FIRST OF SERIES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 194, 15 May 1944, Page 5

FIRST OF SERIES

Attacks To Press Wehrmacht WASHINGTON VIEW (British Official Wireless and Press Assn.) NEW YORK, -May 12. _ The attack in Italy is regarded in Washington as the opening of a series 1 of land offensives that will soon subject the entire Wehrmacht to remorseless pressure from a number of different directions, says the “New York Sun’s” Washington correspondent, Glen Perry. * Observers believe that the attack is part of a much larger project, embracing the Allied forces in Britain, Russia, and elsewhere. The new attack marks the raising of the curtain on large-scale ground troop activity. The air war over Germany has been the overture, but now the actors will be actually on the German divisions in Ifely which are reported to number 25 are now solidly tied down, and even if the Allies are unable to register a significant advance the freezing of these German divisions must affeet oth?r operations. The British United Press correspondent with the Fifth Army says that flamethrowers and also every other weapon the Germans can lay their hands on are being used in the effort to stem the new offensive in the Garigliano sector, where Allied troops have already advanced nearly two miles.- Since daylight today the Germans have sharply increijsed their artillery fire, but a comforting feeling is the steady, swelling stream of our own planes, which are continually smashing the German gunners and other enemy positions. A correspondent with the Indian forces says: “Many hundreds of guns .more than were employed at El Alamein opened fire simultaneously, and the whole battlefield quaked as the guns thundered. The concentrated artillery fire was ' followed by hours of - ‘sottening fire.” Just before .the, barrage opened there was an intriguing silence over a 30-mile stretch of ground that has known no peace for the last six months. When the guns started everything was blotted out. The barrage was a gigantic fireworks shdw, with hundreds of flashes lighting the hills and valleys. The Germans’ readiness to offer very stiff opposition was known, but they hardly expected an attack on such a broad front.” . The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain with the American air forces in Italy says that hundreds of Allied war planes started sweeping the sky at the crack of dawn and gave record-breaking support to the ground forces in the first round of the new offensive. First Casualties Eight. The British United Press correspondent with the Eighth Army reports that the Allied casualties were light in the first phase of the. battle. A number of prisoners have already been captpred in the north-west. They were fanatical members of the First Parachute Division, mostly 17 or 18 years of age. The Germans are reacting very vigorCairo and Cassino. In one sector alone they launched five counter-attacks in two hours. . A “Daily Express correspondent who watehed the barrage which opened the offensive draws a comparison between the Allies “belching hell” and the “twinkle” of the German reply. “This comparison,” he says, “is an indication that for this battle we greatly outnumber the enemy. We have more guns, tanks, and planes, and, most of all, more men. It is the infantryman who will fight this battle. His air colleague in the next few days cannot do much to help him. Even pinpointed dive-bonlbing helps little >n mountainous country. The Germans are •too well dug in to suffer many personal losses by bombing. The air forces can scarcely hope to bend a single gun, but they can bend man’s will and break his heart.”

Enemy Communications. . “The Mediterranean air forces, before the first shell screamed through the moonlight last night, had been' lighting a battle for a whole month —an all-out effort to strangle Kesselring’s supply lines. The plan was officially known as an ‘operation strangle.’ The intention of the whole scheme was to cut off the railway and sea communications to the ■ German battle fronts. “So successful has been the strangulation that today the Germans as far north as Florence have not a single through train to send supplies and reinforcements to any front. Kesselring’s roads are deserted by day, and there is no such thing as a German road convoy—-just odd vehicles travelling at night time. “The Germans at sea have not dared to use anything larger than 300-ton vessels, and even caiques and schooners sail only at might time, hugging the coast, and sheltering in daytime in cove's. There is a bridge blown up on every railway route, and every major line is blocked,' usually at more points than one. “The Germans, therefore, in the course of the past few weeks of lull, have been able to get through only enough to live on. It now remains to be seen if they have enough to fight on, but whatever the air forces have done in the past month it will not save a single infantryman's life. It may take days, perhaps weeks, in the first fierce fighting before the Germans use up their immediate supplies.” Certain divisions which formerly were part of the Eighth Army have now returned to that command, and fresh formations have been absorbed. The army has thus been training and preparing for the new attack. The divisions have been rehearsing their roles, and considerable reserves of stores and supplies have been built up. Enemy Defence Lines. The Gustav Line consists of a series of strongly fortified positions on the main secto.r of tlip Fifth Army front, running 30 miles from the mouth of the Garigliano River to Santa Elin, in the mountains above Caflsino. Field-Marshal Kesselring is said to have several more lines of defence behind the Gustav Line, of which Cassino is the king pin. The Liii Valley and the upper part of the Gnrigliano is a bottleneck beyond Cassino through which the Allied armies must force their way before reaching the main road to Rome and before they will be able to link up with General Clark's men in the Anzio beach-head.

Behind this lies the Adolf Hitler Line, another strong defensive position which German military engineers have prepared for months past and strengthened to the utmost, and which Hitler's troops will be ordered'to hold to the last man.