NON-EXISTENT

Evening Star, Issue 25184, 25 May 1944, Page 5

NON-EXISTENT

GASSING'S TUNNELS INVESTIGATIONS SINGE CAPTURE fßec. 9.45 a.m.) LONDON 1 , May 24. The Cassino correspondent of the ' Daily Express ' says that officers who fought the long house-to-house battle in Cassino learned a lot from a. long examination of the town made since" the Germans were driven out. He says that there were no tunnels in Cassino, and that the Germans used defences similar to those of the British. They made no concrete emplacements, but used strongly-built stone houses with well-made cellars, or hotere witli arched arcades. They scheduled cellars for sleeping and for feeding soldiers. The officers agreed that the Allied bombing helped the Germans, for craters stopped the Allied tanks and the destruction increased the Germans' field of fire. " For some time we put at least

1.000 shells and mortar bombs on the Germans in Cassino every day," one officer said. " One night we used 5,000 smoke bombs. Some thought the Germans could stiolc it because they had refuge in honeycomb. tunnels in the lower part of Monastery Hill. I have yet to find this tunnel system."