These are some highlights from the News Journal on August 26, 1944:
Nationally
• ‘Allies Drive Toward Belgium, Germany’
“(AP) — Swiftly advancing Allied troops soon may bring the war to the Germans’ stolen province of Alsace-Lorraine, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said today in an order of the day, as a great 200-mile Allied front expanded eastward and northward toward Germany and Belgium. The Americans were firmly across the Seine River in a half-dozen places, and the Nazis, battered in retreat by bombs and shells, were believed withdrawing for a stand along the Somme-Marne line.”
• A photo was captioned, “Citizens of Paris gave the Allied troops entering their city a hearty welcome as they cheered wildly all along the streets as liberators appeared.”
Locally
• “Mrs. Eleanor Campbell, Doan St., said Saturday that she has received word from the War Department that her husband, Sgt. William Campbell, was seriously wounded in action in France July 26, but she has received no word that he is blind” (a rumor of that had been circulating locally). “A picture of Sgt. Campbell and his buddy Sgt. Walter Thompson, both of Wilmington, appeared in the News Journal August 7, and word was received that same week that Sgt. Thompson had been seriously wounded on July 26 (he died of the wounds that same day) and that Sgt. Campbell also was seriously wounded on that date.”
• “Mrs. Ernestine Deaton Veatch, who was living in Wilmington with Dr. and Mrs. Robert Conard when she received word June 10 that her husband, Lt. F.M. Veatch Jr., had been killed in action in Italy May 26, has received a letter from the chaplain in her husband’s fighter-bomber group” stating that “Lt. Veatch was on a strafing and bombing mission and it is thought he was hit by small arms fire. No parachute was seen to drop from the falling plane. He was over enemy territory.”
• “Mrs. J.W. Denver Williams received members of the Six and Twenty Club and several guests at her home on Rombach Place” including President Mrs. M.J. McKay, but missing her first meeting in 12 years was Mrs. J.E. Orebaugh. Program leader was Mrs. Helen Haynes.
• Playing at the Lamax Theatre was “Going My Way” with Bing Crosby and at the Murphy was “Sensations of 1945” with Eleanor Powell.
