Sunday, September 30, 2012

October 1, 1944; Prospect For Early Peace Fades:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, OCTOBER 1, 1944:

Prospects for Early
Peace Fade as Army
Girds for New Drive
By JAMES M. LONG
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS.
ALLIED E X P E D I T I O N A R Y FORCE. Sept. 30.—(AP)
Allied fighting men, grimmer and sobered by the heroic tragedy of Arnhem, are moving into position on the western front to drive into Germany the hard way; head-on.
. Unshakably confident that they can do the job, they nevertheless are aware that hard fighting lies ahead in this f i f t h phase of the invasion. Victory s t i l l is possible in 1944, but now it quite" likely may require fighting well into the Spring of 1945. Prime Minister Churchill set the tone for a general change of opinion when he told the House of Commons Thursday that "no one— certainly not I— can guarantee that several months of 1945 may not be required."
NAZIS OUTNUMBERED
At bay stand bitterly-resting elements of a German Army which was close to world conquest three years ago. The Germans have dug into their tightest and last defense system, but despite the shortened front appear to be outnumbered perhaps as heavily as five-to-one by half-dozen Allied armies massed against them in the west — a fighting force estimated by Churchill at from 2.000.000 to 3,000,000 men.



Snow Fails to Slow Advance;
Nazis Lose 113 Tanks and 33
Planes in 2 Days in Assault
By ROBERT EUNSON
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE, Sept. 30.—(/P)—
The U.S. Seventh Army, fighting through snow sweeping out of the Vosges Mountains, wheeled up to two foothill passes today and were only nine
miles northwest of the gateway city of Belfort to challenge the Germans along the chain of peaks blocking the southern route to the Rhineland.
To the north, the U.S. First Army opened up with an attack on a 60-mile front, carved out limited gains, and smashed through eight fortifications of the Siegfried Line, near its Western fortress of Prum.
Between these sectors the U.S. Third Army wiped out the equivalent of a German armored division in two days—113 tanks. 31 of which fell to gunners and fighter bombers in the last 2-1 hours in a battle lying around the American salient east of Met?, and Nancy.
33 PLANES DOWNED
The British on the Dutch end of the long front beat back German counterblows from east and west at their Nijmcgen Bridge positions.
The enemy tossed 300 fighters and fighter bombers into the struggle-----

Japan Knows
It's Beaten,
Says Forrestal
Secy, of Novy Here;
Nips,Hope U.S. Will
Ease Up, He Warns

Alternately optimistic and pessimistic, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, on a surprise visit In HIP Bay area yesterday. ainnounced the Japanese "know that they arc thoroughly beaten," but they hope that the United States will be bored
with war while the Germans quit and will ease up in the Pacific.
His purpose for coining to San Francisco, where he held n press conference at headquarters of the 12th Naval district was to make a study and prepare for the logistics that will inevitable  will accompany the all-out drive in the Pacific.

Nazis Invite
Ruin on Land

Arnhem Tragedy
Sobers Allies
Prospects for Early
Peace Fade as Army
Girds for New Drive
By JAMES M. LONG
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS.
ALLIED E X P E D I T I O N A R Y FORCE. Sept. 30.—(AP)
Allied fighting men, grimmer and sobered by the heroic tragedy of Arnhem, are moving into position on the western front to drive into Germany the hard way; head-on.
. Unshakably confident that they can do the job, they nevertheless are aware that hard fighting lies ahead in this f i f t h phase of the invasion. Victory s t i l l is possible in 1944, but now it quite" likely may require fighting well into the Spring of 1945. Prime Minister Churchill set the tone for a general change of opinion when he told the House of Commons Thursday that "no one— certainly not I— can guarantee that several months of 1945 may not be required."
NAZIS OUTNUMBERED
At bay stand bitterly-resting elements of a German Army which was close to world conquest three years ago. The Germans have dug into their tightest and last defense system, but despite the shortened front appear to be outnumbered perhaps as heavily as five-to-one by half-dozen Allied armies massed against them in the west — a fighting force estimated by Churchill at from 2.000.000 to 3,000,000 men.

September 30, 1944; "BACK FROM HELL" At Arnhem:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1944:


Men Back From Hell
At Arnhem Tell Story
By ROGER D. GREENE and ROBERT C. WILSON
WITH THE BRITISH SECOND ARMY, Sept. 29—(AP)—"
We never lost hope x x x."  . . . '
With these four words, the valiant men of Arnhem epitomized the story of a nightmare ordeal across the Rhine, where they were cut off for eight days and nights under fire of German' tanks, artillery, mortars and machine guns.
The Germans wouldn't come out and fight," said Capt. David Allsop of Bakewell, Derbyshire, a member of the British First Airborne Reconnaissance
Squadron who landed with the first gliders at 1:40 a. m. September 17,. six miles west of Arnhem. •• •••' ••-"
"Our troops shouted 'come out you yellow bastards and fight.' "But the Germans didn't answer. They just kept slinging mortars at us until it fell like rain."
Shelled Day And Night
Allsop's men lay in slit trenches, bombarded by day and night. They were unable to bury the dead. Bodies of their own men and the enemy littered the ground a few feet away, puffed and rotting.
"We glided down int9 a potato field, and it was just like an exercise back in England except for a few odd bits of flak." said Allsop.
'But two hours later the run began when' we made our first contact with Germans on reconnaissance patrol at Wolfheeze station. From there on it got rougher and rougher.
"The second day we tried to get into Arnhem. We, in jeeps, ran into heavy machine-gun fire and had to turn back, but our infantry got into town. On the third day we acted as a screening force on the west flank and on the fifth day it really got sticky. The Germans shelled and mortared us without letup, and snipers were a nuisance, too, although we dealt with them
pretty well.
"I didn't see any flame-throwing tanks, but I did see plenty of selfpropelled guns. German S.S. (Elite Guard) units came up at dusk every night and pumped away at us for 20 minutes from a range of about 300 yards.
Short Of Ammunition
"Our ammunition shortage began to get very serious Friday, but we heard help was coming up at last. But it never came. The last four days we were so pinned down by close-range fire from Germans hidden in near-by woods, and by shell and mortar bursts, that we couldn't bury the dead, either ours or
the Germans. The Boche by now was systematically destroying houses where our chaps were hiding, one-by-one.
"They were beautiful two-story brick villas when we took them over and made them into individual forts. Now they are just shambles. Smashed shelling.
to bits by enemy
"Packed in a tight perimeter, it was positively hell—far worse than we experienced at Taranto, Italy. You lost men all around you. You felt lost, in a bewildering nightmare. You wondered what was happening to the relieving forces—and that was really hard to bear.
"We felt blue, but we never lost hope, x x x never."
Allsop said he received orders to evacuate across the Rhine at 3 p. m., Monday, but his own trench was under such incessant machinegun fire that he had to wait until
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(Continued From Page One)
night to pass the word among his men. Then, under cover of dark ness, he crawled from trench to trench and told his men: "We are withdrawing. Only personal weapons and Bren guns will be taken Nothing else. Silence is essential.'
The troops received the order in complete silence, Allsop said. "thought I heard a few men grumble under their breaths at pulling out before the Boche, but we were so dead-tired by then I don't think they thought much, one way or another.
"As we began the march to the river, our guns on the opposite side laid down an absolutely magnificent barrage, covering, our withdrawal.
It was so terrific that Boche mortars which were falling all around sounded like Christmas crackers, and we didn't even notice them. Amid all that racket I felt
like a bloody fool, then, at my order for complete silence "We left our position at 8 p. m. (Monday and embarked in outboard motorboats across the Rhine at 11p. m. When we got across the men let go their emotions. I guess we all said: 'Well, we made it.-------
(See "Editorial" posted September 29, 1944.)



Saturday Morning, September 30,1944
5c Copy; lOc Out of State. 16 Pages

By HOWARD COWAN
ALLIED SUPREME HEADQUARTERS,
Sept 29 — (AP) —
Allied armies pressed the Germans back tonight at opposite ends of the 460-mile western front—at Arnhem. where the enemy blew approaches to the Neder Rhine bridge to balk pursuit; through Northern Holland, and in mountain strongholds 11 miles west of France's Belfort gateway
to Southern Germany. German forces who slipped south across the Neder Rhine near Arnhem by night fled from their flimsy bridgehead as the British Second Army swept into action. Then they turned and destroyed approaches to the bridges—which their famed "Red Devil" Division fought more than a week to hold—lest the resurgent Tommies try to forge across after them.
Beset By Seventh Army
The Germans were hotly beset also on the extreme south, where the U. S. Seventh Army fought five miles across a battlefield strewn with enemy dead and seized a fortified village 11 miles from Belfort, which stands at the western edge of the gap leading to the reich 30 miles beyond.
(The London radio said the first snow of autumn was falling on Americans closing in on Belfort Gap.)

Reds Win
Strategic
Rail City
By W. W. HERCHER LONDON, Sept. 30—(Saturday)— (AP) —
Russian and Romanian armies chopped holes in axis lines along the Czech-Polish border and in Northern Transylvania yesterday, and also penetrated into the strategic rail city of Oradea in their massive three-way drive aimed at knocking Hungary out of the war.
Bucharest and German announcements told of the fight which has spilled onto Hungarian soil at points along a 100-mile front, while a special Moscow announcement said that Marshal Leonid A. Govorov's Leningrad army—which has freed all the Estonian mainland and now is pressing heavily on Riga,
Latvian capital—had killed 30,000 Germans and captured 15,745 between September 17 and 26.
Budapest In Revolt
Radio France at Algiers said that new demonstrations broke out in Budapest, Hungarian capital, after it became known that the Russians had reached prewar "Hungary. Berlin implied that the Red army temporarily had smashed into Szeged, Hungary's second city, as, well as other key towns, when it reported that Szeged, Gyula and Oradea were "again in Hungarian hands."
The Germans acknowledged retreats in Transylvania, far to the east, and~said a general Nazi army regrouping was going on throughout the Balkans, presumably with the idea of diverting more troops to Hungary in and effort to keep that weakening satellite in the war on the axis side.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

September 29, 1944; FIRST CLASS FIGHTING MEN

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY SEPTEMBER 29, 1944:

THE STARS AND STRIPES Friday, Sept. 29, 1944
                                 An Editorial
First Class Fighting Men

NINE days they fought the Hun to a standstill. Crouching, cold, drenched to the skin in muddy foxholes, these tough paratroopers were mortared, blasted by flame-throwers, shelled by 88-mm. guns and machine-gunned for days and nights without letup. They ran out of food and water, almost out of ammunition, and they fought on.
* * *
A battalion of their wounded with bandaged heads, legs and arms in splints charged, and routed a counter-attack by picked SS men, driving them back. The Germans say they "fought like lions."
* * *
Out of 8,000 airborne troops who landed at Arnhem, 2,000 walked back through the German lines and were ferried across the Lek river to Allied lines.
* * *
These heroic men of the British First Airborne Army made it possible for their comrades, including Americans, to grab the strategic Grave bridge and both the Nijmegen bridges over the Rhine intact. They held back the German reserves sent to defend these vital crossings. They failed to hold the
Arnhem bridgehead only because bad flying weather prevented supplies and reinforcements from
reaching them. And they came staggering back demanding a chance to return and lick hell out of the Huns.
That's why GIs everywhere today are proud of these fighting Britishers—proud to call them Allies. That's why we call them:
FIRST CLASS FIGHTING MEN


BENTON HARBOR, MICH., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1944

NAZIS YEILD
GROUND ALONG
ENTIRE FRONT
Calais Garrison Asks
Surrender Terms; 82
Tanks Knocked Out
BY JAMES M. LONG
LONDON, Sept. 29-(AP)-
The American Third and Seventh armies have surged forward three to five miles through fierce German resistance in Alsace-Lorraine, it was announced today. The Third Army alone knocked out 82 German tanks in the powerful onslaught. The two American armies, prying at the Beifort Gap only 11 mile* away and knocking at the four, main passes through the Vosges to the Rhine, scored the deepest and widest gains of any on an Allied. front seething with the mounting power of new offensives.
On these southern sectors of the 500-mile front, they shredded half a dozen enemy counterattacks which cost the Germans heavily, captured eight to 10 villages and their bag of enemy tanks was one of the biggest since D-Day.
Calais' Fall Imminent
But to the north the German commander at Calais asked for surrender terms, while Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C. Dempsey's combined British Second Army and parachute forces closed up to the Maas (Meuse) river on a 20-mile front from their Nijmegen corridor in Holland.

HITLER'S LAST
ALLY PREPARES
TO DESERT WAR
***
300,000 Russians And
Romanians Swarming
Over Country
BY DANIEL De LUCE
MOSCOW, Sept. 29-(AP)-
The Red Army's three-way offensive against Hungary from Romania and Yugoslavia developed swiftly today while rumors of peace feelers by the
Budapest government indicated Hitler's last important satellite may be on the verge of deserting him.
Hungary's defensive position was dark as strong Russian forces, pressing forward in a 100-mile arc on the Romanian-Hungarian frontier, increased their mountain salient and utilized Marshal Tito's permission to cross Yugoslav territory and strike the Hungarians and Germans from the South.
The  Russian war bulletin disclosed that Soviet troops had fought their way into Lupkow Pass leading from Poland into Czechoslovakia, taking Vydran, a Czechslovak rail station nearly three miles inside the frontier.

YANK RAIDERS
HIT JAPS HARD
IN PHILIPPINES
Sink 22 Ships, Damage
70 Others, Destroy
36 Planes
BY LEONARD MILLIMAN
(Associated Press War Editor)
Tokyo radio reported the capture of one of the three remaining advanced American airfields in China today as U. S. fleet carrier forces added up the most remarkable record of ship and plane destruction of the Pacific war.
In an almost unopposed raid on the central Philippines, sea-borne fighters and bombers sank 22 Japanese ships, damaged about 70 other surface craft, and destroyed 36 planes. The raid, Sept. 23, (U. S. time) cost the attackers 10.planes and eight airmen, Adm. Chester W. Mimita announced last night.
This was the seventh day of sweeping raids over the invasion threatened islands since Sept.8 by the air arm of Adm. -William Halsey's Third fleet. Altogether they have wiped out 1,014 Nipponese planes and sunk or damaged 360 surface craft. This mark surpasses most monthly totals for the entire Pacific.
Jap Planes Shot Down
Only seven interceptors dared oppose the raiders as they wrecked shipping, defensive installations and "thoroughly bombed and strafed" airfields on Cebu, Leyte, Negros, Mactan and southern Luzon islands.
All seven were shot down. The meager opposition illustrated Nimitz' statement that the enemy's aid defense had been broken. Tokyo radio said replacements have since been flown in.