DIFFICULT COUNTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 64, 13 September 1943, Page 5

DIFFICULT COUNTRY

NO QUICK ALLIED VICTORY

Rec. 12.30 p.m, RU6BY, Sept. 12. If the Germans in the Naples area ro on fighting as hard as they are now their expulsion from Italy may take some time, reports a British correspondent near Salerno. "They have here all the conditions which made defence easy in Tunisia and Sicily," he says. "The stretch of "joast and mountains is in fact rather sasier to defend. There is less room tor the army to spread out than on the coast of Sicily. Enormous quantities of heavy equipment have been driven from the beaches up the very aarrow one-track sandy lanes between archards and tomato vines. Even when pou push further into the Sele Plain, bordering the Gulf of Salerno, the country does not open out. The Germans are using every rise in the ground to delay us. They do not have To pull back to the higher mountains which ring this plain. If they did that it might be easier to shell them ofl these bare, rocky slopes. Before you come to the steeper hills there is a gradually rising series of small foothills. As the Germans fall back they can place 88-millimetre guns, -ma-shine-guns, and mortars behind each row of foothills in turn. There has to be a set battle for each fresh position, Instead of a smooth advance.

"It should be remembered that our landing: in the Gulf of Salerno was by all military rules one of the boldest landings ever made. We deliberately chose land beyond the normal range of fighter aircraft against an enemy who is known to have strong fighter and bomber forces on many airfields within easy reach.

NEED FOR AIRFIELDS

"Over this battlefield, as the enemy well knew, Spitfires from Sicily , can stay only about 20 minutes. We should have been bombed and strafed off the beaches and harried mercilessly from the air. but apart from a few uncomfortable moments each day and night nothing of the sort happened. The reason may be that the day and night offensive against railways and airfields Which, went on for weeks before the invasion disorganised the Luftwaffe. All the same, this campaign should not be expected to move fast Until We have several airfields in working order. To get them our infantry have to fight the hard, uphill way of Tunisia and Sicily." The correspondent added that the invaders did not meet with resentment from the Italians, some even making the innocent suggestion that they were riow almost allies. There were few who resisted at first, not having heard of trie armistice, and there might have been some who would have liked to go