FIRST TO ENTER RIMINI

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24372, 26 September 1944, Page 4

FIRST TO ENTER RIMINI

♦ TWO NEW ZEALAND OFFICERS NEARLY ALL BUILDINGS IN RUINS (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) ADRIATIC COAST, September 21. It was cold and blustery, with rain showers not far away, when the first troops of the Bth Army entered Rimini at 8 o’clock this morning. They were two officers of a Wellington armoured regiment, Second-Lieutenants C. G. E. Cross, of Hamilton, and A. H. M. Maurice, of Feilding. From 2000 yards down the mam road, where they had left their tanks, they walked forward to make a reconnaissance, and found the enemy gone, from the main part of the town at least. They then brought their tanks forward, and the crews on entering the outer suburbs received a warm welcome from such of the townspeople as had remained during the heavy bombardment of the last week or more. Not long after the arrival of the New Zealanders, Greek infantrymen, with whom they were co-operating, entered the town by the coast road, and our forces were soon firmly established in the greater part of Rimini. Civilians reported that the Germans had, withdrawn from the town last night, but sporadic bursts of Spandau fire a few streets away indicated that they had still not entirely released their hold on the place. It was. a cheerless enough prospect that faced the people of Rimini when they emerged this morning from the cellars, and even sewers, in which they had been sheltering until the enemy was driven out, as the town has taken a severe battering from our artillery, as well as naval guns and bombers, and when the rain which had been threatening set in during the morning, it gave an even grimmer appearance to the ruined buildings and deserted streets, blocked here and there by piles of rubble. Many of the hotels have gaping holes in the walls, floors have caved in. trees which surrounded them have been shattered by flying shell splinters, and demolitions carried out by the retreating enemy in an effort to delay our advance have heightened the prevailing effect of destruction. Groups of refugees straggled back towards the town during the day with their few possessions on their backs or on barrows, and poked among the wreckage of their houses to see what remained. It was little enough. Not a shop and few houses remained unsacked by the Germans, and what they had not been able to carry away had been strewn in wild disorder. Rimini, like so many other towns, is an example of the price the Italian people paid for their part in the war.