FAR EAST WAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 October 1944, Page 6

FAR EAST WAR

CHINESE GAINS. CHUNGKING, Oct. 23. The Chinese have scored appreciable gains in a counter-offensive 21 miles north of Kweilin. Counterblows on the West River front have also achieved considerable success. Marshal Chiang Kai-Shek has launched a movement for voluntary enlistment of 100,000 of China s educated youth. Declaring one division thereof would be equivalent to raising China’s striking power by 10 ordinary divisions, he said the situation in China was even more serious than on the eve of the 1911 Revolution. AERIAL ATTACKS. CHUNGKING, October 22. “The 14th Air Force has carried out widespread raids west of the river area on the Kwangtung and Kwangsi borders of French IndoChina and in Siam,” says General Stilwell’s communique. Enemy troop concentrations, barges, locomotives, and steamers were destroyed. Several villages were left in flames. CHUNGKING, October 23. The 14th Air Force, supporting Chinese ground forces, bombed nine Japanese occupied towns during the week-end, says General Stilwell s communique. United States planes attacked enemy troop concentrations over a wide area, killing nearly 609, and also bombed bridges on the Salween River. CANADIAN”SQUADRONS RUGBY, October 24. Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill, commanding the R.A.r. Transport Command, stated that two, all-Canadian squadrons, consisting pi air crews only, were being formed in India for transport action against the Japanese in Burma and elsewhere. PROGRESS IN BURMA.

LONDON, October 22. Both in the Chin Hills and m North Burma striking progress is announced by the South-east Asia Command. In the west British troops have occupied Haka, 50 miles south of Tiddim and 20 miles south of Falam, the loss of which, by the Japanese, was announced on Friday. On the railway in North Burma strong combat patrols have occupied Monyhin, more than 50 miles southwest of Mogaung and 40 miles north of Kathia, on the Upper Irrawaddy.

KANDY, October 23. “When strong patrols of the 36th Division entered Mohnyin, an important point in Burma nearly 90 miles south of Myitkyina, on October 19, there was little enemy opposition, writes a correspondent at South-east Asia Command Headquarters. . No Ja-oanese. were found in Mohnyin itself, although a machine-gun post on the railway line had to be liquidated. There vzere signs of bomb damage in the bazaar area, and railway sidings were cluttered with wrecked railway trucks, many of which had been loaded with British-built sugar refining machinery looted from a sugar factory in north Burma and addressed to the Nippon Sugar Factory presumably located somewhere in lower Burma.”