Born. To Red Skelton, 34, rubber-faced, baby-talking radio and cinema comic, and second wife Georgia Maureen Davis Skelton, 26, retired starlet: their second child, first son; in Santa Monica, Calif. Name: Richard Freeman. Weight: 7 Ibs.

Died. George F. ("Buzz") Beurling, 26, Canada's leading wartime ace (28 Axis planes in 14 fighting days at the defense of Malta), and peacetime flying mercenary; in a plane crash at Urbe airfield, Rome, while en route to fly in Palestine. He won his discharge shortly after D-day in 1944 (said the R.C.A.F.: "Beurling has already done his part. . ."). He found peacetime bush-piloting, stunt flying and insurance selling too tame ("I guess I'll have to go and find another war"), bargained with both Arabs and Jews before taking Haganah's offer.

Died. Major Guy Richard Charles Wyndham, 52, wellborn, well-to-do war correspondent for the London Sunday Times; by machine-gun fire; in Jerusalem (again demonstrating that the war correspondent's risk is greater than the average soldier's*).

Died. Claude McKay, 58, onetime Pullman porter and first Negro to write a bestseller (Home to Harlem, 1928); after long illness; in Chicago. A protege of Max Eastman, Poet-Author McKay drifted leftward through Communism to disillusionment, then swung to Catholicism, lost his high literary promise on the way.

Died. Colonel James Layton Ralston, 66, Canada's bull-dogged wartime Minister of National Defense, whose demand that home-defense draftees ("zombies") be shipped overseas forced a Cabinet crisis and his resignation in 1944; of a heart ailment; in Montreal.

Died. Maria Kapitonovna Petrova, 72, star pupil and longtime colleague of the late, great Physiologist Ivan Pavlov in his studies of conditioned reflex (by experiments with dogs); in Leningrad. She carried on Pavlov's studies after he died in 1936, published more than 100 works, lived according to Pavlov's precept: happiness is nothing, the dogs mean all.

Died. Laurence Vincent Benet, 85, West Point-born manufacturer of the French Hotchkiss machine gun, uncle to Poets William Rose Benet and the late Stephen Vincent Benet; in Washington. Benet sold the Hotchkiss, which he perfected to fire 550 shots a minute, to all comers, but was touchy about his reputation as a "merchant of death," once reassured a visitor that "my fingers are not dripping blood this morning."

*In World War II, 34 U.S. correspondents out of some 600 to 800 were killed--a casualty rate of over 4%. Percentage for the Army: 2.98% killed or missing.

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