What you’ll read below first appeared on this page four years ago this week . . . and the facts stated occurred seventy-eight years ago!
While I was not yet 10 years old, there are elements from that year that I remember almost like they happened yesterday, including the house we were living in at the time. I don’t know what condition it’s in, especially inside, but it still stands … located about 20 miles south of where I now live here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
What kind of memories do you have from your early years?
When XM Radio’s Savoy Express had its own newscaster, Ed Baxter … here’s what you would have heard Ed reporting on “the 40’s and more … on XM track number four” on each March 17th of satellite radio’s early years, the first decade of the 21st century.
Keep in mind that while things were beginning to brighten in both the European and Pacific theaters, no one knew that, as of this report by Ed … the fighting in Europe would come to an end in less than 60 days and that Japan’s surrender would finally come only five months down the road, following the dropping of two atom bombs!
And, while a decline in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health had become apparent to those close to him, especially following his return from traveling half way around the world to meet with Soviet Marshall Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the palace at Yalta in Crimea in early February, it came as a shock when the news was broadcast to the nation — just 26 days after this report — on April 12th that the President had died.
In the news today … March 17th … 19-45 … While everybody in Hollywood film circles who is anybody was celebrating the presentation of this year’s Academy Awards the night before last at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles … troops of the U. S. military were clearing the last fortifications of the Japanese defenders on the island of Iwo Jima. After months of fierce fighting … the volcanic island in the western Pacific has now been proclaimed securely in American hands … and a U. S. Navy military government has been established. Our forces began bombing the Japanese strongholds on Iwo Jima more than a year ago … when B-24 and B-25 bombers carried out missions for seventy-four consecutive days. The island has been defended by an estimated twenty-one thousand Japanese troops who were not only in heavily-entrenched fortifications above ground … but were also hidden in an extensive network of caves.
As reported here … the hard-fought land battle began with amphibious landings by U. S. Marines on February 19th. Four days later, a group of Marines were able to raise an American flag on the island’s highest point, Mount Suribachi … yet only one-third of Iwo Jima was under our control. From the European front … the British Royal Air Force … in a raid over Germany … has dropped the largest bomb to be used so far in the War … the twenty-two thousand pound “Grand Slam.”
Meanwhile … General George Patton’s Third Army forces have pulled another strategic move, as they did in the Battle of the Bulge last December … by circling around and sweeping southward to attack from the rear the German troops holding the Siegfried Line in the Saar … which are already attempting to stave off a frontal attack by the U-S Seventh Army. We’re told that General Patton’s forces are roaming virtually at will and spreading havoc among the enemy. And, that area roads are jammed with German troops and civilians fleeing eastward to the Rhine.
And … speaking of the Rhine … the Ludendorff Bridge over that river at Remagen, has collapsed under the combined strain of bomb damage and heavy use … however, U-S Army engineers have already built several other bridges nearby and the advance over the Rhine continues.
Finally … sixty-six German prisoners-of-war recently escaped from a P-O-W camp in Wales by tunneling forty-five feet under the barbed wire fence. Two-thirds of them have been re-captured as police, members of the Home Guard, along with Land Girls carrying pitchforks, searched one hundred square miles of the wooded countryside.
This … is Ed Baxter. And … that’s our report for March 17th … 19…45.
And, as I write in my radio journey memoir, RADIO … My Love, My Passion, the voice behind our 1940’s newscaster was Bill Schmalfeldt, who was the first program director of XM Radio’s Broadway channel … and in our “theater of the mind” world, Ed Baxter is the father of famed television newscaster, Ted Baxter.
Thank you for reading.
