WAR IN SPAIN: Hand to Hand

For the first time last week Leftists holding the battered city of Teruel which they captured at Christmas time seemed to be in danger of losing it. Rightist troops using the springboard of a recent advance to the Alfambra River, drove on Teruel itself from three sides, then purportedly cut the last rutted Leftist supply road, isolating 10,000 Leftist soldiers. But the garrison resisted stubbornly. This week, as men of both sides fought hand to hand on Teruel’s outskirts. Rightists opened a bombardment of the city with their heaviest artillery, sent a bombing fleet over it. Thereupon the Leftists took to the air, staged one of the most exciting airplane battles in months. Sent down in flames by a Leftist machine gunner, General Franco’s officers admitted, was the Rightists’ ace flyer, Carlos de Haya. While Rightists claimed the capture or destruction of thousands of Leftist soldiers and began to hail the battle as the turning point of the war, a series of explosions suddenly shook the city’s outskirts. Leftists, answering the Rightists’ bombardment from above, were blowing up Rightists from below, were believed to have mined the entire city.