APPROACH TO NAPLES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 3, 29 September 1943, Page 5

APPROACH TO NAPLES

Enemy Pulls Back Along Whole Line FOGGIA BEING EVACUATED (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received September 28, 9.10 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 27. The Allied forces tonight are less than 20 miles from both Naples and Foggia, two prizes of the present phfise of the Italian campaign. Field-Marshal Kesselring’s army while trying to hold up General Montgomery’s men in the approaches to Naples is pulling out rapidly along the rest of its line. The Algiers correspondent of “The Times” says that the Fifth Army’s advance west and north of Salerno has continued steadily, though the pace has been slowed by the necessity of mopping up enemy strongpoints and repairing bridges and roads. Seven days’ arduous fighting in the eastern sector were rewarded by the capture of the villages of Calabritto and Cassano, 2.5 and 20 miles respectively north-east of Salerno, dominating an important network of roads. Our troops today are consolidating their positions and organizing supply routes across difficult mountainous country.

Fighting in the 'bare mountains forming a (barrier between Salerno and the Naples plain is being decided in bitter close-quarter struggles, says Reuter’s correspondent at Allied headquarters. Tile bayonet is the only weapon with which the enemy can be dislodged from hide-oute to which he has obviously been ordered to cling to the end. The British United Press points out that the Fifth Army’s thrust up the Sele Valley is now within a few miles of the line from Avellino to Foggia, which the enemy has probably 'been using for switching troops from one sector to the other. The Germans, it says, have been forced to pull back along the whole line 'by the (double threat from the Eighth Army and the right wing of the Fifth. Reuter’s correspondent with the Fifth Army says that the Germans are looking uneasily over their shoulders as General Clark’s Americans further east forge .ahead in the mountains on a turning course, and that if their progress is maintained the German forces will be compelled to retreat toward Naples or be outflanked. A correspondent says that in the centre of the line the Fifth Army has driven what seems likely to 'be a vital salient into the enemy defences, and he says: "‘We are at the turning point of the battle for Naples.” Only south of the city are the Germans reported to be fighting stubbornly. Eighth Army Advance.

Reuter says that the Eighth Army has two more rivers to cross before reaching Foggia. These are the Carapelie and the Ceraro. They might 'be used for a stand, but’no serious opposition is expected as the countryside is against the defenders. Cairo radio says that the Germans have begun to evacuate Foggia. An Algiers communique says that the Eighth Army, which in the north crossed the Ofanto River gnd captured'Cerignola, is still in. contact with the euemy in the centre, just north of Bella, and has captured Muro.

The Eighth Army is going rapidly ahead north and east of the main battle area,. and there has been little enemy opposition. Our men have pushed up the Adriatic eoast and in addition to taking, the important inland town of Cerignola have occupied Marguerita di Savoia, 30 miles south-east of Foggia. > There was little air activity yesterday, as the bulk of the North-west African air forces were grounded by bad weather. Mitchells found some gaps in the clouds, however, and bombed enemy troop concentrations in the .Sarno area. Fighter-bombers located 40 trucks and destroyed four of them. Fighter-bombers also attacked 40 trucks parked beside a road. The landing ground at Pomigliano d’Arco, near Naples, was attacked by fighter-bombers, two direct hits being scored on the runway and another on parked aircraft. No Allied aircraft were lost. Foggia aerodrome, with at least a dozen satellite airfields, has been evacuated by the Germans on their own admission. Its possession will bring Allied bombers within 500 miles of the great industrial regions of Austria to which much of the German war production has been removed since the destruction wrought by British bombers in the Rhineland and Westphalia.