SPEEDING NORTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 66, 15 September 1943, Page 6

SPEEDING NORTH

MONTGOMERY'S MEN

MAY TURN TABLES IN ITALY (By TelegrapU—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 2 p.m. . LONDON, Sept. 14. General Montgomery's force, which is speeding towards the Salerno battlefield at the rate of 25 miles a day, is now faced with a single main road and railway running northwards through Paola Policastro and Agropoli. The other force, moving from the Taranto area, will have better communications for the first 50 miles, after which it must cross the main ridge of the Appennines before the Salerno area is reached. There are three railways through the range.

Vichy radio quotes German military leaders as saying that the whole course of the battle in Italy can be changed within a very short time if General Montgomery's forces succeed in reaching the Salerno region sooner than is expected. "; Berlin radio's commentator declared that if the Allies had pressed their invasion plans immediately after the fall of Mussolini there would have been little to prevent them. The morale of the Italian army was then at its lowest ebb. There was hardly a single German division to oppose an immediate advance in July. ,"But the enemy lost several weeks and the results of the delay can now be seen," he said. "The British and Americans over-estimated the political possibilities, meantime neglecting military strategy. Calabria may have been the soft spot in Europe's underbelly, but it is no longer so." German parachutists in St. Peter's Square in Rome are mounting guard with anti-tank guns, said Berlin radio, quoting its Rome correspondent. The radio added that they were in Rome to prevent Communists, or anyone else, penetrating the Vatican City. The Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican says that St. Peter's Square forms part of the Vatican City, but the Italians can use it, and therefore the Italian police are responsible for order and security there. German soldiers have now replaced the Italian police, and behind them at the entrances to the Vatican are the Holy Father's Swiss Guards.