FAST PROGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 96, 23 April 1940, Page 10

FAST PROGRESS

ALLIED FORCES

UNFAVOURABLE SITUATION

FOR GERMANS

GARRISON HEMMED IN

(Daventry Broadcast.)

The Allied campaign in Norway is progressing faster than many experts thought possible. The War Office communique today gives no further hints, but its phrasing leads observers to think that things are going well. The "cbnsiderable successes" of which the communique speaks cannot be officially described. It must not be assumed they are necessarily the same exploits described in Swedish reports, but it may be that the rapid advance to the south is one of the achievements to which the War Office refers.

According to, Swedish reports, the Allied troops are holding the vghole of the railway from the port where ■some" of the forces are suppPiSed 'to have landed, to Hamar and so eventu^ ally to Oslo. If reports are true' that a considerable number of Allied forces have joined the Norwegians at Hamar arid Elverum, it presents a picture of a situation very unfavourable to the ; Germans. It means that the garrison at Trondheim cannot get reinforcements from the land force around Oslo. Already messages speak of Allied forces advancing on Trondheim from

the south and north. The Germans are said to be bombing this part of the country, and Namsos is said to have suffered heavily. " There are also (Unconfirmed reports that Allied forces got behind the rear communications at Bergen.

.In the east, if it is true that British troops are at Hamar, the-German troops based at Oslo will find themselves on the defensive only 80 miles from Oslo itself.