TIRED BUT HEARTY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1944, Page 4

TIRED BUT HEARTY

BRITISH FORCE REJOINS MAIN BODY DURING ANZIO BEACH-HEAD BATTLE. AFTER BEING CUT OFF BY GERMANS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.35 a.m.) RUGBY, February 8. Hew a big British force, with its supply line cut off by a major German pincer attack at the neck of the northernmost salient of the Anzio area, fought its way back almost intact to its own lines, was described by a war correspondent,

cabling at midnight on Friday. “They came bdek tired but hearty,” he says, “through a gully of fire. For 24 hours they held on to a strongpoint established after grim fighting at the beginning of the week, over the railway line to Campoleone. An attempt to overrun them from the north was beaten off. For the rest of the day they w’aited, confident of the outcome, while other units were hotly engaged in a desperate battle to restore the position. German tanks controlled the main highway —which follows the line of the River Pascolare —with a raking crossfire, and they had to be driven off the ridge on both flanks of the salient. At one time they were nearly astride the road itself. It had been a day of bloody engagements, many between groups no larger than platoons, but our losses had been more than counter-balanced by. those of the enemy. A brigadier who came back with a force which had been isolated all day told me: “The German dead were thicker on the ground than we counted in one day at Medjez, when 700 were killed along one small sector.” The correspondent adds that the immediate situation has grown more comfortable, and had permitted of the bridgehead being strengthened by a withdrawal and adjustment of our line. A tongue of salient we had stretched out across the railway line at Campoleone was always exposed, and the enemy’s movements had gone on all day on this flank. An hour before midnight, enemy infantry overran out outposts and cut off whole companies as the attack rolled forward, under the heaviest artillery barrage the enemy was able to call down, on this front at least. The battle sv/ayed all the morning, and tanks on both sides were knocked out. A cheer went up from headquarters when a signal reported that 100 of our prisoners, whom the enemy were taking along a railway cutting, had been recaptured by a small group of our own infantry. It was the enemy’s intention to lop off the Campoleone salient, but. it is now clear that, his attempt failed—expensively. Another correspondent, describing the escape of the 100 British prisoners, said that as they passed a British position, guarded by Germans, a British major, out of our slit trenches, told the prisoners to make a dash for it when he gave the word. This worked, and 25 Germans were killed when our tommy-gunners sprayed them on the major's shout, and a good number of’ our men got through. According to one correspondent, prisoners lost by the Germans in the Anzio beach-head number 1500.