CHURCHILL CROSSES RHINE IN 30TH SECTOR
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Four United States soldiers sentenced to death by a German military court sweated it out for 93 days in solitary confinement before their rescue by advancing American divisions on Friday.

They told today of watching the Germans erect posts in the ground in front of their prison windows and of waiting for the day when they would be led out before a firing squad and tied against the poles, but that day never came.

Two days ago the Germans want away and left the Americans locked in their cells.  After a while the Yanks heard a jeep outside and a dough boy saying, "I guess we had better shoot the damn locks off".

The four prisoners had been sentenced to death after the Germans planted forbidden articles in their bedding.

"It was just after they had brought in a bunch of prisoners from the Ardennes and they might have wanted to make an example for them", said Sgt. Gervis R. Dickerson, Pelly, Tex., who was captured at Alsdorf on Oct. 15 and liberated by men from his own division when the veteran 30th took over this ancient Saxon town.

Pistol Placed In Bed

The Nazis had planted a pistol in Dickerson's bed during roll call at the Faulenbusier Stalag 11-B on Oct. 29, 1944.

Propaganda papers were planted in the blankets of the three others, Cpl. Julius C. Lewis, Brutus, Mich., and Pvt. Kenneth K. Evens, Pontiac, Mich., both from the 820th tank destroyer battalion and Sgt. Eugene R. Manfredonio, Mount Vernon, N. Y.

The four men were taken to Hannover, where their trial before a German military court began, on Jan. 2. They were represented by a civilian counsel who talked to them thru an interpreter who "couldn't understand us any more than we could understand him". The four men sentenced to death.

'We were asked if we had anything to say for ourselves end we all did', said Manfredonio.

"Dickerson stood there with his Bible in his hands and swore on that Bible that we were innocent. He told them we were all too young to die. We were talking for our lives.

"After that they paraded us thru the streets of Hannover and the civilians just stared at us."

Thrown in Cold Cells

The four Americans were brought here on Jan. 9 and thrown in unheated and poorly lighted single cells where they were kept for all but 10 minutes out of every 24 hours.

"They let us out five minutes each day for washing and five minutes for a walk in the yard, Dickerson said.  The men were given no books or magazines and had nothing to do but sit by themselves in the bitter cold or look out of a window by standing on a bed, a board platform with no mattress or covering.

Evans talked once and they hand-cuffed him to the bed.

Lose Weight on Slim Rations

Each received half a loaf of bread every three days, and to this was added three small potatoes for dinner and a dipper of soup for supper. As they were not registered prisoners they did not receive Red Cross packages. They lost, on the average about 25 pounds.

Today they sat around a table in a rather comfortable room. They could not walk much because their legs were not used to it.

"I'm glad for Gene", Dickerson said, motioning to Manfredonio. "His wife is expecting next month. He has been awfully worried. The waiting. That was what was bad."

"In some ways we were lucky', said Lewis. "My buddy and I were captured in the Ardennes bulge. They made us ammunition carriers and we went right up under our own artillery fire. After they had finished with us they took us out to kill us. The guard marched us up a road, and when they got us to a ditch they opened fire from behind. I rolled into the ditch and lay there until they walked away. My buddy was dead as hell. I crawled away and captured again. But I'm lucky, I'm still alive"

WITH 9TH ARMY IN GERMANY, Marsh RR (Press Wireless)-A phenomenon of this war is the way the American Army has developed its craze for naming inanimate objects. In peace time, if I remember, correctly, we didn't give names to anything much smaller than Summer Cottages ("Dew Drop Inn" or "Wit's' End"), yachts or Pullman cars. But, in the Army's its a forlorn foxhole or tank or bulldozer, truck, traveling crane, machine gun, air compressor, kitchen range that hasn't been christened and conspicuously labeled by the GI who operates it. Often times the names are ribald, sometimes ironical (the foxhole named "Lebensraum"), sometimes they are apt as for example, the huge tank wrecker named "Muscles". Sometimes, they are trite, like the truck named "Berlin or Bust."

But in the majority of cases and increasingly so as the war gets longer and longer-the names are sentimental, the names of wives and sweethearts and places beck home, transferred to the implements of war.

Rehearsing a Crossing

This afternoon, for instance, while I watched a famous infantry regiment of the 30th Division rehearse crossing a river with the engineers and the equipment which sooner or later will get them across the Rhine, I was struck by the fad that not one of the many, many boats. was without a name. There was the small assault boat next to a sign, which read "44"- its official number for today's drill, on a small stream, as some day it will be the official designation on the broader Rhine. But on the port side there was the name "Marion" painted on white letters. This "Marion" is Mrs. Paul Desrosiers, whose home is at 1 Elisabeth St., Lawrence, wife of the technical sergeant of Engineers who will man the stern when the boat takes assault troops across the Rhine one of these fine days or nights.

On the other side of the square bow was another girl's name, this one the wife of Sgt Martin Beadle of Newport, Vt,. the boss and bowman of the boat. And if you looked very closely on the portside forward you'd see painted in much smaller letters "Chucky' who happens to be the 2-year-old  son of the Desrosiers.

"Why do we name all our equipment like this?"

Sgt. Beadle, a tall sparse Vermonter repeated my question thoughtful.

"Well my wife has been good luck to me for 10 or 12 years and I figure I'll need all the luck she can give me when we shove off."

Desrosiers who has been teamed with Beadle ever since they entered the Army together, thought that about covered it. "Maybe you'd call it superstition," he added, "but it's kinda comforting, too-reminds a guy of home."

Whatever doughfeet wind up in the boat named for the wife of Sgt Beadle or Sgt. Desresiers will be in good hands.

Beadle is a trapper and an outdoor guy by trade, so handling boats and battling rivers is nothing new for him. For three years he worked for the Hudson Bay Company, living the whole time with no one but Indians. Before he went into the Army, he operated 600 acres of marshland, ideal for muskrats. Now, his wife is looking after the marsh for him.

This is the first time they've engineered infantry across a river in assault boats, but they are veterans of the Roer crossing.  On that occasion they were on bridging operations. But as Sgt. Beadle put it, 'We engineers can do anything that's required and there'll be plenty of bridges on the Rhine, too, I imagine, put up by other engineers.

Beadle and Desrosiers figure the Rhine will not be any tougher than the Roer. For one thing, they know the Germans can't flood the Rhine, and, as far as work is concerned, they went 37 hours without sleep and with only one meal, while on the Roer job.

After crossing the Roer at Krauthausen, the 120th Regt. swept on to capture 12 fortified, towns corralling 100 prisoners, and knocking out dozens of tanksa in a five-day non-stop battle toward the Rhine.

The first battalion, with F Co. attached, grabbed three towns -Niederzier, Grettenharter, and Kirchherton - in spectacular night attacks.

"Butch's Night Raiders', they call us now", said Maj. Chris McCullough, of Fayetteville, N. C. - "This battalion had made only one day attack since Nov. 16 - all others have been in the dark."

'Dutch' is 27-year-old Lt Col Ellis Williamson, of Raleigh N. C. the Bn CO.

Niedersier belonged to the night raiders 30 minutes after they crossed the line of departure. Fifty-one prisoners were hauled out of the town.

Tiger Tanks KO-ed

But before Kirchherton could enter, "B" Co. had to deal with two King Tiger tanks with all their 88's and machine guns burping. Burp gunners fired from the decks of the tanks, according to Capt. Murray Pulver, of Lyon, N. Y.

"The Krauts started shooting their machine guns into the ground then slowly lifted their fire to sweep the ground", said T/Sgt James T. Munn, of Biltmore, N. C, "They were shooting flares every two minutes, and together with the fires we had started the place was as light as day. But we finally got around behind the monsters and rid ourselves of them."

Thanks Farmer

'I can thank the farmer who plowed those nice deep furrows in the field for my life," said S/Sgt R. J. Lewis of Bryn Mawr, Pa. "I was making like a mole when those tracers came streaking two inches from me."

Capt John M. Jacobson, of Omaha, Neb., knocked out a tank with a bazooka at 175 yards. Two others ware surrounded in a farmyard and abandoned intact, according to Maj. Ezekiel Glider, of Palm Beech, Fla.

Led by youthful-appearing Lt. Col. James Cantey, Columbia, S. C., the 2nd Battalion had a busy day.

150 PWs Taken

S/Sgt. Darrell E. Fuller, of Valejo, Calif., took a Panther out by setting it afire with a grenade.

A fanatical German captain had grouped about 280 man and some tanks in the town and "they were putting up fierce resistance", Cantey said, "Automatic weapons, Mortars, and tanks were giving us hell but we got in all tight. About 150 prisoners were taken'".

The 120th ran into their first Volksturm at Kolrath. 'After our artillery barrage all 80 of them stationed to guard a minefield turned tail and ran-all except their captain a 59-year-old German", Major Greater said.

The third battalion snatched Garzweiler waiter from the faltering grasp of members of the police force of Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Aachen who were left behind to defend the town They had little stomach for combat.

The United States 30th infantry division has captured a German army proving ground - equivalent of the Aberdeen, Md. proving ground-with more than 2,000 artillery pieces.

Many of the field pieces were of types never seen before by American military men. Some were giant guns far greater than any yet used by the enemy on the western front, and apparently ware of experimental design

Germans started a parade and now it's only a matter of time until a lieutenant shows up on this side of the Elbe river.

The general was a German. He came across the river in a rowboat under a white flag and insisted he wanted only to arrange the surrender of some wounded soldiers and to transport some civilians to this side.

LOATH TO RETURN

But when the American officers refused to deal unless all enemy soldiers in the vicinity surrendered, the Wehrmacht officer seemed loath to return. Under the rules of land warfare, he had a perfect right to return, since he had come under a flag of truce.

Slowly he walked to the river bank. On the other side he had only angry Gestapo and storm troopers, or else the approaching Russians to face and neither prospect seemed likely to lead to a ripe old age.

Finally, he made his decision - to remain on this side of the river as a prisoner of war.

SECOND BOAT APPEARS

Time passed and another boat bearing a white flag appeared. It was a Wehrmacht Colonel sent to see what happened to the general. They told him. Thoughtfully he considered the situation.  Then he, too, decided it would be healthier to stay on this side and asked permission to surrender. It was accepted.

A short time later a third boat was rowed across. A major had been sent to see what happened to the colonel. After talking to his superior officers, he also decided to cash in the return half of his roundtrip ticket.

By the time the tired looking Wehrmacht captain showed up, grinning GI's were laying odds , as to how far surrender through channels would go. Naturally the captain was looking for the major and naturally he, too, voted in favor of staying on the "safe side of the river."

"It's only a matter of time now until that lieutenant gets here," laughed a sergeant on the river bank.

A German secret weapon - a Mark VI Tiger tank mounting the heaviest caliber weapon seen on the front - was knocked out and captured by American doughs who in the last three days have thrown away the antitank text books to smash counterattacking German armor.

As the Yank avalanche rolled across the Cologne Plain, 30th Inf. Div. units fought their way into Oberembt and overran the big Tiger. Tank Destroyers with the First Bn. of the 117th Regt., under Col. Walter M. Johnson, of Missoula, Mont, knocked out the Tiger at a corner.

In daylight they found the tank mounted a 380 mm, howitzer far and away the big  gun encountered on the push. The seven-foot barrel of the howitzer projects only trio feet from the fixed turret, and launches a projectile - apparently rocket-propelled - five feet long and 15 inches in diameter weighing about 100 pounds.

The weapon's captured crew said there were four such tanks in the 1,000th Panzer Assault Howitzer Co. The Nazis said they called their weapon "The Monster." It carries 19 rounds of ammo which needs a hoist inside the big turret to load. The turret is capable of elevation, but the entire tank must be turned to aim laterally.

All across the front, the doughs have been meeting isolated bits of enemy armor, thrown in vainly against the drive which has been picking up momentum like a spring freshet in a Texas draw. They have dealt, with the tanks as they came, knocking out at least one with a smoke grenade which, according to the books, shouldn't have much effect on a tank.

As the 120th Inf. Regt., cracking up seven miles in 24 hours, entered Kalrath, S/Sgt. Darrell E. Fuller, of Vallejo, Calif., stalked an Mk. IV tank parked in a side street. A German got out of the tank to crank it and Fuller tossed the only thing he had - a smoke grenade - on to the engine hatch in the rear. The intake sucked the fumes into the tank, and some of the camouflage netting on the outside ignited.  The suffocating crew quit

Capt. John Jacobsen, of Omaha, Neb., knocked out a Mk. V Panther tank with a bazooka shot at 175 yards.  Most bazooka hits on tanks are scored in close fighting, but Jacobsen saw the Panther flanking Yanks clearing the town of Hollen, grabbed a bazooka and fired as the Panther turned around a bomb crater.  The rocket hit the turret, killed two of the crew and stopped the tank, which was destroyed when the Tank Destroyers came up.

The futile German sorties with lone armor, however were just what Raymond D. Bulls had been wailing for.  Bulls, a patient, plodding private from Waynesboro, Pa., was handed a bazooka back at D-minus-something. With Col Russell Baker's 119th Inf. Regt., of the 30th Div., he slogged across Normandy and France, through one battle after another, the bazooka on his shoulder. He never saw a target, never fired a round.

As the Yanks stormed into Rodingen, a German tank swung out of a side street. Butts did what he'd thought about doing for months. His first shot knocked out the tank and set it on fire.

Along a road that winds east of the Rhine to Fredericksfeld is a bettered farmhouse with yellow shingles that has become the envy of every soldier advancing into the country beyond.

For in the gaping entrance is an unbeatable team of cooks of the 30th Division - one a former butler to the sister of Queen Elizabeth, the other a saloon keeper from Pittsburgh. No other kitchen unit in the division is able to match their record. Since Normandy they have served only B rations, meat and chicken. Theirs was the first complete kitchen to set up across the Rhine.

Unmindful of occasional German shells that whistled overhead, they hunched solicitously over a pan of hamburgers, the former butler as critical as if he was turning out a neat soufflé, the saloon keeper as if he were measuring a drink.

While the butler, Sergeant Polar Anderson, thirty-seven years old, of 71 East Seventy-first Street, New York, the residence of his last employer, Mrs. Marjorie Lloyd Smith, spoke of the merits of hamburgers his partner, Sergeant Edward Stepanovich, who operated a place on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh, beamed assent as he flipped hamburgers with a practiced hand.

He's New to Hamburgers

Sergeant Anderson never touched a hamburger until he went into the Army three years ago. Born in Scotland, he learned to be a butler at fifteen, and when he acquired all the nuances that go with being a gentleman's gentleman, he moved into big social circles.  Subsequently he served for five months in the home of Lady Elphinstone. Queen Elisabeth's sister, at Canberry Towers, Scotland.

In 1939 Sergeant Anderson came to the United States and went to work for Mrs. Lloyd-Smith. While on the job he met his wife. Mrs. Polly Mullins Anderson, now employed by Francis I. Nichols, of Glen Head, L. I.

"Give her my deepest love", said Sergeant Anderson.  "Tell them Ed will set up drinks for every one when he gets back." said Sergeant Stepanovich.

Sergeant Anderson excused himself and returned to the stove. His partner picked up the thread of conversation.

'You know," he said, "Andy sat up his kitchen an hour after we landed, and was frying hamburgers here when a Jerry shell went through the wall and busted the stove. That didn't disturb him a bit He fried the whole batch shells or no shells.

"1 like hamburgers." said Sergeant Anderson, sprinkling onions on a pan as imperturbably as in the days when he served pressed duck.

The 240-foot broad Weser river, which Allied commanders believed might become a major Nazi defense line, as crossed without opposition Thursday.

When retreating Nazis, moving from the Elbe river line toward Berlin, destroyed Weser bridges in the face of advancing Ninth army doughboys, the Americans in broad daylight climbed into pontoon boats and calmly paddled across the Weser.

Cocky Yanks, manned boats on the way across, and frightened Nazi prisoners filled the craft on their return trip.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill crossed the Rhine today for an inspection of British and American bridgeheads and came within 50 yards of being struck by a German artillery shell while standing on  the shattered western end of the bridge at Wesel.

Churchill, described as looking "extremely well and pleased" during his tour of part of the British front entered positions occupied by the enemy as recently as 36 hours previously.

The Prime Minister spent a quarter of an hour with United States Ninth Army troops on the east bank of the river, being guided by Lieut. Gen, William H. Simpson, commander of the Ninth. While he was on the bridgehead German sniper fire could be heard a few hundred yards downstream.  He made the crossing in an American landing craft.

Later while he was peering through binoculars at the battered remains of Wesel, a German shell crashed fifty yards away. Other enemy fire landed in the river as he watched from the western end of the bridge.

Mr. Churchill was accompanied by Field Marshal Bernard L.  Montgomery and Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the British Imperial Staff. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was called away before the party crossed over to the east bank of the Rhine.

While on the east bank, the British leader was persuaded by General Simpson not to walk to the nearest village because it had not yet been cleared of mines.

Mr. Churchill praised the Ninth Army Engineers, who a few hours earlier had completed bridges across the Rhine in record time. Altogether, he spent about three hours in the Ninth Army sector.

"Mr. Churchill seemed more perturbed about lighting his cigar in the wind than he was about the shellfire", said Lieut. Ellsworth Karrigan of Aberdeen, S. D.  Lieut. Karrigan is a member of the American 30th Division, in whose sector the Prime Minister crossed the Rhine.

"He finally lit that big cigar lit and walked away as if nothing had happened", the lieutenant said.

On the east bank, Mr. Churchill looked over into German-held land and compared Adolf Hitler's problems now with his own in 1940, saying it was impossible to defend a long river line in strength just the same as it was trying to guard a long coastline from invasion.

Walking along the American battlefield, Mr. Churchill discussed yesterday's fighting for the bridgehead with Maj. Gen. L. S. Hobbs, of Washington, D. C., commander of the 30th Division. General Hobbs pointed out German emplacements along the dike behind the Rhine.

Shortly after a noon lunch of fried chicken, Mr. Churchill looked out of the window of a building on the west bank, and mused: "The last time I was on the Rhine was at Cologne during the last war. We cruised 50 miles upstream in a British gunboat.

"I would like very much to get across."

General Eisenhower, who still was with the party, shook his head.  Shortly after the Supreme Commander had gone, Mr. Churchill began urging again and finally talked the others into letting him go.