ALLIES RACING TO TRAP ROUTED HUNS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 95, 23 April 1945, Page 6

ALLIES RACING TO TRAP ROUTED HUNS

PO VALLEY DRIVES All-Out Effort To Round Up Enemy N.Z.P.A. and British Wireless Rec. 1.30 p.m. LONDON, April 22. Armoured and infantry columns of the Fifth and Eighth Armies in the Po Valley are relentlessly driving on towards the Po River, states a late night communique from Allied Headquarters in Italy. Fifth Army troops have forced crossings of the Secchia and Panaro Rivers, and other Fifth Army troops are closing in on the Modena. The Eighth Army is within two miles of Ferrara. A race is on between the routed Germans and the Allied armies converging to round them up before they can cross the mile-wide Po River, states tne Daily Express correspondent in Italy. Eighth Army forces closing in on Ferrara this afternoon were close enough to the Po River to know that for many Germans the race had been already lost. Welshmen encountered a German unit composed of elite Storm Troopers and prepared for a stiff fight, but immediately saw a white flag waved. Then some men in the German unit tried to check the deserters. The Welshmen looked on amazed as the Germans fought it out among themselves. The deserters kept up a running fight until 20 odd reached our lines. Our troops have barely paused since the taking of Bologna and the Germans are now in full retreat in columns sometimes a mile long. Their rearguards are fighting hard, but cannot escape from our fighters and fighter-bombers. A security silence now covers the movements of the Fifth Army. Reuters correspondent at Italian headquarters says that forward elements might be past Modena. Allied airmen report long columns of German transport and marching troops jamming the roads northward as the Germans strive to get back remnants of their beaten armies beyond the Po River.