to within 92 miles of Vienna.
The future of wartime professional sports was thrown into doubt by government order shutting race tracks and calling for draft boards to review the status of all professional athletes.
American troops in a tremendous comeback offensive against both sides of the German counterattack into Belgium had narrowed the neck of the enemy position to less than 20 miles and had relieved the beleaguered garrison at Bastogne.
Brig. General Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which had been encircled at Bastogne along with units of the 9th and 10th armored divisions, had a one-word answer for a German commanders demand that he surrender: "Nuts."
Terrific losses suffered by American armies on the Western Front had completely disrupted the Allied timetable for the war in Europe. Allied leaders were estimating three to six months more of hard fighting.
German troops had massacred 90 civilians in four Belgian towns, claiming they were commiting the atrocities under orders from their officers.
The United States in its strongest protest of the war to Germany called the Nazis to answer for the mass murder near Malmedy, Belgium, of all but 15 of 130 U.S. prisoners captured during the Battle of the Bulge.
In Italy, strong Allied air and ground forces were thrown into battle in an effort to halt a German assault in the Serchio River Valley where U.S. troops had been driven from Barga.
by CNB