CURRENT EVENTS OCTBER 26, 1943;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY OCTOBER 26, 1943:

The last remaining vestiges of a German defense line along the lower Dnieper collapsed last night with the
Russian capture of Dnepropetrovsk, in the northeast corner of the Dnieper Bend, and Dnieprozerzhinsk, 20 miles to the west.    (see map on Current Events reported October 25)

Fifth Army spearheads seized the important junction of Sparanise' on the road .from Naples to Rome yesterday as advance guards of Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army pushed forward along the Adriatic flank to within four miles of coastal Vasto.

Fifth Army spearheads seized the important junction of Sparanise' on the road .from Naples to Rome yesterday as advance guards of Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army pushed forward along the Adriatic flank to within four miles of coastal Vasto.

The two-fisted, gun-toting commander of the American Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., known affectionately to his men as "Old Blood and Guts," was revealed yesterday as a poet.
A poem that the editors said would take its place "with the world's great war literature" was published in the current issue of the Women's Home Companion.

God of Battles

From pride and foolish confidence.
From every weakening creed.
From the dread fear of fearing
Protect us. Lord, and lead.
Great God. who through the ages
Hast braced the bloodstained hand,
As Saturn, Jove or Woden
Hast led our warrior band.
Again we seek Thy counsel,
But not in cringing guise.
We whine not for Thy mercy—
To slay: God make us wise.
For slaves who shun the issue
We do not ask Thy aid.
To Thee we trust our spirits,
Our bodies unafraid.
From doubt and fearsome 'boding,
Still Thou our spirits guard,
Make strong our souls to conquer.
Give us the victory, Lord.

               THE STARS AND STRIPES
               Daily Newspaper of U.S. Armed Forces in the European Theater of Operations
               New York, N.Y.—London, England                           Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1943


        Russians Recapture Dnepropetrovsk

Site of Huge
Dam Back inSoviet Hands
Reds Bypass Krivoi Rog;
Nazi Lines Crumble as
Big Trap Develops
The last remaining vestiges of a German defense line along the lower Dnieper collapsed last night with the
Russian capture of Dnepropetrovsk, in the northeast corner of the Dnieper Bend, and Dnieprozerzhinsk, 20 miles to the west.
An order of the day from Marshal Josef Stalin announced this fresh triumph in the great Russian offensive
in the south. The victory was to be hailed in Moscow by 20 salvos from 224 guns, the second such celebration to be witnessed by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden.
Dnepropetrovsk is the site of the great Dnepropetrovsk dam, blown up by the Russians as part of their "scorched-earth" policy in the retreat before the German Army in 1942. In Krivoi Rog Suburbs.
Announcement of the twin victory came after earlier dispatches revealed that Red Army columns had stormed their way into Krivoi Rog, vital communications and steel center southwest of Kremenchug within the Dnieper Bend.
Other Soviet forces had bypassed the city to the west and reached a point less than ten miles from the important railway running from Znamenka to Nikolaev. Black Sea base in the southwest.
While this northern jaw of a developing pincer movement closed down on vast German forces within the loop of the river, a southern arm was pressing on relentlessly after cracking the entire German line from Zaporozhe to Melitopol. These Red Army hordes evidently were driving straight west toward the lower stretches of the Dnieper. Between these two surging Russian hordes German armies were rapidly being crunched into a trap. Their escape gap west has narrowed to 50 miles. "
                                                      Drive On From MelitopoL,
Further increasing the Nazi-fieril was a smash west by Red Army forces pushing on across the'Nogaisk steppe after clearing Melitopol. In addition to the extra outflanki/ig threat posed by this drive to the Germans enclosed within the Dnieper Bend was the increasing peril it meant for Nazis in the Crimea.

Allies Seize
Junction On
Rome Road
Front Pushed Forward
Three Miles; Eighth
Nearing Vasto
Fifth Army spearheads seized the important junction of Sparanise' on the road .from Naples to Rome yesterday as advance guards of Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army pushed forward along the Adriatic flank to within four miles of coastal Vasto.
Both armies advanced about three miles, but their gains were not so important as the fact that the drives put
. them in position to launch a combined push northward. .Capture of Sparanise, 13 miles inland and eight miles north of Capua, gave the Americans command of an important rail and road junction where the road to
Rome splits into two routes, one swinging along the coastal plain and the other running 30 or 40 miles inland through two river valleys.
                                                          May Force Withdrawal
Its loss was expected to force the Germans to execute a new withdrawal north of the Volturno to avoid outflanking. The town's importance to the enemy was shown by, four bloody counter-attacks.

Austria Bombed from South;
Berlin Says It's Shuttle Raid
Fifth Army spearheads seized the important junction of Sparanise' on the road .from Naples to Rome yesterday as advance guards of Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army pushed forward along the Adriatic flank to within four miles of coastal Vasto.
Berlin radio said large formations of American four-engined bombers struck numerous targets throughout southern Europe and then flew on to Britain, but there was no confirmation of this from Allied sources. USAAF headquarters in London refused to confirm nor deny the story, and it might be a typical Nazi "fishing" expedition.
Berlin also said that the bombers had flown from bases in Italy, but the two sentence mention of the operation in the Allied communique did not specify whether the planes were based in Italy or in Northwest Africa. If they used Italian airdromes, the operation was the beginning of the eagerly awaited offensive on
German-held territory from newly-won fields in Italy.
The communique did not identify the targets, and said only that heavy clouds made observations of the results difficult. Nazi radio's story of the attacks, broadcast many hours before the Allied communique was announced, said that 300 U.S. bombers, escorted at the start by 200 fighters, had attacked unnamed places in Germany and Austria, causing "major damage" at one place.
DNB (German news agency) said bombs were dropped over a fairly large area between Vienna and the northern approaches to the Alps. The last big raid in the Vienna area was carried out against the Wiener Neustadt airplane factories Oct. 1 by Liberators based in Northwest Africa.

'Blood-and-Guts' Patton
Turns Out to Be Poet
NEW YORK, Oct. 24—
The two-fisted, gun-toting commander of the American Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., known affectionately to his men as "Old Blood and Guts," was revealed yesterday as a poet.
A poem that the editors said would take its place "with the world's great war literature" was published in the current issue of the Women's Home Companion.
The hitherto unpublished work was turned over to the magazine, its editors told the Associated Press, by Mrs. Patton, who has cherished it ever since the General wrote it. Mrs. Patton read two of her husband's
poems before the annual Authors' Club dinner in Boston last week. She declined to release the poems for publication, but said the subject-matter was of military nature.
Tide of the poem published in Women's Home Companion is "God of Battles." It follows:

From pride and foolish confidence.
From every weakening creed.
From the dread fear of fearing
Protect us. Lord, and lead.
Great God. who through the ages
Hast braced the bloodstained hand,
As Saturn, Jove or Woden
Hast led our warrior band.
Again we seek Thy counsel,
But not in cringing guise.
We whine not for Thy mercy—
To slay: God make us wise.
For slaves who shun the issue
We do not ask Thy aid.
To Thee we trust our spirits,
Our bodies unafraid.
From doubt and fearsome 'boding,
Still Thou our spirits guard,
Make strong our souls to conquer.
Give us the victory, Lord.