NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 71, 21 September 1943, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

ITALY AND RUSSIA

TWO BATTLEFRONTS

Today's news from the two main battlefronts in Europe—ltaly and Russia—shows the Germans in retreat in both places under Allied pressure. The Red Army has had another great day and the armies" of the Western Allies are swinging into line across Italy for decisive battle.

The first objective of the Fifth and Eighth Armies—particularly the Fifth —must be Naples, because the Allies need a first-class port and harbour for a base of supply. Salerno may serve for landings and a foothold, just as the south-east and southern shores of Sicily served in the first few days, until the Eighth Army took Syracuse and Augusta. Similarly the Eighth Army landed in the toe of Italy and made use •of the ports of Reggio , and San Giovanni until they got Taranto and Brindisi in the heel. The supply lines from the toe were far too long for concentrated action, and that was why the earlier progress of Montgomery's men was comparatively slow along the j rocky coast roads? Things began to ! move when Taranto and Brindisi came into the picture and Salerno opened a bridgehead in the west. But the Allies must have Naples as a base for further advances inland and up towards Rome. The Germans know this and are prepared to defend Naples. The Allies have already secured positions at both horns of the great and beautiful Bay of Naples, the island of Ischia to the north and the N island of Capri and the rocky peninsula of Sorrento—names familiar in story—to the south. They have also now convenient airfields for the necessary air umbrella. The Germans are swinging back in good order on the hills at the back of Salerno as a pivot guarding i the gateway to Naples from the south. I The stage is being set for battle. Across the Peninsula. The Allied line across Italy is not yet clearly defined, but sit is not by any means a straight line from Salerno to Bari, sea to sea. Potenza, in jthe heart of the Apennines, half-, way on the railway connecting Salerno' with the Gulf of Taranto, is still apparently in German hands. From Potenza a line of railway runs ! almost due north through the mounI tains to Foggia,. some twenty miles [north-west Of Cannae, where Hannibal destroyed the flower of the Roman legions in 216 B.C. and had Rome at his mercy. Foggia is the greatest railway and air centre in southern Italy, with connecting railways across the Apennines through Benevento and Avellino to Naples. It is this general line that the Germans intend to hold. For a mountainous country there is a useful network of roads, and railways, and the country roundl, Naples is some of the richest and most thickly populated in Italy, dominated by the classic volcano of Vesuvius. Russia Rolls On. The tide of Russian victory sweeps on and has crossed the Desna River in several places. •In a few days, if all goes well, it may be expected to come jn sight of the Dnieper, or even reach it on the big bend between Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe and, perhaps, higher up towards Kiev. Of the German strongholds east of the Dnieper above the bend Poltava alone remains, and even it is cut off from all main sources of supply. ' Krasnograd, Priluki, Lubni, and many other centres have gone. The capture of Yartsevo, long a- bone of contention, and Duchovshchina has opened the "gateway" of Smolensk. "Inhabited Places." \ The mention daily of scores and even hundreds of "inhabited places" liberated—l2oo today—may puzzle people. Such "inhabited places"— there is one Russian word for it—reflect the system of economic and social life in rural Russia, Which has always been grouped round the village rather than, as here and in America, in isolated farm houses and buildings. Thus every square mile or so in the more thickly populated regions of central and southern Russia will have its "inhabited place" —perhaps more than one. In these the life of the community is centred, and liberation has some meaning to the large or small groups of people who have made their homes there, attached so deeply as are the rural Russians to the soil.