Sept 28, 1944; British Airborne Troops Evacuat Arnhem

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1944:

Charleston, West Virginia, Thursday Morning, September 28, 1944

2d Army Pounds

Maas River Line

Enemy Begins Withdrawal

From Netherlands

(From Wire Dispatches)

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS,

AEF, Sept. 28.—(Thursday)—

Two thousand weary survivors of an 8,000-man British airborne division have withdrawn to the south bank of the Neder Rhine near Arnhem after a valorous nine-day stand that enabled the main Allied forces to mount an offensive which hammered early today to the Maas river barrier before Germany's Rhur.

An intended flanking d r i v e around the Siegfried Line's northern anchor via Arnhem came to an unsuccessful end, but the British 2d army, having gained

time through the heroic sacrifice! of the "Red Devil" paratroops, widened two footholds on the Maas for a frontal smash at the upper section of the Westwall.

Squeeze Trapped Foe

Simultaneously, the 2d army and the Canadian 1st army, effecting junction with each other, pushed west from the solid Eindhoven-Nijmegen corridor in Holland and north from the Turnhout-Antwerp canal to tighten a pocket squeezing more than 100,000 German troops in the western Netherlands.

Faced with approaching disaster, these Nazi forces were revealed in a late front dispatch from Nijimegen to be trying to organize "mass retreat," with large-scale enemy withdrawals already underway toward the north German plain through a precarious 25-mile avenue between Arnhem and the Zuider Zee.

Aegean Landings   

Set Balkan Trap!   

Albanian-Dalmatian Coast

Is Invaded by Allies

ROME, Sept. 27.—wi—

In a move to trap large German forces in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean, Allied seaborne and air-borne troops have landed in Albania and on the islands off Yugoslavia, the Allied command announced today.

The landings squeezed some 200.000 Germans in Hitler's crumbling Balkan flank between the Russians on the northeast and the Allies on the coast. In the interior Partisan forces hacked away at enemy units attempting to flee to the Reich over tortuous mountain passes.

A Balkan air force communique said "sea-borne and air-borne troops of the land forces o[ the Adriatic arc at present operating on a wide front in Adriatic country, which includes Albania and the islands off Yugoslavia."

B e r l i n acknowledged landings were made "from Albania along the whole Dalmatian coast," which lie; to the north in Yugoslavia, and declared the action "is still going on.' "British and United States forces

Nazis Fight Bitterly

'Russians Cross

Border at Arad

Clean-Up Drive in Baltic

Continues Unchecked

Continues Unchecked Russians drew their ring tighter around Riga today, capturing more than 200 communities 25 to 37 miles north, northeast and

southeast of the Latvian capital, but were silent on German accounts that credited them with a ten-mile penetration of Hungary from the Arad area of Romania.

Announcing the success in' Latvia and also capture of the island of Vorrnsi. off the Estonian mainland in the continuing cleanup of t h a t state, the midnight Moscow communique mentioned only one other from, in southern Poland. :. where another half-dozen or so mountain villages were taken on the fringe:' of the Czechoslovak border.