September 30, 1944;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1944:

Men Back From Hell

At Arnhem Tell Story

 (See article at bottom of this post)

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.

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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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 grum ble 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.-------