Newsmap. Monday, November 1, 1943 : week of October 21 to October 28, 216th week of the war, 98th week of U.S. participation Side: 1 of 2

                                
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1,1943

WEEK OF OCTOBER 21 TO OCTOBER 28

216th Week of the War -98th Week of U. S. Participation

Volume II No. 28

THE WAR FRONTS

The Nazi position in Southern Russia grew more critical
each day as the Red Army expanded its major
gains across the Dnepr that had skirted with a bridgehead between
Kremenchug and Dnepropetrovsk.
The latter town, inside the Northern bend of the Dnepr River, fell
before the Soviet offensive last week, as did its companion industrial city
of Dneprodzerzhinsk which lies 20 miles to the west.
Elaborate concrete pillboxes and blockhouses guarded the approaches
to both cities and thousands of German dead and vast quantities of enemy
materiel captured resulted from the successful storming of the positions.
The fall of Dnepropetrovsk, which formerly supplied one-third of all
Russia's cast iron, was predetermined by the successful crossing of the
Dnepr to the northwest of the city.
Farther south the sternly defended rail city of Melitopol fell after
an 11-day battle that included savage street fighting and cost the Nazis
an estimated 20,000 dead. Advances westward from this point, which
cut one of two rail lines to the Crimea, formed the lower jaw of a pincers
whose jaws were less than 100 miles apart and which threatened to close
on Nazis caught in the Dnepr bend.

The eighth week of the Italian campaign found the Allied
Fifth and Eighth Armies making small but steady advances
all along the line that ran across the spine of Italy from the Gulf of Gaeta
northwest to the Adriatic Sea.
On the west the Fifth Army had largely eliminated the Nazis from
the broad Volturno River Valley and the enemy fell back on strong positions
in the mountains providing him with excellent defensive terrain.
Improving weather permitted increased air support and our dive bombers
coordinated closely with infantry to blast out enemy strong points. The
enemy made repeated and violent counterattacks and our advances were
being made against enemy artillery fire directed from well-placed
positions.
Front dispatches described the battlefront as one front this week to a
greater extent than at any time since the first British landing at Reggio
Calabria. The line was now virtually perpendicular across the Italian
boot and the Fifth and Eighth Armies were encountering similar resistance
from a strongly emplaced enemy.
Our principal points along the line were along the roadways running
northwest through the mountains and the following towns in our hands
indicate the areas of contact. On the west coast the U. S. and British
Fifth Army held positions about three miles north of the Volturno River
inland to the Via Appia where the line moved northward to put Francolise
in our hands. From there northeast we held Raviscanina. The
British Eighth Army held Bojano, Spineto, Petrella, Lupara, and Palata
towards the Adriatic coast and held a bridgehead across the mouth of
the Trigno River, on the coast.

Signal Corps Photo
Tricky spiral nose and all, this wreck of what appears to
have been an Me-109 rests on the beach near Paestum,
Italy, after U. S. Army antiaircraft put the finger on it.

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Allied soldiers quickly come to the aid of victims of the
explosion of a Nazi delayed action land mine in the
Naples postoffice. Injured man at right is still stunned.

Lightning P-38 fighters, with longer range than the P-47 Thunderbolts,
were disclosed to be in operation as escorts for our bombers from
England. This was generally assumed to prelude even deeper penetration
of German industrial areas by American daylight heavyweights.
The RAF struck its first major blow at Leipzig, the third most important
Nazi industrial center and key rail junction for supplying the Germans
on the Russian front. Leipzig, a city of 700,000 lies almost on the
Czech border, 100 miles southwest of Berlin.
From Mediterranean bases, U. S. bombers hit targets in Austria and
ranged out to hit strategic enemy rail and airfield positions in Yugoslavia.
German raiders were carrying out a series of nightly attacks against
the London area, apparently for propaganda purposes. The raids were
light and of short duration.

::I  .       An Allied communique from Middle East
Headquarters revealed that our land patrols
on the Island of Kos had been withdrawn after completing their task
there. A German landing was made on the island early this month. RAF
bombers carried out attacks on air facilities at Crete and on the Island
of Melos.

Japanese ground troops who
had been forced inland to
Satelberg when Australians converged on the Huon Peninsula base at
Finschafen, made a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to break through
to the coast. This remnant of the enemy defense on Northeast New
Guinea had apparently been reinforcd by several thousand Jap troops
who joined them across tortuous mountain trails from the northwest.
In the heaviest raid yet made in New Guinea a heavy force of Liberators
dropped 221 tons of bombs which virtually levelled the enemyoccupied
area.

Another crushing blow on the enemy's reinforced main base at Rabaul
destroyed 123 more Jap planes bringing the total destroyed there in four
raids to over 300.
In the Northern Solomons the main Japanese airfields in the Bougainville
Island area were temporarily knocked out of action by heavy
Allied attacks.
The British Admiralty disclosed that a British aircraft carrier had
participated with the U. S. Pacific Fleet in combat operations against the
Japs. The 23,000-ton Victorieus served several months in the Coral
Sea, Southwest and Mid-Pacific areas and part of the time had an Ameriv>
111I I ,| ] 7 In only 25 minutes of fighting on the Italian
front this crack six-man crew and their tank
destroyer "Jinx" knocked out five Nazi Mark IV tanks,
one ammunition truck, one armored half-track and blasted
one pill box and a house harboring German troops. Each

Sig-n Corp R, dio TclIphOto
man was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. They are:
Sgt. R. G. Murphy, of Jacksonville, Fla.; Sgt. E. A. Yost,
of Gorham, Kansas; T/5 Alvin B. Q. Johnson, of Snyder,
Texas; Pfc. Joseph R. O'Bryan, of New Haven, Ky.; Pvts.
Clyde T. and Claude H. Stokes, McAlester, Okla. twins.

I  Allied bombers struck heavily at Hitler's
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week. From bases in England heavy bomber formations of the RAF flew
through icing conditions to hit Kassel, the Nazi arms and engineering
city, 70 miles east of the Ruhr, dropping more than 1500 tons of explosives
and incendiaries. British losses from this, another attack on Frankfurt-on-the-Main,
and attacks including Cologne were 44 bombers and
one fighter.

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As soon as the Nazis were driven from the Kuban Valley
of the Caucasus, Russian harvesters moved in to provide
needed wheat. A quadruple machine gun gives protection.

Berlin issued this photo of Nazis looking across the Dnepr
from Kiev, Sept., 1941. Current Nazi view is less pleasant.
Soviets hold bridgeheads north and south of the city.

Taken from an Axis magazine, this photo is described as
that of a Nazi rear guard fighting in a suburb of Dnepropetrovsk.
Soviets recaptured the city last week.

i1. :;  .:  .:  , ;W                 hile
our paratroops have seen action on the fighting fronts in
Tunisia, Sicily and Italy as well as in the Southwest Pacific,
few good photos of such operations have been available,

mainly because most of these operations were carried out in
darkness. Our daylight landing in the Markham Valley,
Sept. 7, near what was then the enemy base at Lae, provided
this remarkable view of the first extensive use of paratroops
in the Pacific. Jumping behind a protective smokescreen
put down by light Boston bombers, these soldiers
bailed out from a lower altitude than ever before attempted
in battle. Study of the photo shows troops in every stage

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