Allies Smash on From Salerno

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 222, 18 September 1943, Page 5

Allies Smash on From Salerno

Germans Crumble Under Terrific Sea and Air Blitz Eighth Army Only a Few Miles Away United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Saturday, 1 a.m. LONDON, September 17. “The bridgehead crisis is over,” declares the British United Press correspondent at Allied Headquarters. The Allies have smashed on after cracking the dangerous German wedge between the Sela and Colore rivers. We have regained in a single day four days’ gains by the Germans. We are on top for the moment anyway and the Eighth Army is coming up. ’ ’ The Algiers radio says the Eighth Army detachments are only 18 miles from the Fifth Army’s bridgehead. A British press representative with the Fifth Army says the German retreat from the salient began on Wednesday evening when guns from British warships in Salerno Bay opened a withering barrage after a day of record air pounding by relays of Allied bombers in the most intense and closest air support Allied troops have ever had.

British and American troops heavily reinforced by tanks moving forward under a creeping barrage found the German positions lacerated and the enemy troops retreated before slight pressure without offering serious resistance. Elsewhere our line has not changed with patrols active on both sides.

General Clark’s strongly reinforced Fifth Army wedged in the enemy lines between the Sele and Corole Rivers is now exploiting its success with orders to drive on relentlessly, says Reuter’s correspondent at Allied Headquarters. The official German spokesman told / the Berlin correspondent of the Zurich newspaper Dietat that the British Navy’s intervention at Salerno exclusively turned the battle in the Allies’ favour. The Berlin radio stated that General Montgomery sent a motorised division from the Eighth Army by sea to join the Fifth Army. This division, including Canadians, embarked on Tuesday and landed during Wednesday night near Castellabette and Paestum. It immediately took over the American defence sectors while the Americans reformed. The Germans claim that one of the main reasons for their successes on the Salerno front is that no Italians are fighting with them. The Daily Express’s Stockholm correspondent says the Germans are making big propaganda use of this fact. They claim that it proves that when the German Army is not hampered by the presence of a traitorous and cowardly ally it can repel any attack. The latest evidence indicates that the Germans are determined to establish a major front south of Rome, says the New York Times. The Germans have abandoned their original plan to make a stand on the Po River. The paper adds: “The conquest of Italy has become for the Allies a major military operation. Hitler’s strategy in Italy is another example of hiß resourcefulness which will continue to make him a dangerous enemy to the end. Hitler is rushing reinforcements south, mainly to the Salerno front. This fact together with the constitution of the Fascist Puppet Government in Rome indicates that the Germans have decided on establishing their main front in Italy south of the Capital.’’ WAR CORRESPONDENT’S DARING DASH

How three war correspondents racing ahead of the Eighth Army made a motor dash of a hundred miles and reached the American Headquarters in the Gulf of Salerno is told by Reuter’s correspondent. “With a conducting officer we left the Eighth Army in the neighbourhood of Belvedere and prepared to become involved in a series of rearguard actions and encounter road demolitions and wrecked bridges. Instead we drove in grand style along a road which crawls over cliffs. Along this southern part of the Italian west coast we encountered absolutely no opposition and found nomansland without mortars, snipers, landmines, boobytraps or battle-torn villages. “We found only one bridge destroyed, yet there were, fifty bridges which the Germans could have blown up, causing many days,’ delay. We encountered only one demolition. Our idea was to run straight through every village, but always crowds halted us crying ‘Viva Churchill! Viva Inglese!’ “Italian soldiers just returned from the front disclosed the German dispositions and we drove to the American Headquarters where we reported the state of the roads and the lack of demolitions. The Army commander thanked us. Wo then visited General Alexander who said: ‘Gentlemen, you have done something I would not have attempted. You have certainly shown enterprise.’ ’’ Saying that the occupation of Switzerland by Axis forces must be foreseen as a possibility the Swiss radio added that Switzerland has summoned a considerable number of troops for defence.