GERMANS ON VOLTURNO

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1943, Page 5

GERMANS ON VOLTURNO

MAY BE WITHDRAWING

LONDON, October 6. The German news agency admits the evacuation of Volturara, in Italy, 25 miles west of Foggia, on the Eighth Army's front. Algiers radio says that Allied pilots report that Field-Marshal Kesselring is already withdrawing from the Volturno line on which it was predicted he might make'a stand. Keports from Italy suggest that General Montgomery is exerting heavy presure from Volturara along the main trans-Apennine highway running from Volturara through Isernia to Rome. The British and Canadian forces are meeting with stubborn resistance to General Montgomery's bid to squeeze the Germans from the Volturno River line by this flanking threat. General Clark's Americans are at present held up at the canal which runs parallel with the upper Volturno about five miles south of the river. Diplomats accredited to the Vatican joined those whom foreign correspondents throughout Europe have so frequently reported since 1939 as hastily burning their secret documents in the expectation of the early arrival of the Germans. The Madrid correspondent of the "Daily Mail" declares that the diplomats in the Vatican City no longer believe the Germans will respect the Vatican's neutrality when the time comes to withdraw from Rome. Even the Papal secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione, is reported to be destroying documents from informants within Germany.