NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1943, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

SLOWER PACE

ALLIED ADVANCE IN EUROPE It will be noted that in both the major campaigns in Europe, the greater in Russia and the lesser in Italy, Allied progress is slow compared with the rate of advance in the earlier stages. There are several reasons for this altered aspect. The two physical conditions that, in the main, control the pace of an army's advance in a successful offensive are the nature of the country (terrain) over which the army is advancing, and the state of the weather at the time. In easy terrain, wide, open; level country with no natural barriers, and in dry weather, there will be little to stop an advancing army, so long as it can maintain its communications and receive adequate supplies. The advance proceeds with momentum, but it is quite possible for an army to outrun its supply columns and be compelled to slow down until they can catch up. In such circumstances the retreating army will also move fast, sometimes faster than its pursuers, for its communications become shorter as theirs lengthen. Even in such country, under perfect weather conditions, the pursuers may come to the end of their tether, so to speak, before decisively defeating their adversaries, and may even have to sustain a check or be rolled back in their turn. When the retreating army has succeeded in reaching defensible country, it is always liable to stand and fight. Over Easy Country. The process has been illustrated more than once with convincing clearness in Russia and the Western Desert in North Africa. In both places over easy country,;the black soil plains of southern Russia, and the bare plateaus of the coastal fringe of the Sahara, the tide of battle rolled to and fro over vast areas and great distances. When the armies in advance and retreat reach more difficult country and defensible positions, movement slows down to a stop, at' least temporary, as, notably, at El Alamein, on the border of the Nile Delta, and in Tunisia. Similarly in Russia there have been fastflowing tides of advance and retirement all the way between the Volga at Stalingrad and the Dnieper from Kiev to its mouth. This is all tank country, where any great concentration of strength is almost sure to effect measurable gains before it comes up against similar concentrations and positions prepared for such emergencies. When, in addition, the weather breaks and rain creates quagmires, as in Russia today, in the Dnieper bend or Kiev area, progress must be clogged. Adverse Conditions. In Russia the Red Army and in Italy the Western Allies have, for •weeks past, faced conditions that impede advance and favour defence. There is little tank country—in fact, only patches—in the narrow part of Italy the Germans are holding between Pescara on the Adriatic and the Gulf of Gaeta on the west coast. It is Tunisia over again with no gaps through which to cut the enemy in two or lead to encirclement. The nearest approach to such a gap is at Mignano on the road from Capua to Rome where General Clark's v Fifth Army is pounding away at commanding heights to get through to the more open country at Cassino. The line the Germans have chosen to defend is, as pointed out in these notes several weeks ago, the best south of Rome; as it forms a sort of wall of the Apennines from sea to sea. North of it are the levels of the Pontine Marshes and inland the trough between the mountains in which the main road and rail communications lie between Naples and Rome.: Further inland still, in the heart of the Apennines, lies the central basin of Avezzano, with the drained bed of the former lake Fucino. Solmona is the railway centre for this. coldest region of central Italy in the winter. That is why the Germans are fighting so hard to retain this "winter line." Once dislodged, they would have to quit Rome and hurry back north. It is essentially a soldiers' war. Resistance in Russia. Similarly in Russia, the Red Army has come up against defensible positions in the Dnieper bend with Krivoi Rog as the centre, and extending to the lower Dnieper to the south at Nikopol and to the north between Kremenchug, except for the Cherkasi bridgehead to near Kiev. The Dnieper bend is not a small area; it is 250 miles from KieV to Dnepropetrovsk, 200 from Dnepropetrovsk to Nikolaev, and another 250 from Kiev to Nikolaev. Of this area the Russians hold not much more than a quarter, and they have had to fall back somewhat from Zhitomir and Korosten, west of Kiev, where there are higher levels of ground favourable to the enemy. While this country is still in an unreasonable state of mud, it is probable that the Russian High Command will exploit more and more the harder ground to the north of Gomel and throughout White Russia, where the winter has already set in with snow and frost.