October 4, 1944;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, OCTOBER 4, 1944:

October 4. 1944

Allies Grant

48-Hour Truce

At Dunkerque

LONDON. —(AP) —

American tanks rumbled today into a 2 1/2 mile breach torn in Germany's Siegfried line above Aachen and fanned out, bringing their guns and armor into support of a doughboy drive against backstop defenses guarding Cologne.

The first army smash had carried two miles into Germany itself, AP Correspondent Don Whitehead reported. Supreme headquarters earlier declared the drive had carried t h r e e miles beyond Ubach, a mile inside the frontier, to one of the enemy's main escape roads above Aachen.

Repulse Counter-Thrusts.

Infantrymen had, torn the broadening hole in t h e westwall defenses, beating off three German counter-blows.

U. S. Third army men 125 miles to the south fought as  b i t t e r l y  at Fort Driant, strongest of the ring of fortresses guarding Metz. Supreme headquarters announced c a p t u r e of the fort, but a later front dispatch said doughboys were clinging to surface positions in the fort, which i s honeycombed by tunnels, against increasingly furious enemy resistance.

Other units ≪captured Mazieres Les Matz, seven miles n o r t h of Metz.

U. S. Fliers Raid

Strategic Oil

Plant in Borneo

(By The Associated Press)

American warplanes crowded i n t o  t h e i r  only remaining a i r base i n southeast China maintained a constant attack on threatening J a p a n e s e columns today while U.S. bombers i n t h e Pacific, operating from a n ever-increasing number of fields, smashed "the most l u c r a t i v e strategic target in the

Pacific"—Borneo's Balikpapan oil

center.

The plight of American airmen d r i v e n from half a dozen evacuated fields to the Liuchow airdrome lent support to Tokyo propaganda broadcasts that "this

i s  t o  be a long war."

Other J a p a n e s e broadcasts told of the deaths of seven more Japanese rear admirals and indicated the Filipinos would not fight American invasion forces.

Tokyo has reported the death of 19 admirals within a month.

Fires Rage  on Borneo.

One Domei news agency radiocast quoted J o s e P . Laurel, puppet president of the Philippines, as refusing to allow "the remnant of F i l i p i n o manhood to be decimated on the battlefield and by disease or to take up arms and fight in this war."

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who is expected to lead t h e Philippine invasion, announced 60 of his army Liberators h a d scored telling

blows and left huge fires raging a t Balikpapan, J a p a n ' s "most important source of aviation gasoline and lubricating oils."