STORY OF LINK-UP

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 205, 27 May 1944, Page 7

STORY OF LINK-UP

Anzio And Main Fifth Army Forces LONDON, May 25. When patrols from the Fifth Army front made contact with patrols from the Fifth Army beach-head force early this morning they brought to a climax tlie Fifth Army’s spectacular advance ot more than 60 miles in only 14 days. The dramatic juncture of these patrols occurred a few miles south-east of the beach-head on the coastal highway between Terracina and Anzio. Thus the Fifth Army has established land communications with the beach-head for the first time since the landing-on January 22. A single Allied line now stretches across Italy, with the nearest point only 2o miles from Rome. Commenting on the junction of the troops, a spokesman at Allied headquarters said it should not be long before the two fronts w’ere firmly established as one. The Fifth Army would develop even greater strength than*hitherto. ' . The story of the link-up has been told today by a correspondent in the beachhead. Americans left Terracina yesterday morning and drove up the coast road. They met with practically no opposition. The main German forces had already withdrawn from the Pontine Marshes area. The men advancing from the beachhead did not have such an easy passage. They had to clear the enemy from several miles of the coastal road before they could move ahead freely. Soon after, down on the level cornfields of the Pontine Marshes, a British reconnaissance car spotted an American car moving north. The British made the Cigna! “What outfit are you?” The reply came, “We’re from the south.” “Then,” says a correspondent, “you can imagine the cheer that went up from men who had waited so long.” Cheers for General.

The correspondent drove to the meeting place with the Fifth Army commander, General Mark Clark, and just beyond a village where the link-up took place he met the first troops from the main Fifth Army . front. “There they were,” he says, “joking and exchanging yarns with our British boys in the warm morning sun. ..Jeeps and other cars and lorries drawn up on the tree-lined road were heart-warming proof that the nightmare of Anzio was over at last. “On the road, in the middle of a little cheering crowd., General Clark shook hands with the lieutenant who had led the party coming .up from the south. The' lieutrfiant saluted and said, ‘Lieutenant Buckley reporting, sir.’ ‘That’s fine,’ said the Fifth Army commander, ‘l’m glad to see you. How are you?’ ‘Very glad to see you,’ said the lieutenant, and that was how everyone felt.” Engineers clearing mines ahead of the advancing reconnaissance troops from the beach-head and also from the main Fifth Army front farther south were the first to shake hands in celebration of the historic union of the Allied troops, says the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain in Italy. The meeting occurred five miles east of the former beach-head front on the Mussolini Canal. Tied Germans Down. An Allied spokesman said that the beach-head force played a very important role in the strategy of the Italian campaign, tying down German forces for four months. The Allied navies are being praised for supplying the beach-head, even under fierce shelling from the enemy’s longrange guns. The , “Daily Telegraph" correspondent with the Eighth Army says that the Germans are bringing disaster to village after village and town after town. Before the present offensive the Allies had scarcely touched many of the communities'behind the German front. Now the Germans are converting each mountain village into a fortress, which must be utterly destroyed. The Exchange Telegraph Company’s correspondent says that the Germans lived snugly and pretty safely in the Hitler Line till the Canadians arrived, and then the line cracked as though a giant had delivered a terrific blow with a cudgel. This section of line is a thin string of widely dispersed pill-boxes, heavily mined and wired. The pill-boxes are well placed. Some of them are large and elaborate and made of thick concrete and steel sunk in the ground, with earth piled up round them. They are divided into two or three compartments, providing living and fighting quarters for six men. None of the pill-boxes in this section had turrets, but some elsewhere are reported to have been equipped with turrets from Mark IV tanks. “The Allied troops who broke out of of tlie beach-head were fighting mad after four months of confinement/’ states a representative of the Combined British Press.

“Something more tbnn superiority of tanks, guns, and even in numbers was responsible for the successful breakout from the beach-head,” he added. “Our troops were so fighting mad that they even outmatched the fervour of the German paratroops. It was this spirit that carried men as much as three miles on the first day and helped them to storm the most heavily-defended sectors.”