SURPRISE PUSH

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 24826, 24 February 1944, Page 4

SURPRISE PUSH

GERMANS OUSTED TWO HILL FORTS THE NEW ZEALANDEBS DIFFICULT ADVANCE SYDNEY. Feb. New Zealand and Indian troops who have only recently reached the Cassino front have made advances in the Cassino area by two stubborn night battles, states Mr. Roderick Macdonald, war correspondent on the Fifth Army front, in a special despatch to the Sydney Morning Herald. Ending the temporary halt on this front at the moment when the beachhead at Anzio was under its heaviest attack, our troops fought their way across the main tributary of the Rapido River and in the mountains above the plain the New Zealanders and Indians drove the Germans from two of their strongest hill fortresses. . Maoris in First Assault The troops were moved With the utmost secrecy. They wore no badges and abandoned their distinctive hats for berets and side caps. Now, led by General Freyberg, they have made a surprise advance at a point where the Germans did not expect to be attacked. The first assault, which was directed across the Gari River above the point where it forms a V by joining (lie Rapido, was made by troops who stormed over on kapok floats. These floats were rapidly made into a bridge about 60ft. long, and over it went the Maoris.

In spite of an immediate reaction from the startled Germans and continual explosions from small mines which look like cigar-boxes and are very easily detonated, they crossed the mined area and captured an important objective. Night of Extraordinary Effort

Following them were engineers, who spent a night of extraordinary effort, often coming under close mortar, rifle and machine-gun fire.

They took bulldozers into the firing line, gouging cuttings and embankments, and rapidly bridging culverts and tearing up railway lines to which had been attached German mines. They hitched their bulldozers to the lines and hauled them off bodily, the charges exploding harmlessly. By first light they had managed to construct a roadway through a difficult, marshy area right to the river bank.

The forward troops had found that they were among a network of small waterways and flooded fields, with a few Germans on the dry sections. Some of them began to attack from a few boats which they floated out on the water, but these were dealt with by our troops, swimming toward them with tommy-guns and rifles. Bridgehead Secured

In their advance the troops secured a bridgehead area on the other side of the river, extending our ring around Cassino to the north-west.

In both this attack and the advance by our troops in the hills around the ruined abbey there has been hard fighting. The difficulties of an advance into the' broken mountain country at the end of our tortuous supply line are so great that mules have been lamed or lost literally in hundreds, and this does not allow us to mount anything in the nature of a big offensive there. Although Cassino is almost encircled and the edge of the Gustav Line is almost pinched out, this last segment is being bitterly defended from very good defensive positions.