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    "label": "Memorandum from John J. McCloy to General Eisenhower",
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    "title": "Memorandum from John J. McCloy to General Eisenhower",
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    "ocrText": "898-6158\nS-3 - Rosk\n5-4-vaa -\nIn term\nALLIED FORCE HEADQUARTERS\nAPO 512\nM.S.\n13 December 1943\nMEMORANDUM FOR: General Eisenhower.\nB\nI am just in from a trip around Sicily and Italy. I visited\nPalermo, saw Patton, McSherry and the AMG group there. I talked\nwith the staff people who were running the thing from Headquarters,\nand one of the Civil Affairs officers who came with me took a trip\naround through the back areas and saw how it was operating on the\nground. Patton was a bit downcast but soldierly. He was not\nvery intelligent the way he handled himself, but Lincoln's remark\nwhen they got after Grant comes to mind when I think of Patton -\n\"I can't spare this man - he fights.\" I hear that the hubbub is\ndying down in the States.\nFrom Palermo I went to Naples and was much impressed by\nHume and his group there.\nEverywhere it was the same story: \"Food\" There were many\nproblems, some acute, but most could be answered in terms of\nfood. The shipments have not had any continuity and they are\nshort - short to the point where I feel it will complicate your\nmilitary situation unless they are increased and are made fairly\nregular.\nThere was evidence of some careless and what seemed to be\nunnecessary use of great historical or national monuments by\ntroops.\nCrimes are being committed in the name of military neces-\nsity that I think could be avoided by some pronouncement from\nyou. If you are fighting a battle, you can't help it if you\nknock the corner off a Greek temple that stands in the battle-\nfield. With a little more effort and some greater inconvenience\nyou can billet troops elsewhere than in the midst of a scien-\ntific collection in the Naples University or use the famous\nNaples Museum which still has many easily removable objects in\nit for 8. storehouse. We have been running many articles in the\nStates as to the good work the Armies in Italy are doing toward\nrespecting the great monuments of Italy, but I was a bit shocked\nat the way the thing was operating in Naples itself. When we\nget to Rome, I suggest a better system should be devised whereby\nit would not be possible for every combat officer to take the\ncourse of least resistance in the name of military necessity in\nthe accommodation of his troops. Could not some expeditious\n5928\n-1-\n2633\n394\n58th"
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