Friday, November 9, 2012

November 9, 1944;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1944:



ABILENE, TEXAS, THURSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 9, 1944—TWENTY PAGES

Patton Hurls More
GIs Into Metz Fight
By the Associated Press
Six U. S. Third army infantry divisions attacked today on the central sector of the 500-mile western front and the Germans, calling this a prelude to "the big offensive," also declared Americans in the Aachen sector were feverishly preparing for a new assault toward Cologne and the Rhineland.
Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., threw in two divisions north of the fortress city of Metz, and added another division to the three which attacked yesterday on a front north, south, and southeast of the city.
U. S. First army doughboys in the Hurtgen forest area of western Germany gained slowly in the area south of captured Vossenack. Southwest of Hurtgen they scored small advances and west of Schmidt, lost to a counterattack early, this week, the infantry mopped up enemy pockets.
More than 1,300 American heavy bombers pounded German front line positions in the Metz area to clear a path for the Third army. The bombers swept over the battlelines at levels lower than usual. Hundreds of divebombers struck the area both before and after the Flying Fortresses and Liberators attacked. Perhaps 500 fighters e s c o r t e d the heavies.
Berlin said Lt. Gen. George S. Patton had opened this attack in order to break through to the Saar river inside the German border, 30 miles to the northeast, but the direction of the drive suggested an attempt to cut behind Metz.
South of Metz the attackspread all the way from Cheminot, 10 miles south of Metz and four miles east of the Moselle, to the Chateau-Salins area where the Doughboys hammered a mile-deep wedge north of the Rhine-Marne canal at a point 2Q miles cast of Nancy and an equal distance west of Sarrebourg.
In Holland where the first snow of the season fell last night. Field Marshal Sir-Bernard L. Montgomery's 21st army group had seized all of Walcheren island-at the mouth of the Schelde except a tiny pocket around the villages of Buttinge and St. Laurens, two miles northwest of Mkldelburg. This pocket was isolated from the coast. South of the Maas (Meuse)
Poles had blown their way through the concrete defenses around the southern end of the Moerdijk bridge and were attacking an enemy
bridgehead 1 1-2 miles long and three-fourths of a mile deep.

Typhoon Slows
Yanks on Leyte
By The Associated Press
Weary, water - soaked American infantrymen, fought in a raging 100-mile an hour typhoon on –the slippery- ridges—of northern—Leyte island today against fresh Japanese " soldiers whose arrogant new commander boasted he would demand "unconditional surrender" of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Mud-soaked Yanks were temporally stopped in their Philippines  more by the blinding storm than by the reinforced enemy.
Tokyo radio admitted the Japanese, too, were halted in their southeast China drive through cold rain against "bitterly resisting" Chinese in hilly Kweilin. Chungking claimed the Nipponese, attacking from three demand "unconditional surrender" of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.  Mud-soaked Yanks were temporarily stopped in their Philippines invasion more by the
blinding storm than by the reinforced enemy.
Tokyo radio admitted the Japanese, too, were halted in their southeast China drive through cold rain against "bitterly resisting" Chinese in hilly Kweilin. Chungking claimed the Nipponese, attacking from three directions, .were using poison gas.
Only important land progress was reported from Burma where Indian and British troops captured P o r t White in two days of heavy fighting.
The Allies, who had advanced 15 miles from Tiddim, pushed on from Ft. White toward Kalemyo. 15 miles beyond.

COCKY JAP TO 'DEMAND'
MacARTHUR 'SURRENDER'
By the Associated Press
Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, new Japanese army commander In the
Philippines, is going to demand "unconditional surrender" from Gen. Douglas MacArthur the Tokyo radio announced today. Yamashita, who conquered the
Malay peninsula and captured Singapore early in the war, told Jose P. Laurel, puppet Philippine president, according to the broadcast, that the "only words" he spoke to the British commander during the negotiations for the surrender of Singapore were "All I want to hear from you is 'yes or no.' "I expect to put the same question to MacArthur." The broadcast was recorded by the Federal Communications commission.
In another broadcast Tokyo radio said a "mass rally" was held yesterday in Taihoku in northern Formosa as part of a Japanese campaign "to stir to action the 100,000.000 people for the .destruction of the United States and Britain."

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