CASSINO OFFENSIVE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 198, 19 May 1944, Page 5

CASSINO OFFENSIVE

Poles And Germans In Furious Battle

(£ly Telegraph.—Press Assu. —Copyright.,' (Received May 18, 8.15 pan.) LONDON, May 17.

General Alexander launched a new attack today against Cassino, where the garrison is estimated at 5000, states Reuter's correspondent with the Eighth Army. An artillery barrage comparable .in number of guns to the cannonade which opened the general offensive last week preceded an attack by Polish troops on the heights behind the town which give access to Monastery Hill. Artillery simultaneously shelled Highway 0. the road to Rome. The British and Polish drive toward the Via Casilina, known as Highway B, is described by a correspondent with the Polish troops near Phantom Ridge. He says that Polish troops, in an allout attack against German strongpoints round Monastery Hill and the Cassino area today, were driving down from the hills to the vital Highway 6. British troops of a famous division, penetrating deep into the enemy lines with tanks and infantry, huve captured a point from which they menace the road, which is now under terrific British mortar and machinegun tire. With the Poles driving 111 trom the east toward Highway 6 and the British smashing a way through from the west, the town of Cassino is threatened with complete encirclement. If the Poles and the British link together on Highway 6 Hitler's famed First Parachute Division will be trapped in the Monastery fortress and Cassino (own itself. They will face complete annihilation. L’nder Deadly Fire.

“The poles north of Cassino are fighting fiercely over rugged peaks, ’ slated a “Daily Telegraph” correspondent in an early message from the Cassino sector. “The key position is the Albaneta massif which, if captured, would allow the Poles to dominate the monastery, causing its fall. The Poles, crouching and crawling up the mountain sides, have returned again and again to the onslaught under deadly fire from the German mortars. The “Daily Express” correspondent says: “The fighting on the Polish sector is desperate and furious, with the attackers and the fanatical defenders locked together on the hills. The racket of the firing is continuous It is a ghastly battle. Soldiers who were wounded early in the night were laid on the roadside in the hope that stretcher-bearers could collect them, and many of the wounded have been moved by mules over bumping trails. “There is a fortified house on Albaneta peak spraying fire against wave after wave of attackers. The house must be destroyed, and this is being done—with blood as well as steel.”