Current Events July 31, 1942: BATTLE FOR CAUCSUS RAGES ON:

            The Bakersfield Californian

                                BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA, FRIDAY, JULY 31, 1942

Do-or-Die Red Army Halts Nazis

Japs Mass 400,000 Troops to Strike at Siberia

Red Rally Wipes Out

Huns' Flying Wedge

But Soviet Faces Disaster in Bloody

Battle for Caucasus as Foes Advance

By ROGER D. GREENE

Associated Press War Editor RALLYING Soviet armies, fighting under the slogan, "die, but don't retreat," threw back the Germans in some sectors

of the Don river bend 80 miles northwest of Stalingrad

today, but in the Caucasus the situation grew ever more

critical. A bulletin from

Adolf Hitler's field headquarters

declared that German,

Rumanian and Slovak troops

driving toward the Caucasus oil

fields had already thrust spearheads

113 miles below the Don, and the

Russians acknowledged German advances

in this theater.

The Nazi command said that

fighting was in, progress for the

town of Salsk, a junction on the last

major rail line from tho Caucasus to

Stalingrad 100 miles southeast ot

Rostov, and that axis troops had

swept across the Don on a 150-mile

front.

German speed troops and advanced

infantry divisions were pictured by

tho Nazi command as closely pursuing

the Russians and preventing

further retreat at several points by

outstripping: the "disorganized fugitives."

Strong1 Soviet attacks were acknowledged

in tho north, around

Rzhev, 130 miles northwest of Moscow,

on tho Volkhov front and outside

Leningrad.

In the battle of (he Don river

bend, above Stalingrad, tho Red

armies reported they had turned a

novel "flying wedge" attack of

massed Germany infantry, walled by

tanks, into a death trap for the

Nazis.

British Predict

3 Nip Smashes

at Russia

Yanks Down 9 of.

49 Jap Raiders

at Darwin. By Associated Press

BRITISH military quarters

declared today that Japan had

massed nearly 400,000

troops in Manchukuo opposite

the 1000-mile Soviet frontier

and said "there is little

doubt they are planning to attack.

These quarters predicted that the

Japanese would make at least three

drives in an attempt to Isolate the

Siberian port of Vladivostok, which

lies only 700 miles across the Sea

of Japan from Tokyo.

"August and September are the

best months for campaigning in that

area," the source said, "and the Japanese

inactivity in all other.- spheres

except the north Pacific indicates

Siberia la their objective for the last

half of 1942."

Aside from aerial operations and

a minor Japanese land thrust toward

the allied outpost of Port Moresby,

in New Guinea, the whole far Pacific

theater has been ominously quiescent

for weeks.

In Australia, General MacArthnr's

headquarters reported the

biggest outburst of aerial warfare

since the Coral Sea battle, with

American airmen destroying 9 out

.of 49 Japanese raiders over Port

Darwin, setting another enemy

transport aflame off New Guinea

and shooting up the transport's destroyer

escort.