The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-01-04
The War On
 |MonyFronts
CNEA Telephoto)

slicing into pre-war Poland today and Allied bombers of the Mediter- ranean command took up the air of- fensive that has converted half the German capital into a smoking rub ble.
 In the Turin area of northern Italy, U. S. flying fortresses blasted an important ball-bearing factory and German-controlled rail yards. On the Adriatic front, British Eighth army troops pushed within five miles of Pescara, coastal anchor of the latest German defense line.
 Penetration of former Polish soil by onrushing Red Army Vanguards, driving across the frozen marshlands west of captured Olevsk was indicat- ed by Moscow reports reaching Lon- don and Stockholm and broadcast by the uncontrolled Paris radio.
 Scores of other inhabited localities were swept up by the advancing Russians along border area stretching 43 miles from Olevsk, off, ficial reports said, and 1t appeared likely that a sizeable Soviet army would be fighting in Poland within a matter of days.
 Last Enemy Defense
 The capture of Olevsk yesterday wiped out the last enemy defense point on the Kiev-Warsaw railroad east of the 1889 Polish frontier. Lib- eration of the entire Zhitomir region of the western Ukraine was virtually completed with occupation of Nov ograd- -Volynski, an important rail- way and highway junction IS miles east of Poland, by southern ele- mentS of Gen. Nicolat P. Vatutins 1st Ukranian army.
 Although the advance on Poland held greatest dramatic interest to- day, Vatutin'S snasheS around the southern and southwestern rims of the Dnieper Bend were of equal military importance. One force cap- tured the highway junction of Sopin and forged on southward toward the rail junction of Vinnitsa, only 9 miles away.
 Capture of Vinnitsa would open the way for a direct assault on Zhmerinka, on the OdeSsa-Lwow railroad, last practical escape route for thousands of German troops facing encirclement in the Dneiper bulge. Zhmerinka's fall would leave the Germans with a choice of death, capture or hazardous escape over in- ferior land and sea communications to Rumania.
 North of Nevel on the approaches to the Baltic states. the Russians re- ported capture of 70 more localities and seizure of two tanks, P guns and other booty.
 Air Offensive
 British two-engined mosquito bombers carried the Allied aerial offensive through the night with an attar" on western Germany, pre- sumably the industrial Ruhr or Rhineland, and scarcely had the Mosquit os returned to their bases when U. s. Marauder medium bomb- CTS tok up the atatck with an pull verizing assault on the French inva- sion coast.
 Meanwhile, well-informed sources placed the destruction of essential installations in battered Berlin at more than 40 percent, and 1t was estimated that the capitals popula- tion had been reduced from 5000, 900 to 2,O00, 900 by evacuations and cas- ualties resulting from the Allied raids.
 Hitler Reichschancellery was re- ported three-quarters demolished in Sunday nights l,OOO-ton assault, and rescue squads were digging frantically in the rubble Hitler him. self was reported out of the city.
 2,76O Killed
 The Stockholm newspaper Afton- tidningen reported that 2,760 per- sons were killed and 10000 left homeless by Sundays raid.
 The American raid on northern Italy saw the big U. s. Flying Fort resses scoring direct hits on the Vil- lar Perosa Ball-Bearing plant 25 miles southwest of Turin, source of one-eighth of Germany's ball-bear- ing supplies. Tn a supplementary raid, the fortresses temporarily knocked out the hub of the German controlled rail network in north western Italy.
 While Canadian units of the British Eighth Army ripped deeper into the German winter line along the Adriatic coast, American troops engaged in heavy patrol fighting along the Fifth Army mountain front across the Apennines, where action had been ahlted for three days by one of the worst winter storms of years.
 Strong American, British and French patrols clashed with Ger man reconnaissance parties, a Fifth Army NOTnFniininaia nniA