Carnage on Beachhead

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 43, 23 February 1944, Page 5

Carnage on Beachhead

GERMANS SHOWING SIGNS OF EXHAUSTION LONDON, Feb. 21. The news from Italy is better to-day, and there are new indications that the British and American troops on the beachhead south of Rome have dis- j organised the enemy attack. It is believed that the present German move to drive the Allies back to the sea may be exhausted. “All along the beachhead the frontline stands firm,” writes a correspondent at Allied Headquarters. “It has withstood for 48 hours German attacks described as the most energetic of the Italian campaign. Our troops then struck back in a brilliant counterattack, and to-day they are within 3000 yards of Carrocetto. “All the available German rtoops were flung into the conflict with the enemy making his do-or-die effort to sweep the Allies from the beachhead. Engineers, reconnaissance units, antiaircraft gunners, and various other noncombatant detachments were used as infantry to strengthen the German main line forces. ‘ ‘So determined was the enemy, and so intent on his effort, that five German regiments, the equivalent perhaps to 17,000 men, were thrown into a 1000yard front in one desperate attack Solid artillery barrages, both medium and heavy, helped the enemy’s forward troops, while at least four waves of aircraft in formations of 20 bombed and machinegunned the Allied troops. “The enemy is using his old tactics of concentrating the majority of his troops on a narrow front against a chosen point. Perhaps it is too early to say that the enemy’s second all-out offensive is a failure, but he certainly has not achieved his main objective—the Allies still stand firm on the Anzio beachhead,” concludes the correspondent. TERRIFIC POUNDING OF GERMANS “For four days now the Anzio front has seen carnage done on a scale that must equal, if allowance is made foi the limitation of the battle zone, the annihilation of the Germans anywhere in Russia, ’ • writes a correspondent in Italy. “Since Wednesday morning at least four divisions of some of Germany’s best troops have been poured by the High Command into the square-shaped pocket perhaps six square miles in area pushed into our outer perimeter de fences. There they have been pounded day and night by artillery, caught before they could gain adequate manoeuvring room. “Light, heavy and fighter-bombers, too, have come to bomb and feed the confusion started by the Allied guns. For four days and three nights the Germans in this square of death have known no rest or respite. “Nature made this battlefield in which the Germans have now twice been met, smashed and thwarted in their drive through to the sea. It is a square of patchwork plots of brown tilled fields and others under crops with Carrocetto in the top left-hand corner and the main Albano-Anzio highway on the western boundary. “We hold three sides of this box and contain the enemy infantry and tanks for our guns to crush with a weight of

shells never before equalled in the bridgehead. The roads that gave the German tanks their best, though restricted manoeuvring ground, became in the end the answer to our gunners’ dreams. I suppose it would not be putting it too high to calculate that some 100 guns could shell a given point in the Germans’ position at any given moment and at the shortest notice,’’ the correspondent says. The German divisions on the beachhead front are the 26th Panzer, the Ist Hermann Goering Panzer, the 3rd and 29th Grenadiers, the Fuhrer Panzer Grenadiers, the 715th and the 114th Motorised, the 65th Infantry, and the 4th Paratroop Division. The German divisions pitted against the Fifth and Eighth Armies are the 334th and 350th, the 94th, 71st, and 44th Infantry, the Ist Paratroop Division, the 15th and 19th Panzer Grenadiers, and the sth Mounted Division. Tho majority oi these divisions face the main Fifth Army front. ALLIED WARSHIPS HELP Continuing their bombardment of the Formia and Anzio areas, British warships scored direct hits on a factory behind the enemy beachhead lines on February 18, and American warships inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy on the following day, state Allied Headquarters. The Allied bombing effort yesterday was again directed against the beachhead area. Heavy, medium and light bombers participated, hitting supply dumps, troop concentrations and gun positions. Fighters continued their offensive patrols over the beachhead forces. Shipping at Via Reggio was attacked by other medium bombers. On Saturday night light bombers attacked the enemy north of Anzio. Four enemy planes were destroyed, and three of ours are missing. The Mediterranean Allied air forces flew approximately 900 sorties. The enemy air activity over the beachhead amounted to 100 sorties. Yesterday the enemy attempted infiltrations between Cisterna and Carrocetto, but these were repulsed, says an Algiers correspondent. In their last attack on the beachhead the Germans advanced to 400 yards south of Carrocetto. Allied infantry and armour, supported by artillery and aircraft, counter-attacked to resist the infiltration and held the enemy. By nightfall on Saturday the Allies had driven the Germans back more than a mile and taken 700 prisoners. On Friday the British cruiser Mauritius and the destroyer La Forey bom Larded Formia and then moved up to bombard Anzio, the correspondent adds. On Saturday an American cruiser bombarded Anzio. The beachhead situation is regarded in London as satisfactory so far. General Macreery, who is announced to be commanding on the Garigliano front, was General Alexander’s Chief of Staff in the Middle East and followed him to Timisia. He then obtained a corps, with which he attacked Salerno. It is also disclosed that the Cameronians are among the troops who have been fighting with the Eighth Army.