The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-05-31

toI shoWdoWn battle on the broa( Still lay covered with snow on Christ
 On Oct. II It. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges U. s. 1st Army closed a vlse around Aachen. Hodges gave Ihe German commander his choice oetWeen surrender and complete oestructlon. The Germans an- sWered by attempting to break through American lines surround mg the embattled garrison which had turned the railroad junction GUY into 8 hedgehog barrier, ham, perlng American advances on the Cologne plains.
 The defense of Aachen, like that ot Metz, to the south, and the Shores of the Schelde Estuary guarding the approaches to Ant werp in the north, doomed thou sands of German expendables, as part or the German general staff's plan to buy time.
 Aachen Surrenders
 By Oct. 12 Aachen was 85 per cent ruined by air raids and artil- lery oombardment. Lean, deter mlned veterans fought their way into the ruined town, first German city entered by Allied forces. Aachen had become a macabre caricattue of a modern city. Five counter-attacks on Crucifix Hill taled to break the Allied grip, and Aachen surrendered.
 In the Mouse river bend, the British 2d Army was advancing it's right flank. The Canadian 1st Strove for the big strategic prize, the Schelde river estuary, Ameri- can 7th and French 1st Armies fought for passage through the 5ensely wooded Vosges mountains.
 During October too, the driving Russian forces stood for the first time on German soil, at Eydtkau, East Prussia, hurling Nazi defend PTS back on 200-mile front. They lsolated the lower Balkans from Germany by advancing through he Carpathians more than half way across the Balkan peninsula. and cutting of 150,000 German troops on western Lithuania front by taking Riga, Latvian cap- tal.
 By the middle of October, the powerful Red offensive had taken from Germany her last satellite ally in Europe. Hungary had asked tor an armistice. Belgrade and Debrecen, Hungary's third city, had been liberated, and Russians were advancing into fighting at Budapest on the Danube. Civil war ragged within Hungary as fascists sought to obtain control.
 Hitler Calls Men 16 to 60
 The Russian drive spread out like the fingers on a gigantic hand, reaching for Norway, and liberat- ing the important port city. Kirk enes, on the Parents Sea, near the northern Finland border.
 A hard-pressed German govern ment, with Heinrich Himmler in charge, by Hitlers order, ordered all men between 16 and 50 for a last-ditch defense of the Reich. PCOpEN Id14SC VI do Sklll = ened by Himmler's Schutz Staffel (SS) guard.
 The German people needed more than Himmler's form of morale building. They had lost their last battleship, the Tirpitz, sunk in it's hiding place of Norway, and their military hero, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. the Desert Fox Berlin announced that he had died from injuries received in an automobile accident. Allies were certain that his car was strafed by an American pilot and the general fatally wounded
 Reich leaders gave their people shot in the arm with a new se- cret weapon, V-2. The huge rocket weapon, travelling more than 1000 miles per hour, with range of 1000 to 5000 miles, crashed in- discriminatory over London and southern England. destroying with It's one-ton explosive charge homes, schools and people. The se- cret weapon, which resembled an alrplane, was between 30 and 50 feet long and equipped with tail fins. Because it travelled faster than sound and descended with sudden swoosh, it was more fright ening than the smaller robot bomb, Vi, which hit it's targets while moving only 300 miles per hour and was more easily inter cepted.
 Greece Liberated
 Despite desperate Nad secret weapons and equally desperate threats, Allied forces moved for ward. Only in Italy were Allied armies begged down, as they fought along the muddy, bloody banks of the Pc river. See-Saw fighting resulted in small gains