GERMAN GUSTAV LINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 18, 22 January 1944, Page 7

GERMAN GUSTAV LINE

Both Flanks Threatened

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Bee. noon. LONDON, January 21, Allied troops, pressing" on from the Garigliano River, are threat* ening both flanks of the German Gustav line, the latest dispatches from Allied headquarters say. Renter's Algiers correspondent, commenting on the Germane position, says*that the British are fighting to points from which the German coastal flank could be turned. The French, after crossing the Rapido River yesterday, menace the mountain flank.

By capturing Minturno the British have forked roads ahead of them. The first is the ancient Appian Way, following the Gulf of Gaeta to Formia, and the second is an excellent road from the Gulf of Cassino, from which they are only two miles distant. The Germans have used part of this r^oad as their main supply route for the Gustav Line.

The Algiers correspondent of the British United Press says that the British, the Americans, and the French are attacking strongly, Jhoping to beat the Germans to the Adolf Hitler Line, six miles west of the Gustav Line. The German are counter-attacking at some places in an effort to hold the Allies back until the Adolf Hitler Line is fully prepared. Small clashes are more numerous on the Eighth Army front, but the forward positions are practically unchanged. Reuters Algiers correspondent says that British forces of the Fifth Army are engaged in fierce fighting on the outskirts of Castleforte, ;two miles

observation, posts overlooking the river, and their guns and mortars are being driven out of range of the crossings. The Germans left certain areas mined with almost unbelievable thoroughness.

from Garigliano, and Ventosa, a village half a mile to the west. ( Algiers radio says the Americans have again crossed the Rapido at the northern end of the Gustav Line.

British forces of the Fifth Army have won the battle of the lower Garigliano, and these forces at some points havfe (penetrated the secondary German defence positions at the mouth of the river and in the hills. Allied artillery and bombers smashed German preparations for a large-scale counter-attack against Minturno.

Algiers radio says that British sappers, working day and night under coyer of a smoke screen, erected a bridge across the Garigliano River over which reinforcements are now passing. The Germans have lost their