COMPARATIVE LULL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 63, Issue 172, 3 May 1943, Page 3

COMPARATIVE LULL

ALL BUT MEDJEZ EL BAB AREA.

AMERICANS CAPTURE A HILL.

ADVANCE BY EIGHTH ARMY

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec. 12 noon.) LONDON, May 2. Except in the Medjez el Bab area,

General von Arnim appears to have called off ferocious Axis counter-attacks against General Sir Harold Alexander’s steel spearheads, which, yard after hard-won yard, continue shortening the Tunisian arc. Reports from Algiers indicate that a comparative lull developed in the last 24 hours, in which fighting was mostly concentrated on the American front in the north. American and French troops are grimly attacking Axis positions at Jebel Hazamat, north-west of Mateur, between the sea and the Medjerda

River. The Allies have not yet wholly captured this hill whei'e they are encountering fierce resistance from scattered, well-placed defence pockets. The Algiers radio, reporting the Americans’ capture of another hill position, said they are now 12 miles from Mateur..

Reuter’s correspondent at Allied headquarters says that the American

2nd Corps, after the capture of Jebel Taihent, .seized Hill 476, eight miles north of Medjez el Bab. The British operating in the Medjez el Bab area spent yesterday improving their positions without much interference from the Germans, who are resting after four days’ extensive counterattacks. To-day, however, the British Ist Army beat off yet another !i°a' r y counter-attack in the Medjez cl Cab sector.

The Algiers radio stated that *he British repelled the Axis forces after heavy hand-to-hand “lighting. The French African Corps continues mopping up in the northern Tunisian coastal sector and has now passed Mersa Douiba, 20 miles west of Zizerta. The British United Press correspondent at Algiers says that the Bth Army again holds every inch the Axis forces retook in the last few days. General Sir Bernard Montgomery lias now advanced 5| miles north of Enfidaville, also 10 miles north-east along the coast.

The attack which the Bth Army repulsed north of Enfidaville, mentioned the Algiers communique, was in the hills where the Axis troops infiltrated ground they had lost. The Btli Army cleared out the infiltration and is now in complete control of the area. The Allied air forces are continually tightening the air blockade, throwing more and more planes t n-a> the task of cutting off communications with Correspondents at the front say that the Germans arc fighting in the Stalingrad manner. They are apparently prepared to make big sacrifices in men and material. A military writer in the Sunday times” says that reinforcements are still reaching the Axis forces in Tunisia, but the Germans’ counter-attacks are contributing to their own exhaus-

tion. A communique issued at Allied headquai'ters in North Africa to-day reports local successes in the Medjez el Bab sector. On Friday Allied forces repulsed an enemy assault. Six hundred German prisoners -aero taken in another engagement. In spite of bad weather enemy bases on the coast of Tunisia were attacked by Allied aircraft, while Spitfires shot down eight enemy planes. Uphill Fighting. Explaining why the Bth Army, after advancing almost 200 miles, is now making such heavy weather of the last 40, tihe correspondent of the “Daily Mail” with the Bth Army states: “The mountains give the enemy every con- • eoivable advantage. For almost three years the Bth Army has been operating on the basis of mobility and speed, but, here mobility is useless and speed impossible. The tanks cannot move, so the fact that the Germans have fewer tanks ceases to matter. German observation posts sit on peaks and spy dow n on us. We are always fighting uphill, and they are fighting downhill. “Here is what happened at two key points in these hills. Fust, at a long humpy mountain called Garci, which controls several valleys running to the sea, the Indians battled half-way into the Garci defences, and then came suddenly to a precipice that they could not climb. The precipice was invisible from the plain, and there was no hint about it on the maps, but thcie it vas # a sheer, vertical cliff. “These Indians, born and bred in some of the world’s most rugged mountains. normally scale anything, and they might possibly have been able to climb the precipice if it had not been for the Germans dropping grenades. ; The Indians rigged up .a radio, and within four minutes about 100 guns were directed* with mariellous accuracy on to the Germans, i\ho ueie assembling for a counter-attack. The Indians beat off four counter-attacks, but they could not advance. “Something similar happened at Tnkrouna. I stood under Takrouna’s frowning cliffs and decided, even without the shellfire which was going on, that 1 would not want to climb it. The correspondent then described how the little band of Maoris captured Takrouna. and added: “That is the sort of fighting it is here. Each liill becomes a major operation, ft means savage, close-quarter fighting. Often we gained 1(10 miles of desert at less cost than 100 yards here. ’ The Rome radio stated that only an . Italian chaplain, a sergeant, and a handful of soldiers reached the Axis lines after tlie battle for Takrouna. “Our troops were ordered to resist to the death,” it. stated. “The fighting > was of unparalleled violence. When the enemy finally entered our positions he found only dead and wounded.”