Significant Gains By Allied Armies

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 208, 2 September 1944, Page 5

Significant Gains By Allied Armies

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) Received Friday, 11.50 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 1. “Eighth Army troops on the Adriatic sector are engaged in heavy fighting against strong enemy resistance from a high ground north of the Foglia River,” states to-day’s Allied communique from Italy. Penetrations were made in some cases and fierce counterattacks supported by tanks were beaten off. “Other Eighth Army forces west of the Apennines continued to advance towards the Gothic Line. In the Upper Tiber Valley they advanced over four miles. Significant gains were also made in the Florence area where Eighth Army troops made an appreciable advance on both sides of the city. Fifth Army patrols were active west of Florence.”

Referrng to the Eighth Army’s contact with the main defences of the Gothic Line, the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in the Adriatic sector expresses the opinion that any Allied breakthrough will leave the Germans with no alternative but to rush back to the Alps and abandon all of Northern Italy. Pesaro is not in the Gothic Line proper, but the Germans have built defensive positions around it, so connecting it with the Gothic Line that Pesaro can be described as a bastion of it.

Polish and British troops had to fight their way past strong concrete defences which the Germans built to protect the southern approaches to Pesaro across the Foglia River, and thence to the Gothic Line. The Germans immediately retaliated with concentrated mortar and machinegun fire. They counterattacked late yesterday in strength. Fierce fighting raged in the streets, with the R.A.F. bombing the northern approaches to the city and also the German fortifications. The city finally fell to-day. The returns of the patrols reported that the Germans in many places failed to mine Foglia and its northern bank. The minefields elsewhere are as deep as 300 yards. The fact that the Allies forded the Foglia and reached points in the Gothic Line suggests that the enemy underestimated our strength and was not prepared for our attack.