"THE END INEVITABLE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 35, 10 August 1943, Page 5

"THE END INEVITABLE"

FEELING IN LONDON LONDON, August 9. Though commentators in London are sounding a note of caution in view o± the fact that 40,000 to 60,000 Germans are still fighting in Sicily, the Press Association's military correspondent, summing up the general feeling says that the end is inevitable. The Allies ! advance is continuing successfully and [steadily, with the Germans, in country which lends itself to defensive action, fighting determined rearguard actions and gaining as much time as possible with the lavish use of mines, boobytraps, and demolitions. The Germans managed to get most of their troops from Troina, where they experienced one of the hardest battles of the campaign, reports the British United Press correspondent with the Seventh Army. Americans who had fought in Tunisia say that- the battle for Troina was worse than anything there. One hill south of Troina was taken and retaken six times before the Germans were driven out under a hail of artillery fire and dive-bombing. A "New York Times" correspondent says that the Americans, on entering Troina, found a town of horror, emptied of Germans but amazingly alive with weeping and hysterical men, women, and children. The Germans had made the town s fortress, and deliberately neglected the elementary humanitarian duty of evacuating the civilians, who underwent two terrible days of bombing and shelling. The Germans shot civilians who attempted to escape, and looted every house before departing. "Everywhere along the line the German resistance is most stubborn," the correspondent says, "and the Allied strategy must be based on its continuance. There is no quick and easy solution for fighting in such mountainous country. It is hard, determined slogging every day, in which our artillery and air support and the steady pressure of the ground troops should unquestionably bring victory in the long run. If the Germans could not hold Troina they cannot hold anywhere else. We have paid a fair price for the victory, but they have paid a heavy price to gain a few days more in Sicily."