WAR CRIMES UNCOVERED BY
30TH TO BE PROSECUTED
Page 10

The trial of Germans responsible for the mass slaying of American troops at Malmedy during the Ardennes battle last December may open soon in a military court.

Revelation that cases against the Germans, are being prepared was made in Paris by Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court Justice who has been named as American prosecutor in the war-criminal trials.

Infantrymen of the 30th Division found the bodies of the murdered Americans in the snow southwest of Malmedy.  The victims were lying in groups, some with hands still raised above their heads.  They had been murdered by the First SS Panzer Division December 17.

Jackson pointed out that he will have no official connection with the military court trials. He is in Europe to gather evidence against the top war criminals who will b tried by the first international criminal court ever to be created.

There will be no delay, however, in trying Germans involved in offenses against U.S. troops. The Malmedy massacre is but one of such incidents, and these cases currently are being prepared by the Judge Advocate General's office, according to Jackson.

Trial dates for ranking Nazis cannot be fixed until international agreement is reached on the tribunal, Jackson said.

Nazis charged with offenses against citizens of former occupied countries are to be turned over for trial to the courts of those countries, he said.

Must Wait Tribunal OK

Jackson's appointment as American prosecutor by President Truman and his appearance in Europe were the first visible signs that the international tribunal is coming into being. `

"The formation of such a body necessarily takes same time" , Jackson said.  "Until it has been concluded, we naturally cannot fix an exact data for the commencement of those trials."

Neither Britain, Russia nor France has yet named their prosecutors, and reports on progress on formation of the tribune! have been limited mostly to speculation.

However, Jackson is going ahead with preparatory work. He said he had already had conferred General Eisenhower and U. S. Group Control Officials. He also plans to go to London to confer with the United Nations War Crimes Commission.

The great cities of the inner Reich, strongholds of the Nazi creed and citadels of the German war machine, are falling one by one to sweating, weary doughboys of the 12th army group while armored divisions of the Second British army on the left flank smash northward toward Hamburg and other North sea ports and on the right flank infantry of Gen. George S. Patton's Third army sweep across the Czechoslovak border completing the bisection of Munich, Germany.

Magdeburg, capital of the province of Prussian Saxony, fell to the 30th infantry and Second armored divisions of the Ninth United States army after a most bloody battle.

Magdeburg was the first of the German strongholds in the 12th army group to fall. Assaulted by tanks and infantry of the Ninth army yesterday, the city fell late this afternoon after a bitter struggle with SS and Hitler jugend troops.

According to front line reports, flame-throwers were used by the Americans on barricades within the city and members of the Hitler jugend ran into streams of Americana machine- bullets, firing and shouting "Heil Hitler" as they fell.

Doughboys working their way from house to house with the cool precision of veterans encircled one barricade across the main street; taking 180 prisoners from it and surrounding houses. Front reports said that over 600 prisoners had been captured in the city by 5 p. m.

Resistance ebbed when tanks which had entered from one side of the city linked with infantry who had thrust in from the other. There are still a few Germans in the suburb of Werder east of the Elbe.

After a successful crossing of the Roer at Krauthausen where the Germans apparently thought it impossible, doughboys of the 120th Infantry Regiment swept on like a house afire to capture 12 fortified German towns, corral 800 prisoners, knock out dozens of tanks, and swat the Germans around in general in a five day non-stop battle toward the Rhine.

The first battalion with "F" Company attached gabbed Niederzier, Grettenharten, and Kirchherton in spectacular night attacks.

"Dutch's right raiders, they call us now," said Major Chris McCullough, of Fayetteville, N. C. "Butch" is 27-year-old Lt. Col. Ellis Williamson, of 708 Boylan Drive, Raleigh, N. C., the Battalion commander.

Led by youth-appearing Lt. Col. James M. Cantey, Columbia South Carolina, the second battalion did a neat job of taking Kolrath.

Thanks to "Old Hickorymen" like Staff Sergeant Darrell E. Fuller, Valejo, California, the 120th doughboys made it without a hitch.

The diminutive sergeant, fire feet four inches tall, took a Panther Tank out of the running by setting it afire with a phosphorous grenade.

A fanatical German captain had grouped about 80 men and some tanks in the town and they were putting up fierce resistance, Col. Cantey said, "Automatic weapons, mortars, and tanks were giving us hell, but we got in alright. About 150 prisoners were taken."

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

Other 120th men who played a heroic part in the action were S/Sgt. Paul Hicks, Louisville, Ky., Lt. Arthur Saalfield, Akron, Ohio, Cpl Boyd Cobbs, Shelby, N. C., S/Sgt Thomas J. Mock, West Homestead, Penna., S/Sgt Wallace Miller, Alameda, California, Pvt. Paul I. Dunkle, Carlisle, Penna., Pvt. George Starch, Cincinnati, Ohio, S/Sgt Lawrence L. Grogan, Bowling Green, Ky, Pfc. Ezekiel Carter, Tallahassee, Fla., and Pvt. Stanley Rychnovsky of Rockford, Ill.

Two crack divisions of Lt. Gen. Simpson's United States 9th army - the 30th infantry and the 2d armored - launched an all-out assault on Magdeburg after heavy aerial preparation. They were reported making "excellent progress" thru the streets of the industrial city on the banks of the Elba river.

Sit on Hills and Cheer

It was the first real attempt to take Magdeburg since it was reached a week ago, the 9th army troops had crossed the Elbe above and below the city. Thousands of Poles, Czechs, and French - former slave laborers in factories around Magdeburg - set on surrounding hills and cheered like a football crowd as Simpson's doughboys and tanks began the task of rooting cut the Nazi, garrison.

A front dispatch said Yank infantry was methodically approaching the city's center, but that Simpson's tanks were being hampered by thick smoke screens laid down from across the Elbe.

Troops of the 1st and 9th armies linked up at Bernburg, a short distance from the Elbe some 27 miles south of Magdeburg. The 4th army's bridgehead across the Elbe at Barby, southeast of Magdeburg, remained intact.  German forces which had been by-passed by the 9th army north of Magdeburg made an attempt to break through and escape up the Elbe to the north, but were turned back.

Back home in Lorain, Ohio, Cpl Raymond J. Wick was just another state highway patrolman. Today, he is known as "The Chief" by some 7,000 German prisoners of war.

Wick runs the prison camp at Magdeburg and his prisoners include Wehrmacht staff officers, high ranking Nazi officials and 226 women members of the German army.

Every day the former speed cop holds inspection. Smartly polished German officers from generals down stand rigidly at attention and report on conditions in their sector of the camp. Then Nick checks personally

"They are easy to control", said the 28-year-old 30th Division corporal, a member of the Old Hickory Military Police Platoon, "and when given facilities keep themselves and their quarters spic and span". The reason, at least partially, is because he demands and gets scrupulous obedience and co-operation from the Germans with whom discipline is a fetish.

That glorification of discipline is how Wick came by his nickname. There is nothing in either the Nazi or Wehrmacht book of rules covering being ordered around by a mere corporal. Furthermore they are accustomed to saying! "sir" to anyone who has the power to give them orders. They did not want to say "sir" to Corporal Wick, but he plainly had plenty of power,

So they compromised between their disciplinary training and their current situation by nicknaming Wick. "The Chief" which is all right with the grinning Buckeye boy so long as they behave themselves.

If yesterday's story of Ninth Army achievement of the first amphibious crossing of the Rhine ,in this sector, today's vas of an imminent break-through that might open the way-for a clash far into Germany. (Maj. Robert Hewitt of 259 West Twelfth Street, New York, said that a break-through had been accomplished, press services reported.)

The Ninth Army's bridgehead which it may now be revealed was established by the Thirtieth.

Ninth Army infantry and armor, after consolidated during their Rhine bridgehead have pushed more than 10 miles east into Germany and tonight continue to advance through heavily wooded areas against moderate to light enemy resistance.

Since the operation began in the early morning hours of Saturday„ doughboys of the 30th and 79th division have seized more than 100 square miles of ground and have captured well over 3,000 prisoners, including infantry elements of the 180th Volksgenadier and 116th Panzer divisions.

Terrain Changes To East

As American troops, supported by tank units, push east from the level Rhine plain to the higher ground, some 3,000 yards from the river, the complexion of the terrain changes. There, fighting is being waged in heavily wooded pine areas, criss-crossed with a network of sandy dirt roads and a few good second-class highways, which the Germans have attempted to defend with infantry, a few light armored vehicles and mobile guns.

Shortly after noon yesterday both American infantry divisions operating over the bridgehead had taken more than an 6-mile section of a superhighway, reputed to have been one of Hitler's, but in one area at least they found a still uncompleted roadbed. And as the front was pushed steadily forward it was becoming more evident that there are few first-class roads available either to us or to the retreating enemy.

Change Since First Attack

By midmorning yesterday, when we reached the Rhine bridge site there was a steady stream of infantry, artillery, tanks, supplies and equipment moving over pontoon bridges which the engineers had thrown across since the first storm-boats left the west bank carrying companies of doughboys who established the first bridgehead. Some distance up the river we could see other vehicles moving back for the return journey to pick up cargoes vital to continued operation.

To those of us who had witnessed the first attack, the scene was a vastly different one. The fields over which the men and material had been moved were now littered with trucks, antiaircraft batteries and supply dumps, Overhead floated a number RAF-operated barrage balloons, protection against Luftwaffe attacks.

Five British soldiers freed by American forces which seized the Weser river city of Hamelin, revealed Monday the details of an 11-week "march of death" perpetrated by the Nazis.

The soldiers, all of whom had been captives for almost five years, emerged from cellar hideouts in Hamelin and disclosed that they had been forced to march 600 miles in 11 weeks. Nazis evacuating prisoners from Poland engineered the death march-which rivaled in brutality the notorious Jap-inspired death march on Bataan.

The prisoners, routed out of their camp near Graudenz on Jan. 22 when Soviet armies menaced the position, were marched 25 and 30 miles a day in freezing temperatures. They slept in barns and cornfields and were fed watery soup and husks of bread.

Dozens collapsed where they fell. Hunger killed many others. Still others froze to death.  Only the hardiest survived.

The Nazis inflicted vicious beating on any who lagged behind. One prisoner who lingered for an extra moment was shot, and given no treatment until the next morning.

THE PRISONERS WERE MARCHED clear across the Reich and reached Hamelin only few days ago. During the 600-mile march they were beaten with rifle butts and prodded with bayonets when the faltered.

These five escaped from the column in Hamelin and took refuge in cellars.  They endured along with the Nazis, the savage shelling of the city.  The Hamelinites said they wanted to surrender but that the Gestapo kept the garrison fighting.

One soldier said the Gestapo ordered anyone who showed a white flag to be shot. A doctor raised a flag of surrender and the Nazis executed him in the city's main square.

Rescued soldiers remembered their horror march across Germany as a worse ordeal than the shelling of Hamelin. One soldier said: "Some days we marched from 7 a. m. till11 p. m. and then were forced to sleep in the snow."

"Our guards" said another, seemed to delight in torturing us. If you paused even for a minute you were stuck with a bayonet or beaten with rifle butts."

A Scottish soldier said: "The only satisfaction we got on the march was in seeing the evidences of terror in German cities as the Russian spearheads drew nearer.

"The supermen are scared to death of the Russians. We could tell that everybody was panicky. They know that the war is lost and they're fearful of the consequences."

Two soldiers who were captured near Ghent, Belgium, in May, 1940, said:

"The greatest thrill of' our lives was to see American men and materiel clattering into Hamelin."

"We remembered how little we had five years ago. When we saw the American tanks rolling through by the dozens, and all sorts of equipment following after, it was some thrill."