GAIN ON ADRIATIC

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 252, 24 October 1944, Page 5

GAIN ON ADRIATIC

ALLIES TAKE CERVIA

Troops Advance On Foot Over Marshy Country

N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, Oct. 23. Eighth Army troops captured Cervia in a five-mile advance across marshy country, reports Reuters correspondent. Vervia is on the main highway from Rimini to Ferrara, Padua and North-eastern Italy.

To-day's communique from Italy says that heavy rain has again hampered large-scale operations. Recent gains on the Fifth Army front have still further been consolidated and some local improvements in the forward positions made. The Eighth Army has enlarged its bridgehead over the Savio River, north of Cesena, against stiff enemy opposition. Our troops in the mountainous sector crossed the Rabbi River in the vicinity of Strada and progressed into the high ground immediately beyond. Only One Casualty Eighth Army tank men, chasing the Germans on foot when the tanks could not go any further through the swamps, took Cervia, says Reuters correspondent at Allied Headquarters in Italy. Their entry was like the liberation of some Greek town. Thera was only one casualty—someone looking for billets across the canal was shot by a sniper.

Cervia escaped almost without damage, but the Germans had dismantled the great radio station. They had hardly got over the canal before Cervia's citizens spread tables in the streets and laid out fruits, wines and chicken with which to greet the Allied troops.

The New Zealanders west of the salt pans along the coast clashed with German paratroopers who are still on the SaVio River.

Fifth Army troops south of Bologna, although contending with roads that had been churned into muddy morasses, further improved their positions nine miles south of the city. A battalion commander at the front line said: "The Germans are just about matching us round for round." He estimated that in the past few. days mortar fire had increased 25-fold ~and artillery tenfold.