HOW CATANIA FELL

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 268, 7 August 1943, Page 5

HOW CATANIA FELL

Conquerors Welcomed By Citizens LONDON, August 5.. The German withdrawal from Catania was forced by an outflanking move by British and Canadian troops on the sector centred'about 15 miles to the northeast near Aderuo, and was hastened b) a frontal attack. . , The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain with the Eighth Army says that Catania, the second city in Sicily, surrendered to the victorious Eighth Army this morning after troops had entered the outskirts soon alter dawn. The majority of the defenders, who were iu pill-boxes covering the roads to the city, fled soou after dawn Xhe surrender was made to a colonel who led the first infantry units into the . As the British entered the streets, frenzied civilians ran alongside, cheering, clapping, and kissing the soldiers’ hands. Men, women and children crowded round the cars, frequently begging for food. Some people had sufficient command ot English to say that they had virtually been without food of any kind for a week. “There was no mistaking the words with which we were hailed as liberators, the correspondent added. Joyful Citizens. Eager citizens in a joyful demonstration almost mobbed a unit of British infantry which, after combing the town tor possible snipers, assembled iu >a street leading to the town’s main square. Masses of debris from the Allied bombing were still blocking many of the streets. “Catania is a complete shambles —the worst 1 have seen since Bizerta,” said another correspondent. “There arc bomb craters every few yards along the main roads.”

Reuter’s correspondent in Catania says that mingled with the people’s cheers was the hard and saddening cry: “Give us something to eat.” “Like the people of every German-occupied city,” he says, "the Catanians have suffered through the German habit of robbing them ot food and looting their shops.” Reuter says that in some quarters there seemed to be scarcely a house which had not been hit. Some places were simply mounds of rubble, but the cathedral was undamaged. Not all the damage was done by bombs. The town s power-station was blazing fiercely as the British entered. The mines of the German demolition engineers were the greatest danger in the city. , ' The fall of Catania has cracked open the whole enemy front, and gives the Allies the opportunity for which the. present offensive was planned, says Renter's Algiers correspondent. The Eighth Army is pursuing the retreating Germans, who arc faced with an untenable position on the southern slopes of Mt. Etna and are being forced to withdraw along the vulnerable coastal highway to Taormina and Messina. , . While the Algiers correspondent ot the Mutual Broadcasting .System declares that, the end is now only a mutter ot days, the correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System says: "The capture of Catania does not mean that the Eighth Army can now simply roll up the coastal highway. The German position in the new line north of the city will be just as hard to crack as was the original position. "There is no wide coastal plain on the GO-mile stretch between Catania and Messina along which the Allies can thrust forward swiftly. There is only a highway hewn out in some places from high cliffs, with an escarpment, plunging steeply to the sen. For grant distances the highway has been damaged by demolition, and, two or three well-placed demolitions can effectively hold up things.”