DESPEEATE FIGHTING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIV, Issue 140, 13 May 1944, Page 6

DESPEEATE FIGHTING

3.45 P.M. EDITION

GRIM STRUGGLE IN ITALY. (N.Z. Press Association.— Copyright.) (Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON, May 12. The' Eighth Army troops who crossed the Rapido River are now hammering the German defences to the west, says a special correspondent with the Indian forces. Tne Germans are desperately resisting and Allied infantrymen in some places are locked in a grim struggle. The same correspondent describing the opening of the offensive says: "Many hundred guns opened fire simultaneously and the whole battlefield quaked as the guns thundered. The concentrated artillery fire was followed by hours of 'softening' fire. Just before the barrage opened there was an intriguing silence over a 30-mile stretch df ground that had known no peace for the last six months. When the guns started everything was blotted out. The barrage was like a gigantic fireworks show, with hundreds -of flashes lighting up the hills and valleys. The Germans' readiness to offer very stiff opposition was known, but they hardly expected an attack on such a broad front." ' . The Associated Press correspondent with the American air forces in Italy says: Hundreds of Allied warplanes started sweeping the sky at the crack of dawn and gave record-breaking support to tlih ground forces in the first round of the new offensive. TO SMASH GUSTAV LTNE.

With a superiority at last in men, and with massive air and artillery support, the Eighth and Fifth Armies have opened what, it is hoped, will be the final assault to smash the Gustav Line defences, says Router's correspondent at Advanced Headquarters in Italy. Warships in the Gulf of Gaeta pumped broadsides into the German flauk defences which are anchored among difficult mountains, some rising to 5000 feet, and it was against these that the warships directed their fire.

. The Fifth Army's barrage gave the Eighth Army an- opportunity to move its equipment to the banks of the Rapido Eivcr. The operations were carefully timed, and when the moon rose and the river had been crossed swarms of Tactical Air Force fighterbombers carried out pin-point attacks against gun positions. Light and medium bombers joined in and pounded the heavily entrenched, wired, and mined Gustav Line. The Daily Express correspondent, who watched the barrage which opened the offensive, draws a comparison between the Allies' "belching hell" and the "twinkle" of the German reply. This comparison, he says, is an indication that for this battle we greatly outnumber the enemy. We have more guns, tanks, planes, and, most of all more men. It is the infantryman who will fight this battle. His air colleague in the next few days cannot do much to help. Even pinpointed dive-bombing helps little in mountainous country. The Germans are too well dug in to suffer many persorinel losses by - bombing. The air forces can scarcely hope to bend a single gun, but they can bend a man's will and break his heart. The Mediterranean air forces before a fire shell screamed through the moonlight last night had been fighting the battle for a whole month—an allout effort to strangle von Kesselring s supply lines. The plan was officially known as an "operation strangle. The intention of the whole scheme was to cut off the railway and sea communications to the German batt cfronts So successful has been the strangulation that to-day the Germans as far north as Florence have not a single through train to send supplies and reinforcements to any front. COMMUNICATIONS GONE. Von Kesselring's roads are deserted in the daytime. There is no such thing as a German road convoy, just" odd vehicles travelling at night-time. The Germans at sea have not dared to use anything larger than a 300-tonner. Even caiques and schooners sail only at night-time, hugging the coast and sheltering in the daytime in coves. There is a bridge blown up on every railway route. Every major line is blocked, usually at more points than one. The Germans, therefore, in the course of the past few weeks' lull have been able to get through only enough to live on. It now remains to be seen lif thev have enough to fight on, but whatever the air forces have done in the last month it will not save a single infantryman's life. It may take days, perhaps weeks, in the first fierce fighting before the Germans use up their immediate supplies. . Other correspondents emphasise that this battle is bound to be a slow, frontal, uohill fight'for many days to come and spectacular results should not be expected. General Leese told correspondents before the attack began that unless a ' 100 to one chance occurred there would be heavy fighting and it would be wrong to expect a quick break-through. ' The Algiers radio reported that Allied planes to-day attacked 17 targets on the Italian west coast, also north of Rome. No enemy air resistance was reported all day.

AIR SUPERIORITY.

With complete superiority the Allied air force on the Italian fronts to-day have been concentrating against enemy batteries and gun positions, many of which have been bombed, says a Naples correspondent quoted by the Official Wireless. Warhawk pilots reported four hits on the Cassino monastery and a similar number ot bomb hits on an observation post near the monastery. Other Warhawks co-operating with the Eighth Army attacked and hit a railway bridge and gun emplacement near Pasterna, about half way between Cassino and the Pontine Marshes, and scored hits on mortar positions in the same area. They also carried out strafing attacks against transport: For weeks past on the Italian front the Germans have revealed nervousness. Night after night they have sent out patrols in desperate efforts to find out who was in the opposite lines. The Allied strategy was so subtle that at no stage did the Germans know just what they were up against. Brigades were switched over so fast that one night the Germans would find New Zealanders in the line and the next they would be startled to find Indians there. Day after day the enemy revealed his nervousness, and when the attack opened he was still unable to determine where it was going to come. - SEVERAL MILES GAINED. Allied troops at some points have penetrated to a depth of several miles, states Reuter's correspondent with the Fifth Army in a dispatch ■ lodged to-night. He adds: In the softer .spots in the "brick wall" we have substantially advanced and the advance in the harder spots is measurable in hundreds of yards. The Americans at one point had to evacuate a captured position. , The Commander of the Fifth Army (Genera! Clark) said in an Order of the Day to his troops: "The entire world, including the Axis, knows of the success and significance of the Salerno landing against bitter opposition and of your subsequent, capture of Naples in face of the enemy's' determination to deny us a port which was

indispensable to the support of our further operations in Italy. . - The remainder of the Order of the-Day je on similar lines to General Alexanders.