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Show r 1 Who's News This Week By Delos Wheeler Lovelace Consolidated Features. WNU Release. "NJEW YORK. On the day General Eisenhower's invasion barges bump against the channel-washed walls of Hitler's fortress, the invad- t- r ers' air sup" Victory May Now port wiu be Depend Upon an commanded OV Umbrella Man AirTMaTr-shal AirTMaTr-shal T. L. Leigh-Mallory. His initial job will be to raise a cover of planes through which Nazi bombers and fighters cannot thrust at Allied infantry and tanks down under. On his record Leigh-Mallory is as good as he had better be and the business of raising an aerial umbrella is not new to him. He raised a fine one over Dieppe. Some of the fruits of that hair-raising raid were sour but the air marshal's parasol was beyond criticism. Besides smoke-screens laid and the gun positions knocked out, his bombers bomb-ers and Blenheims and Bostons, his Hurricanes and Spitfires fought so furiously that Nazi plane losses were set at 191, against a British 98. And 30 pilots of the 98 were saved. Entering the last World war as a private after coming down from Cambridge, Leigh-Mallory finished as a flying officer with the D. S. O. He had planned on law, but remained re-mained in the army and the start of this war found him commanding the British Twelfth fighter group. He also organized and directed the Polish air force in England, and for his achievements has been made a Commander of the Bath. Of all Britain's commanders none looks more British than the air marshal. mar-shal. He has the wide jaw, the trim, thick mustache, the strcng nose, the closely buttoned mouth glorified in cartoons. He is 51 years old. THIS is just a luncheon pick-up; probably there isn't a true word in t. Sir Stafford Cripps was traveling with a Great Man. After dinner the Great Man Maybe Mr. Cripps nauied out Isn't as Austere a couple of As Yarn Suggests his terrific cigars. "Smoke!" he urged. "I never smoke," said Cripps. The Great Man turned himself into a chimney, poured a stiff brandy, poised the bottle over a second sec-ond glass and raised eyebrows in 8 convivial invitation. "I never drink," said Cripps. The Great Man had several stiff ones. Ten o'clock came. At the first chime Cripps checked his wrist watch. It was ten, right enough, "G'night!" he said briskly. "I always al-ways go to bed at ten. Britain's minister of aircraft production probably isn't as severe se-vere as all that. But he can be grim; as now when he warns rosy optimists that 1944 will be the Allies' toughest year. He took on aircraft production late in 1942 and some said he had been demoted. It did seem a come-down from the post of lord privy seal, and certainly less rewarding than his earlier ambassadorships to China and Russia. Fifty-five, Sir Stafford is an aristocrat, aristo-crat, a baron's son, but he runs with left-wingers. He is M.P. for Lab.orite Bristol and works to allay distrust of Communism. GERMANY'S Iron Cross comes in three grades; the Nazi special police come in three grades, too. And it couldn't be just a coincidence . , , that Wilhelm Executes Hitler s Schepmann Orders to Letter wears the And to the Death 1e't rade of the one and commands the lowest grade of the other. Hitler's own Elite Guard, the swaggering SS and the Gestapo, Himmler's pets, both rank above Schepmann's troopers. Since Schepmann took over after tough Victor Lutz died in that automobile accident last May, his task has grown enormously. enor-mously. There are 12,000,000 rebellious re-bellious alien workers in the Reich now, and if these are to be kept at work along with the bombed natives, the SA must turn the trick. Fifty now, Schepmann was born in the troubled Ruhr. In the first World war he won his Iron Cross in the infantry and survived three wounds and at the end was a lieutenant. lieu-tenant. With peace he spent much time in the headquarters of the budding Nazi group at Dortmund Dort-mund and finally Hitler made him a full time SA leader. When the Nazis at length came to power in '33 Hitler ordered Schepmann Schep-mann to wipe out opposition in Dortmund. There was a lot of opposition. op-position. Communists were numerous. numer-ous. These all vanished, however, after Schepmann's militia caught up with the leaders; aad Dortmund became be-came known as the town where political po-litical suspects most frequently were shot while trying to escape, or committed com-mitted suicide by leaping from their prison windows. For his good works Schepmann was awarded the empty honor of membership in the Prussian Prus-sian Diet and In the Reichstag, too. |