HEAVY RAIN IN ITALY

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 November 1944, Page 5

HEAVY RAIN IN ITALY

FORLI AIRFIELD

(Rec. 10.0) LONDON, Nov. 3. British infantry and armour despite bad weather, slogged forward nearly one mile to contain Forli airfield on two sides, says Reuter’s correspondent at Allied Headquarters in Italy. The Germans are desperately defending the airfield at north-west and north-east corners. They are using Tiger tanks to defend the aerodrome for which fighting is raging in violent thunderstorms. Only a canal separates the opposing forces. German tanks are firing at point blank range supporting the ‘infantry. Eighth Army troops, three miles south of Forli, are enlarging the bridgehead across the Ronco River, and captured the village of Crisignano on the east bank of the Rabbi River. The German are established on the heights west of the Rabbi River.

The British United Press correspondent says that the Germans before Ravenna and Bologna outnumber the Allied forces, but that would not matter if the weather and terrain were not against the Allies, because we outnumber enemy tanks and guns. The mountain slopes are not only sodden, thereby bogging down the Allies’ tanks, but are covered with heavy fogs. The Exchange Telegraph Agency’s correspondent reports that a thunderstorm with torrential rain raged for seven hours yesterday with disastrous effects on the roads and bridges. Even the main road between Rome and Siena is temporarily impassable.

KESSELRING INJURED

RUGBY, Nov. 2

Marshal Kesselring was injured by machinegun fire from a low-flying Allied plane which attacked his car, according to the Paris radio. It is not known whether the injuries he- sustained were severe.

MUSSOLINI’S PROPERTY

LONDON, November 3.

All properties belonging to Mussolini and his family and to his latest mistress, Clara Petacci and her ■family, have been confiscated by an order of a Rome Tribunal. An attachment order was issued at the request of the Italian AttorneyGeneral. It lists fourteen people. They include, besides Mussolini, his wife, his children, and his grandchildren, the entire family of his mistress who are held to have enriched themselves as a result of her relationship with Mussolini. The bulk of Mussolini’s movable fortune is believed to have been transferred to Brazil.