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Show II I I I I I t I I I I I I I I I I I I li-li.l I). FORWARD MARCH By n. S. Sims, Jr. t i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i. i i t i. THE RECORD OF 1943 REVEALS OUR ENEMIES RECOILING FROM AIR, LAND AND SET DEFEATS There is one way to understand the progress made in two wars that the nation is fighting and which will enter decisive stages during 1944. Turn the pages of time back a year and consider the war news that was being read by the people peo-ple of the United Nations as 1942 was fading and 1943 beginning. Compare the situation with the battlefronts today and there is only one sensible conclusion, regardless re-gardless of. prophecies and postmortems. post-mortems. Nazi Lose War In Russia . . . Here is what was happening in Russia about a year ago: The Germans were in Stalingrad, Stalin-grad, with a month to elapse before be-fore Gen. Paulus was to surrender; surren-der; Soviet offensives were underway under-way along the Middle Don aimed at Rostov and Red army soldiers in the Caucasus were taking the offensive . It is a long way from Stalingrad, Stalin-grad, Rostov and the Caucasus to the southern battleline in Russia Rus-sia today. In addition, the Russians Rus-sians have staged successful offensives of-fensives on other fronts, gaining ground every week except along the northern front where they were sixty miles from Latvia as 1943 began. War In Mediterranean Decisive ... ' What was the situation in the Mediterranean ? The sue cessful invasion of North Africa had been launched but the British Eighth army was fighting 170 miles from El Ag-helia Ag-helia and 225 miles from Tripoli. Our bombers were attacking Naples Na-ples and Taranto, in Italy, Tunis, Tun-is, Bizerte and Sfax. It requires no magician to understand un-derstand that the scene has changed around the Mediterran-v Mediterran-v . ean. Today an Anglo-American army holds a ninety-mile line across the Italian peninsula, driving driv-ing slowly toward Rome, some 80 miles away. The islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica have been reclaimed. There is hard fighting in the Bal-kins, Bal-kins, where Allied supplies are reaching the groups fighting the Germans .The Italian fleet is out of the way and Italian soldiers, i except in isolated instances, no longer fight for the Nazis. Japan Gives Ground In Pacific . . . What was underway in the Pacific a year ago? Australian troops were about to take Buna Mission on New Gui-relieved Gui-relieved by the army on Guadal-nea, Guadal-nea, the Marines had not yet been canal and the Japanese were fairly fair-ly active in Bombing Allied points. Since then, there has been slow progress on New Guinea but the advance up the Solomons has thrown the Japanese back upon New Britain, where Allied troops now occupy Arawe. Rabaul has been under heavy aerial attack and is said to be untenable as an important Japanese base. The Gilbert islands have been seized and American planes are daily attacking Japanese bases in the Marshall islands, which are likely to be attacked at an early date. The Japanese have lost large numbers of planes and many ships. They are finding it difficult to maintain air strength at points of contact or to send cargo shipments ship-ments with reinforcements and supplies to threatened places. Japan's Jap-an's shipping resources are already al-ready severely strained, suffering suffer-ing especially from the activity of our submarines. |