GERMAN STONEWALL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21579, 5 December 1944, Page 2

GERMAN STONEWALL

New Zealanders who harbour lastwar recollections of the dangers and hardships of conducting an offensive in the mud will sympathise with the views expressed by the correspondent of (he Now York Times at Supreme Allied Headquarters. The writer states that the present advances are being made at the cost; of considerable and sometimes severe casualties and quotes a commanding officer in two wars as saying: “This is the hardest and costliest fighting I have ever seen. It is worse than anything in the last war.” Although it is hard to imagine anything worse than Passehendaele in October, 1917, it does not require much astute reading between. the lines of the cabled reports to arrive at the conclusion that the present battle of Germany has entered a particularly grim stage. The difficulty is that full use cannot be made of the Allied Air Forces over the battlefield, nor yet of mechanised units. The full effects of the oil shortage cannot be felt by the enemy until better weather and drier ground conditions make for Allied mobility and an increased use of modern weapons of all kinds. Clearly the Germans are again proving adepts at the pill-box technique and under present conditions it will be hard for our troops to break a line which fiends only hero and there. The British and Canadians are having the same experience as the American:; and so to a certain extent are the Russians and the Allies in Italy. In a few weeks, however, the Russians | massed against East; Prussia may be J able to make good use of the seasonal freeze-up. The cold does not daunt them and they much prefer hard surface conditions to mud. East Prussia and Poland should be the focal point of the main offensive against the enemy in the dead of winter.