LIKE WILDFIRE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 163, 12 July 1943, Page 3

LIKE WILDFIRE

ALLIED PROGRESS "Amazing" Only Description Of Absence Of Casualties N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 1 p.m. LONDON, July 11. According to an Algiers correspondent well-informed officers said that the Services had been prepared for the heaviest casualties, possibly up to 50 per cent. There was only one word with which to describe their feelings when everything went so smoothly and like a practice operation at manoeuvres—amazing Vivid' reports are being brought back by Allied pilots who have had a bird's-eye view of the fighting, also of the fires and the ceaseless shuttling of landing barges, as the airmen fly over the island attacking enemy targets or providing an air umbrella for the landing forces. An American lieutenant told a Reuter correspondent: "The Allied troops are swarming ashore, pushing into the hills and to the strategic roads in the south-eastern corner of the island. From'the way it is going the attack should progress like a forest fire." Another pilot said, "The boys already seem to have the situation well in hand inland. There are numerous fires:" ' A major said that hell seemed to be breaking.loose everywhere. There were fires all over the place, the beaches were jammed with men, and stuff was being unloaded, while a lieutenant said, "When our troops landed it looked like a million flies going up the beaches." Reuters correspondent continues that the news flashed from Allied headquarters - late this afternoon stated that Allied troops were pushing inland and threatening the important coast road which hugs the shoreline at the south-eastern corner of the island. Great significance is attached by the Americans to the successful action after the Gela landing in throwing back the first reported German panzer counterattack.

The only obstacles near the coast in this area are occasional ravines and scattered marshy areas which the .Americans, advancing on both sides of Gela, appear already to have passed. Reuters Moscow correspondent reports that the news of the Sicily landings spread like wildfire round the Soviet capital yesterday. It electrified the public whose predominant emotion was tense expectancy. The big query in everybody's mind is, "Will this really lead to Allied troops to successful large-scale intervention on the Continent and draw off big German forces from • the Russian front?"