ENEMY'S LUCK HOLDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 2, 30 November 1944, Page 5

ENEMY'S LUCK HOLDS

BAD WEATHER IN ITALY

(Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, Nov. 29 Atrocious weather in the Faonza. area has almost stopped ail fighting. The Lamone River is in full spate and is now 50 feet wide.

Kesselring's luck is holding, saJd the British United Press correspondent at Allied Headquarters in Italy. The Eighth and Fifth Armies, for countless times in the past few months, have been bogged by rains just as their attacks appeared to be developing into a full-scale offensive. Now it has happened again. Heavy rain is pelting down on the battlefield around Faenza, where an Eighth Army attack is threatening to turn the Germans' eastern flank. The weather has not yet brought operations to a standstill, and may improve in a matter of hours, but reports from the front indicate that our attacks have already slowed down.

"There is no short-cut to Germany until we beat the Germans. The infantrymen in Italy are winning the war as much as any man on the Western Front," declared Field-Marshal Alexander, when interviewed by the American Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes. He pointed out that the Italian campaign fitted into the war strategy. "Offensives do not start because Marshal Stalin, General Eisenhower or we in Italy want to attack," he said. "It works like a huge team." He added that the Germans preferred to fight on other people's soil rather than on their own. There were better possibilities in the Po Valley for a winter offensive. The enemy in Italy had been forced to use some of his finest divisions.