Allies In Salerno Area

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 66, 15 September 1943, Page 5

Allies In Salerno Area

MORE MEN BEING LANDED

LONDON, September 14. Troops of the Fifth Army in Italy are meeting with fierce opposition from German panzers in the Salerno area. At some points Allied troops have yielded ground, but fresh reinforcements are being landed to strengthen the assault.

Within a hundred miles of the Salerno fighting the two Eighth 'Army groups are moving north. They have occupied Cosenza, in central Calabria, and on the east side of Italy they are reported to be level with Bari.

Crack German troops and panzer units are going all out to shake off the Allied grip on the Gulf of Salerno.

All dispatches stress the ferocity '™* aJ on S the Sele River, which runs . , _ r i m J inland from the coast south of the of the German, counter-attapks. lney town. Bloody struggles are raging are fighting, one correspondent says, along the front, and although the Fifth •.i S i i i • *.• £ Army has been forced back at a numwith the bitter determination of men ber of places its troops have penetrated who know that enormous issues are inland for a considerable distance at

at stake.

The battlefield is on the mainland of Europe, the so-called European Fortress. Within a hundred miles of it Erom two directions Eighth Army spearheads are closing in. Already airfields much nearer the front than the Sicilian airfields are in Allied hands and may be playing a part in the battle very soon provided the Fifth Army ;an retain its bridgehead. The Germans know this, and their determination to shake off the invaders of Italy oefpre it is too late is'leading to some Df the fiercest fighting of the whole Mediterranean war.

The battle is raging backwards and forwards, and the latest news, from a correspondent at Algiers, says that the enemy has managed to retake some ground, but that the Allies are throw'lng strong reinforcements ashore. Off shore in the Gulf of Salerno, a great amphibious armada stands beaind the landing forces, feeding them with a constant flow of supplies. The sorresoondent says that nearly everything "favours the enemy. From the aigh ground they hold overlooking the beaches they are able to lay down accurate artillery barrages. The small coastal plain around Salerno is the . only one in over 100 miles of coastline, and. the Germans, knowing that it must be reckoned as a likely landIng place, prepared many of their strong defences in advance.

The enemy's counter-attacks are being supported by considerable numbers of aircraft, but Allied fighters are flying many hundreds of sorties a day to keep a continuous umbrella over the bridgehead. Bombers are maintaining intensive attacks, on road and railway junctions all around Salerno. Already the enemy is known to be staving trouble with his communications in Italy, and the Allied bombers are but to see that things do not get my easier for him.