ANOTHER DUNKIRK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 99, 17 August 1943, Page 4

ANOTHER DUNKIRK

UNDER the protective cover of what has been described as the most powerful anti-aircraft concentration of fire, the German Italian Command is trying to initiate another 'Dunkirk' as the beaten Axis armies pour to the northern tip of Sicily and await transport across the narrow Messina Straits. Boats of all descriptions, passenger liners, coastal craft and landing barges are utilised in this ghastly run-ning-of-the-gauntle.t between the continual straffing and bombing, of the R.A.F. and the distant bombardment of the Allied fleet. War in its most intensified form rages round the strip of water that separates Sicily from the toe of the Italian mainland. Night and day the disheartened Germans as they proceed in long motley processions of infantry units and vehicles are hunted out and punished by the relentless Allied fighters. The weary column is given no rest when it reaches the coast for here the packed vessels make for targets which are doubly vulnerable to aircraft and the destruction and loss of life must be terrible. Even when safely across the tortured waters of the straits the retreating army is still not free from the demoralising effects of air bombardment and machine-gunning. The melancholy and tragic retreat must be continued until well within the body of the. mainland for without air protection of any sort the German army is having a taste of what our men had to endure in Greece and in Crete. Thus we have a thumbnail sketch of the terrible sufferings of the retreating German Sicilian army, and thus we move on to fresh connectives as to what course the Italian nation will take in its relationship to the Axis. Will the Nazi grip be sufficiently strong enough to prevent the peace overtures for which the great body of the Italian people yearn ? Will a new and more desperate front be formed on the Italian mainland, and the uselessness of more and more sacrifices be imposed, upon the long suffering populace ? Will this latest German defeat be sufficiently shattering in its effects to allow Badoglio to take the course of a separate peace on the "honourable terms" offered by the Allied Commander-in-Chief ? Any of these things may happen and the next few weeks should see their fulfilment.