EIGHTH ARMY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25069, 10 November 1942, Page 3

EIGHTH ARMY

PURSUIT OF PANZERS RAPIDITY OF ADVANCE NEARING LIBYAN BORDER (Rec. 1.15 a.m.) LONDON, Nov. 9. The Eighth Army is still advancing westward, and the battle of Egypt is rapidly becoming the battle of Libya. Some hostile elements, which were holding out at Mersa Matruh, capitulated yesterday, and many more prisoners were taken, including the commander of the Italian Pavia Division. The latest Cairo communique states that the pursuit of the panzer units was continued yesterday. Heavy air attacks on the retreating Axis forces were maintained, and in one raid on Saturday night 50 lorries were shot up. Twelve enemy aircraft were destroyed during Saturday and Saturday night. Four Allied planes failed to return. The road through Halfaya Pass has been blocked as the result of a heavy attack by Allied bombers. A heavy concentration of enemy transport, caught east of Halfaya, was bombed and strafed from a height of 500 feet with telling effect. The remnants of the enemy force must detour six miles around a high escarpment because of the blockage of the pass, which will take days to clear. Six Junkers 52’s, which were believed to be carrying petrol, were shot down.

A despatch from a correspondent says that the Allied landings in North Africa have spurred the men of General Montgomery’s army to greater efforts, and they now feel that they have an even greater incentive to drive the enemy out of Africa. P.M.’s correspondent, Mr Chester Morrison, in vignettes of General Montgomery’s victorious army, relates how he saw Australians who bore a heavy part in battle burying their own dead in shallow graves scooped out of sand, and leaving the German dead until later. He saw 17 Australians pile out of a truck to brew tea. There was wonder in their eyes, ahd they walked carefully, as though not sure of their footing. No officer accompanied them. “All of our officers were killed,” a sergeant-major explained. “lam in charge now.” The 17 were all that were left of a full company.