RESISTANCE IN NAPLES AREA

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24052, 14 September 1943, Page 5

RESISTANCE IN NAPLES AREA

“ENEMY THROWING IN EVERYTHING”

MANY AIR BATTLES NEAR SALERNO

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, Sept. 12. A correspondent in Algiers says that the fight for Naples is raging with unabated fury. Thousands of Allied cargo ships and naval landing craft are pouring reinforcements and supplies to the beaches in the Salerno area. “The enemy is throwing against us everything he can get into the Naples area, just as he has from the moment our armada began unloading early on Thursday,” adds the correspondent. “He is smashing ferociously against our ground troops with every available fighter and bomber.” . Reuter’s correspondent in Algiers says that Allied and German airmen fought desperate air battles almost continuously yesterday over the Salerno area. The Germans used about 120 aeroplanes, nine of which were shot down.

“When the Germans fled to Salerno to avoid being trapped they tried to secure the road to Naples where it passes through a mountain gorge,” reports a press correspondent writing from the front yesterday, ‘‘But, by this time Allied troops with mortars and light anti-tank guns had entrenched themselves on either side of the road. They withstood German attacks until about noon yesterday ; when a heavier attack by 500 Germans and 20 tanks succeeded in pushing them off the eastern side of the road. We immediately counter-attacked and Won the height again. "In the air the Germans have been active. At night they have made the beaches and ships the main targets, and in the moonlight they were constantly overhead. They are benefiting at the moment from the Allies’ lack of airfields within satisfactory fighter range. Possession of landing grounds could quickly alter the picture. Swift German Action the picture probably would if it had not been for the j r ‘ptional speed with which the GerV«ans'acted as soon as the armistice was announced. In the few hours between the announcement and the landings the Germans had ousted the Italians from the coast defences, manned points along them with Germans, and German sappers quickly and thoroughly mined the beaches and roads.”

“If the Germans in the Naples area lo on fighting as hard as they are doing now, their expulsion from Italy way take some time,” reports a British correspondent near Salerno. “They have here all the conditions which made defence easy in Tunisia and Sicily. The stretch of coast and mountains is, in fact, rather easier to defend. There is less room for an army to spread dut than on the coast of Sicily. Enormous quantities of heavy equipment have been driven from the Reaches up very narrow, one-track, sandy lanes between orchards and tomato vines. Even when you push further into the Sele Plain bordering Gulf of Salerno the country does open out.

“The Germans are using every rise ?f ground to delay us. They do not have to pull back to the higher mountains which ring this plain. If they md that it might be easier, to shell off these bare, rocky slopes, j Before you come to the steeper hills mere is a gradually rising series of small foothills. As the Germans fall hack they can place 88-millimetre guns, machine-guns,-and mortars behind each ftf foothills in turn. There has

to be a set battle fpr each fresh position instead of a smooth advance. Allied Fighter Cover

“It should be remembered that our landing in the Gulf of Salerno was by all military rules one of the boldest landings ever made. We deliberately chose to land beyond the normal range of fighter aircraft against an enemy who was known to have strong fighter and bomber forces on many airfields within easy reach. Over this battlefield, as the enemy well knows, Spitfires from Sicily can stay only about 20 minutes. We should have been bombed and strafed off the beaches and harried unmercilessly from the air but, apart from a few uncomfortable moments each day and night, nothing of the sort happened. The reason may be that the day and night offensive against railways and airfields, which went on weeks before the invasion, has disorganised the Luftwaffe.

“All the same, this campaign should not be expected to move fast until we have several airfields in working order. To get them our infantry will have to fight the hard, uphill way of Tunisia and Sicily.” The correspondent adds that the invaders did not meet with resentment from the Italians, some even making the innocent suggestion that they were now almost allies. There were a few who resisted at first, not having heard of the armistice, and there may* have been some who would have liked to go on fighting. The desire of the majority was to go back to their homes and resume family life, but there may be a small, fretful minority.