UNPARALLELED FEAT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1943, Page 5

UNPARALLELED FEAT

1406 MILES IN 80 DAYS

BUGBY, January 23. -.The Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, broadcasting after the fall of Tripoli was announced, said: "For months past we have been filled with admiration and gratitude for the tremendous exploits of the Red Army. Today we have cause to extend to our own Army that admiration and gratitude: for the destruction of the Italian empire in Africa is overwhelmingly our show—ours, India's, Australia's, New Zealand's, South Africa's, and that of the inhabitants of British East i and West Africa." Ungrudging help had been given by the United States in. supplies and air forces in the later stages, he said, but the troops of the British Commonwealth had cleared the Italians put of am empire over 12 times the size of the British Isles. The final stagesince the Eighth Army attacked at El j Alamein—had occupied just three months, and in that time the greater part of Field-Marshal Rommel's armoured forces had been wiped out and five or six Italian divisions had been destroyed or captured. The Eighth Army had kept up the pursuit of the routed enemy from the jedge of the Nile delta to Tripoli. advancing nearly 1400 miles in SO days.

,It was not an unopposed advance; ajl the time there had been fighting

and skirmishes between the armoured forces, which had whittled down the enemy and cleared the way for a speedier advance. Twice Rommel halted and put up resistance, but General Montgomery used these pauses to bring up' reinforcements and supplies, and he then gave Rommel the extra 'kick which drove him on again in his flight. It was not easy going. There was no railway—only a road which had been systematically sabotaged by the enemy so that our cars had to plough their way across the desert till the obstacles were cleared. In spite of all this, the average rate of advance was" 17£ miles a day, or, if the pauses were excluded, 130 miles a day. The problem of supplying the army during the campaign, Sir James Grigg said, was well illustrated by the fact that during one week over 8,000,000 gallons of petrol and 8000 tons of ammunition were delivered to the front. The Navy brought stores by sea to one Libyan port after another as they were captured, and aircraft carried supplies to the front and evacuated the wounded. The Army, in return, seized and cleared advanced landing grounds which enabled our fighter aircraft to keep in contact with the retreating enemy. GREAT ORGANISATION. It was an unparallelled feat of military organisation that had flung such a great force with such speed so far

across a hostile desert, and much of the credit must go to the qurtermaster- | general's staff under General Lindsell. | Sir James also stressed the fact Skat the advance would have been j impossible without full, co-ordination betwe^f the ground and air forces. Complete mastery in the air had enabled our most advanced forces to be serviced hy lorries, often without hindrance from the enemy, while at the same time the enemy's communii cations had been constantly harassed from the air. At the same time, in the narrow waters of the Sicilian Strait and along ithe Tunisian coast, the Navy took heavy toll of the ships which were attempting to carry supplies and reinforcements to Rommel's hard-pressed forces. . , , In 1940 Italy's African empire had been held by more than 1,000,000 Italian troops, and since then eight more divisions had been sent into Libya- Of these hordes it was safe to say that within a few hours not one would be left with arms on what was once Italian soil.—B.O.W. . j