Wednesday, Oct. 05, 1983
FOREIGN NEWS
THE DAY June 6, 1944
The commander of a U. S. base in England said to his airmen: "May I have your attention, please? This is what we have been waiting for. This is invasion morning." His young men went out to their planes, and up into the Channel dawn.
Near midnight the first C-47 transport planes reached their objective near Cherbourg. Men snapped their rip cords over static lines, waited, crouching. The command came, and they leaped. White, yellow and red parachutes blossomed in the night. Men by the thousands floated down upon captive France.
Battleships, cruisers, destroyers stood off the coast, wrapped themselves in smoke screens and hurled steel from 640 guns. Never before had a target been subjected to such overwhelming bombardment from air and sea.
Fifteen minutes after a rosy sun lifted over the pastures of Normandy, khaki-clad U.S. and British troops began to pour ashore--the British on the left near Havre, the Americans on the right near Cherbourg.
Beachmasters established their stations, directing the mounting traffic. By 10:30 bulldozers were carving out airstrips. England was tied to the invasion coast at last. The Crusade was on.
MURDER, INC.
Fortnight ago a Soviet correspondent described the Nazi murder camp near Lublin. Last week TIME'S Moscow Correspondent Richard Lauterbach visited Maidenek. His report:
Our car halted before a well-guarded gate. "This is Maidenek," Dmitri Kudriavtsev said. I saw a huge, not unattractive, temporary city. There were about 200 trim, grey green barracks, systematically spaced for maximum light, air and sunshine. There were winding roads and patches of vegetables and flowers. I had to blink twice to take in the jarring realities: the 14 machine-gun turrets jutting into the so-blue sky; the 12-ft.-high double rows of electrically charged barbed wire; the kennels which once housed hundreds of gaunt, man-eating dogs.
We rode a little distance to some cabbage patches. The big, leafy cabbages were covered with a sooty, grey dust and next to them were high mounds of grey brown stuff. "This," said Kudriavtsev, "is fertilizer. A layer of human bones, a layer of human ashes, a layer of manure. This is German food production. Kill people; fertilize cabbages."
The crematorium might have been a big bakeshop or a very small blast furnace. Here the Nazis carted the bodies, straight from the gas chambers. They cut them up scientifically. They could disintegrate 1,900 people a day.
FRANCE
Paris Is Free!
The news that made the whole free world catch its breath last week was the news that Paris was free. It was one of the great days of all time. For Paris is the city of all free mankind, and its liberation last week was one of the great events of all time.
The first U.S. newsman to enter Paris, TIME'S Chief War Correspondent Charles Christian Wertenbaker, entered the city through the Porte d'Orleans at 9:40 a.m., Friday, Aug. 25. His report:
I have seen the faces of young people in love and the faces of old people at peace with their God. I have never seen in any face such joy as radiated from the faces of the people of Paris this morning. This is no day for restraint, and I could not write with restraint if I wanted to. Your correspondent and your photographer Bob Capa drove into Paris with eyes that would not stay dry, and we were no more ashamed of it than were the people who wept as they embraced us.
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