Fifth Army Pushing Nearer Naples

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 224, 21 September 1943, Page 5

Fifth Army Pushing Nearer Naples

GERMANS DIGGING-IN ON NEW LINE Received Monday, 8.45 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 20. The Fifth Army speeded up its advance yesterday along the entire front. Reuter’s Salerno correspondent says the next round of the battle for Italy will be fought in the mountains circling Salerno Bay. It will he an infantrymen’s battle in passes covered with vineyards and orchards and traversed by a few tortuous roads. Men and not massed movements of tanks and guns will decide the outcome. The Daily Express says the Fifth Army is pushing nearer Naples and quotes an Axis report that the nuin battle is being fought at Castellamara, 15 miles south of Naples. The Algiers radio says the Germans are digging-in in a new position in expectation of a heavy drive from the combined Fifth and Eighth Annies. The radio urgently warned Italians to take cover from Allied raids and urged them not to come into the open waving flags. So hurried was the German retreat from Nicastro that they left a hundred miles of coast road undamaged, reports a correspondent with the Eighth Army. Small groups endeavoured to get away with all speed through the mountains, but so fast was the Eighth Army’s advance that the enemy was forced to fight a rearguard action at Lagonegro, ten miles :nland from Sapri. Just south of the town they tried to ambush the British with machineguns and mortars in the hills on either side of the road. These were rubbed out, but the enemy had tanks and selfpropelled guns in the town itself, also infantry. British infantry following on the reconnaissance units contacted Lagonegro on Saturday and the enemy was forced to retire up the road under cover of darkness just as the infantry forced their way into the town. Another clash occurred in the hills a dozen miles northwest of Lagonegro when British armoured cars came on a strongpoint covering a hairpin bend. The cars quickly silenced the machineguns and a small group of Germans was Killed or escaped on foot into the mountains.

The islands of Ischia and Procida near Naples have been secured for the Allies by units of the Italian Navy and a British naval officer, according to press messages. Seven Italian boats were at Capri when the Allied force arrived. The crews insisted that they be allowed to fight as part of the Royal Navy. They were allowed to go to Ischia and then proceed to secure them against the Germans. They were accompanied by one British officer. A full-scale war is raging in the Cunco area about 50 miles south of Turin, where members of the Italian Fourth Army formerly stationed in France are resisting the Germans, says the Berne Dietat’s correspondent on the Italian frontier. Pockets of Italian resistance are also reported still to exist in the Venice area. German troops in the Turin area fired on demonstrating crowds of workers and many were killed or wounded. Turin workers still refuse to return to the factories.