SQUARE OF DEATH

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 24825, 23 February 1944, Page 5

SQUARE OF DEATH

ITALIAN BATTLE AREA HUGE GERMAN LOSSES ALLIES HOLD FIRM LONDON, Feb. 22 There is a strange quiet over the Anzio beachhead after the storm of the past few days, says the combined British press correspondent, cabling from the beachhead, at noon yesterday. He adds that the German artillery occasionally opens up, but there is no doubt we have thrown the first stages of the attack out of gear. The bloodstained few square miles at Carrocetto, which the enemy gained at such cost, relapsed into no mail's laud. The ground which tho Germans hold is too boggy for the real deployment of their armour. It is not known how long the Germans may take to regroup, but it may not be long before the next assault. Allied troops are greatly encouraged by the result of tho latest action, but expect a further test. Satisfactory Situation

The beachhead situation is regarded in London as satisfactory so far. For four days, the Anzio front has seen carnage dono on a scale that must equal, if allowance is made for the limitation of the battle zone, the annihilations 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 a squareshaped pocket of perhaps six square miles in area "and pushed into our outer perimeter of defences. There they have been pounded day and night by artillery, caught before they could gain adequate room to manoeuvre. Light and heavy and fighter-bombers, too, have come to bomb them and feed the confusion started by our guns. For four days and

three nights the Germans in this square of death have known no rest or respite. Nature has made this battlefield, in which the Germans have now twice been met, smashed and thwarted in their drive to the sea. It is a square of patchwork plots of brown and tilled fields and others under crops, with Carrocetto at the top left-hand corner, and the main Albano-Anzio highway as the western boundary. All along the beachhead the front line 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 counter-attack. Engineers, reconnaissance units, antiaircraft gunners and various other non-combatant detachments have been used as infantry to strengthen the German main line forces. Tremendous Concentration

So determined was the enemy and so intent his effort that five German regiments. the equivalent of perhaps 17,000 men, were thrown into the 1000 yd. 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 machine-gunned Allied troops. The enemy used his old tactics of concentrating the majority of his forces 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 ho certainly fins not achieved his main objective—the Allies still stand firm on the Anzio beachhead. BLACK WEEK FOR JAPAN HEAVY PACIFIC LOSSES (Special Australian Correspondent) SYDNEY, Feb. "Last week must rank as the blackest for Japan since the war began," says the Sydney Morning Herald, in an editorial article. "There can be no minimising the gravity of the shipping lasses alone in Truk, Rabaul and olf the New Ireland coast, or the shattering of the enemy's air force and its central base in the Carolines. The picture of the brilliant actions fought from last Tuesday evening onward offers an arresting spectacle of aggressive modern sea power in alliance with its aerial arm."

The military writer of the Sydney Morning Herald says much of the enormous value of Tnik, depending on it# 1 ! invulnerability, has been lost to the Japanese. No longer without trepidation will submarines be able to move in and out, aeroplanes come and go, warships enter for refuelling, refit or repair, and cargo transport to the. South Seas flow smoothly out. All movements will be constantly under the menace of American air power.

It is suggested that the neutralisation of Trtilt rather than its conquest will he Admiral Nimita's aim, just as it has been General MaeArtiiurs for Rabaul, the writer adds. To accomplish this, it will bo necessary first to neutralise Truk's important eastern outposts of Ponape and Kusnie, in the Caroline Islands, and probably to capture