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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 31, 1978)
irand went un by ater. )fAg- sand is 25 eand eness bom ;at of mer- ively it cut ; the tions iably sties have o 40 that Iped American panic 40 years ago THE BATTALION Pag© 7 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1978 United Press International Forty years ago the night before Halloween, the Martians invaded earth, a million Americans became ‘unhinged and folks around Grovers N shot the local water tower full of bullet holes. The occasion: a battle that never existed outside the pages of H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic, “War of the Worlds, ” but under the mas terful hand of another Welles — one named Orson — it came a bit too alive the night before Halloween in 1938. Eddie Kemp, now 66, never heard the “Mercury Theater of the Air” radio bulletins that struck ter ror in the hearts of his neighbors, but he remembers the terror well. It was supposed to be happening in his backyard. "Idrove through the area...but I had the radio shut off in the car, he said Sunday night. “I drove right through a big traffic jam, but I thought it was a fire or accident or Jsomething. Next morning, there in the newspaper was a picture of my home which was right in front of the field where the Martians were sup posed to have landed. “My good God in heaven,’ I thought. “I’m sure glad I didn’t have the radio turned on. If I did I prob ably would have been gone with the rest of ‘em right into the hills of Pennsylvania." They took to the hills all over the nation that night as Welles and his crew rapped out one terse radio bul letin after another, describing in horrifying detail the inexorable jfliarch of the Martians, in war ichines like gigantic spiders, strid-' ||hpss the countryside on their Mill That’s why the Grovers water tower got the business. “It was a foggy, misty night, and people could see this image through the fog — the four legs of the to- '||bng legs, slaughtering everyone in wer,” Kemp said. “Oh God, they dght thought they had one. The tower Hitler cast spell, says ex-aide hasn’t been used in a good many years, but I suppose it’s still got the bullet holes.” But Grovers Mill, picked by script writer Howard Koch as the Martians’ beachhead after he closed his eyes and aimed a pencil point at United Press International BONN, West Germany — Adolf Hitler was petty, pedantic, illogical awiirational but possessed hypno- lic powers that compelled obedi- ^ 11106 even in defeat, says his utenant and war production chief, Albert Speer. Thirty-three years after the Nazi Sihrer killed himself in his Berlin bunker, Hitler’s mesmeric power iver his associates still fascinates ‘Im, Speer writes in his latest (memoirs. f The first installment of "Albert Speer on Hitler appeared Sunday | the West German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. I Speer believes it was this power S jit allowed Hitler to dominate other Nazi leaders — “desperadoes from all classes’ — and make “courageous officers” obey him even when they saw his orders leading to catastrophe. Reports of Hitler’s hypnotic pow ers began to circulate as soon as he became German chancellor in 1933. Speer, who probably was closer to Hitler than any other Nazi leader, writes in his new memoirs that the reports are true. “If Hitler had a friend, I was it,” Speer writes. Hitler thought that Speer, who began his career as the Nazi architect, was a fellow artistic genius and was drawn to him. Speer, 73, has written other books and articles since 1966, whep he finished his 20-year sentence in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes. But never before did he dis cuss Hitler’s hypnotic powers. But in his new book, Speer, writes that only Hitler’s hypnotic powers could have held together the desperadoes who gathered around him for different reasons all the long years when Hitler’s prediction he would gain power legally seemed ir rational and illogical. “This to me is still today over whelming proof of Hitler’s hypnotic powers,” Speer writes. “It was a time when strictly speak ing he should not have been able to be an absolute ruler. The lost battles and the impending downfall should have destroyed his halo. ” BUDGET & RE Co MCA Records Presents: ELTON JOHN Simple Man POLYDOR Records Presents: 10 C.C. “Bloody Tourists" paraphernalia On MCA Records: LYNARD SKYNARD “First And Last" BLANK TAPE.S SOUND CARE PRODUCTS a map of New Jersey, wasn’t the only area swept by panic at the com ing horde of aliens. Never mind that Welles and his CBS broadcast crew ran frequent disclaimers saying it was all make-believe. An estimated 1 million of the 6 million who heard the program heard only disaster. In Pittsburgh, a man returned home just in time to keep his wife from swallowing poison. “I’d rather die this way than like that,” she wailed as the radio re lentlessly pounded out its fictitious bulletins. Later, in what had to be the un derstatement of the decade, an un repentant Welles was to describe the classic dramatization as “a Hal loween prank,” but few of the em barrassed victims who fled were laughing. At one point, they learned that of 7,000 men battling a single Martian machine at Grovers Mill, only 120 had survived. “The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster,” the breathless “an nouncer” said, rattling on with other battle statistics. In Newark, N.J., hundreds of re sidents ran into the streets covering their faces with wet towels and handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the poisonous gas of the on coming aliens. In Ashville, N.C., five boys at Brevard College fainted as students fought for telephones to call parents, begging to be taken home. While panic spread, Welles and his crew were blissfully unaware of the havoc their “newscasts” were spreading. Later there was debate. Should Welles and his imaginative crew be given medals — or hempen neckties? Columnist Dorothy Thompson fi nally came down on the side of medals — or at least kudos — for a program she said pointed up the na tion’s vulnerability to panic in the very real war already raging in Europe and overnight, Welles was an international celebrity. Could such a thing happen again, today? Some say yes, but Kemp dis agrees. “People are too educated now,” he said. Forty years ago, it was something new, but a radio story is a lot difierent than television. 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Presents ORCHESTRE du CAPITOLE de TOULOUSE featuring Michel Plasson, Conductor and Philippe Entremont, Guest Piano Soloist Program Le Corsaire (Overture), Opus 21 - Berlioz Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in F-Major, Opus 1 03- Saint-Saens Symphony in B flat Major, Opus 20- Chausson La Valse- Ravel THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1 978 8:15 Rudder Auditorium Tir'Wfst Priz'fSQ - General Public-$7.60, $6.10, $5.00 A&M Student/Date-$6.1 5, $5.00, $4.20 ~U| Tickets and Information- 1K MSC Box Office at 845-291 6 C’ Halloween kO Entire Stock of Madness l Entire Stock of Peeples Shoes Augustus Suits 50% OFF 20% OF Short Sleeve Knits Cross Creek, Thane, Virany 50% OFF un 03 LU LU lo O CP £ Cold Weather Coats From Zero King And Peters 20% OFF Long Sleeve Dress Shirts from Enro $799 OPEN TUESDAY OCTOBER 31 ’TIL MIDNITE \\\N\WA\