AFRICAN FRONT QUIET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 25, 29 December 1942, Page 2

AFRICAN FRONT QUIET

(llec. 1.50 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 28. "Almost all quiet on the African front" is the tenor of despatches from war correspondents in Tripolitaniu and Tunisia, but this does not suggest that a stalemate has settled down over North Africa. Military experts emphasise that Rommel's unbroken retreat of almost 900 miles' since the El Alamein line was"*broken suggests that the Axis High Command long ago decided to cut their losses with Prussian ruthlessness so that the strongest possible force could be concentrated on the North African bridgehead, centring on Tunisia. The weather in Tunisia remains our infantryman's nightmare, with a few warm sunny days alternating with weeks of cold, driving rain, causing muddy quagmire and miscrablo billets reminiscent of the last war. Then, as now, the Tommy's sense of humour rises above all The Times correspondent with the First Army says that the enemy has clearly increased his strength during the lull, but so have wo. Thus the stage is sot 'for heavy fighting. Enemy air activity has greatly increased.