Current Events August 7, 1943;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, AUGUST 7, 1943:

U.S. Troops in Sicily have seized Troina, threatening to split Nazi forces in half, and

British units squeezing up from the southwest have taken Biancavilla

from Italians running up the white flag of surrender, headquarters and

field reports announced Saturday.

Rising fears approaching a "state of panic" that Berlin will be the next target for massed Allied air raids, and serious strikes by German peace demonstrators were reported today to have dealt new blows to Nazi morale.

Two Russian army groups which outflanked Kharkov from the north In a swift drive through Belgorod, were threatening the rear of the German positions

around the third largest city In the Soviet Union today, front line dispatches said.

—Vulnerable spots where the next blows against the Japanese may fall, now that Munda is ours, felt the fiery Impact of America's growing air might in the Pacific during raids reported In today's communique from Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

               The Portsmouth Herald

                       PORTSMOUTH, N. H., SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 7, 1943

SAVAGE BATTLE ENDS IN YANK

CAPTURE OF TROINA, KEY FORT

Americans Occupy

Ustica, Tiny Isle

North of Palermo

Allied Headquarters in North Africa, Aug. 7—

(AP)—Troina, key mountain position in the hills protecting the Germans' Mt. Etna flank, has been captured by American soldiers after one of the most savage battles of the Sicilian campaign, Allied Headquarters announced today.

American forces also occupied the island of Ustica, in the Tyrrhenian sea 40 miles north, of Palermo, Sicily, headquarters reported. Allied air and sea forces kept up their powerful support of the land drive in Sicily. Warships again pounded the east coast at Taormna. and Allied planes blasted Naples in a new raid.

American naval and military forces took about 100 Italian soldiers and sailors prisoner at Ustica, and found 216 Italian civil prisoners on the island. Ustica has been used by the

Fascists as a penal settlement.

All Germans fled Ustica July 11, the Italians said. The civil population of the tiny patch of volcanic land, two miles long and a mile wide, consists of about 1,100 persons.

Many were destitute and without water, many ill of malaria.

Italian Version

Today's I t a l i a n communique, broadcast from Rome and recorded by the Associated Press, said violent fighting continued in the central sector of Sicily and that "new strong

enemy attacks launched with great support of artillery and armor were withstood by Axis troops."

The communique said Allied air forces struck at Salerno south of Naples and Cosenza on the Italian mainland, and that Axis air forces set a steamer afire and hit a heavy

cruiser and another merchantman in attacks off the north coast of Sicily.

Berlin in Panic;

Threat of Raids

Shivers Morale

London, Aug. 7 (AP)—

Rising fears approaching a "state of panic" that Berlin will be the next target for massed Allied air raids, and serious strikes by German peace demonstrators were reported today to have dealt new blows to Nazi morale.

Reuters, the British news service, quoted arrivals in Zurich from Berlin as saying that the capital's authorities were at their "wits end to control a mass stampede from the city." Many arrests have been made among refugees from bombbattered Hamburg, Reuters said, to prevent their spreading stories of fantastic casualties in that north port city.

RAF Drops Leaflets

Berliners' fears that their city will be singled oat for devastation when autumn nights make longer Allied raids possible were reported heightened also, Swedish dispatches said when the RAF showered leaflets over the capital, warning that Berlin would serve as a sequel to the fate of Hamburg, which has become the world's most battered city.

Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels has admitted a partial evacuation of Berlin but he said the list was restricted to nonessential residents.

Reuters also quoted also quoted reports heard in Istanbul that the Germans were preparing to proclaim Berlin an open city and remove the ministries

and other services to Dresden, Leipzig, Munich and Prague.

Soviets

Threaten

Kharkov

Moscow, Aug. 7 (AP)

Two Russian army groups which outflanked Kharkov from the north In a swift drive through Belgorod, were threatening the rear of the German positions

around the third largest city In the Soviet Union today, front line dispatches said.

Descending the valley by way of the upper river, the Russians raced through Zolochev, in little more than 20 miles northwest of Kharkov in full flank attack similar to the action farther north which drove the Germans from Orel and opened the way for a simultaneous push toward Bryansk. Both Kharkov and Biyimsk. 275 miles to the northwest, were threatened by the broad advance.

Air Force

Hits Out

At Japs

Allied Headquarters in the

Southwest Pacific, AUG. 7 (AP)

—Vulnerable spots where the next blows against the Japanese may fall, now that Munda is ours, felt the fiery Impact of America's growing air might in the Pacific during raids reported In today's communique from Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Our fighters whipped a numerically superior enemy in an air battle off southern Bougainville. That enemy air and 'shipping sector is the most formidable barrier still between us and Japan's mighty fortress of Rabaul, New Britain.

Our bombers "in all categories with a fighter escort"—a recurring phrase in Pacific reports which yet is new enough to excite the emotions—blasted Rekata bay, a floatplane base, with 65 tons of explosives.

It is on Santa Isabel island, northeast of New Georgia, flanking the line of advance and supply from Guadalcanal to Munda. Its elimination is vital.