BATTLE-TORN TOWNS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 234, 30 June 1944, Page 5

BATTLE-TORN TOWNS

Where N.Z. Troops First Fought In Italy PEOPLE BACK IN HOUSES (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) D.H., ITALY, June 27. I have just returned from a visit to places where the New Zealanders first fought in Italy, on the Adriatic sector, across the Sangro to Castel Frentano, Orsogna and Guardiagrele. It is easy now to appreciate from the enemy's positions the difficulties our men faced. In Orsogna, I found only about a dozen persons. They were warily looking about what was left of their homes, many of them booby-trapped. Among these people was one Jimmy, an Italian, who had lived in New York and Boston. He took me on a tour of the German defences. His house had been demolished by German mines when the enemy, left the town. The reason, it seemed, Was because it was above a tunnel leading from the northern edge of the town ft a school building used as an observation post above the eastern slopes across which the New Zealanders attacked. The tunnel led a distance of several hundred yard£ to the school and through its corridors, branching off in several directions, but terminating at the main observation post. From that post, I could see the whole length of Cemetery Ridge, toward Ortona, much of the area in which were hidden New Zealand tanks before they attacked, "some length of road from Castel Frentano down to the Moro River, and many of those houses the New Zealanders occupied for several weeks. We had ft make our way carefully through the tunnels as they had not been entered since the Germans left. Signal wires and portable telephones were still there. It was possible to stand upright throughout the length of these underground communications. Above the main observation post, through a hole in the wall, a machinegun had operated. A tower in the town, obviously used as an observation post, and which we saw gradually demolished by bombing and gunfire, was once the main feature of the church building. The destruction of the tower was completed, but much of the church remaiiis. It is the same with a great deal of the rest of the town, in spite of terrific poundings. Upper stories have mostly been blasted to pieces, but there are still many of the lower ones habitable. The buildings are all of thick stone construction. Germans Lived in Caves.

Jimmy showed me natural caves on the back slopes of the town which were lived in by the Germans. They were lined with a variety of material, such as sheets and bed-covers taken from houses, and the entrances were cleverly camouflaged. The whole of the “mad mile” past the Castel Frentano brickworks is the most conspicuous of all the territory, we used. You can look right down on it just as we knew our every movement was being watched by the Germans. At Guardiagrele, I found war-dazed people sorting out their belongings, much of which the Germans had piled in the narrow lanes and surrounded with barbed wire as obstacles, in possible street fighting. The town has not been greatly damaged, but there were many places where booby-traps had people guessing and deterred them from restoring their homes. There is a great view from Guardiagrele of the valley from which it was pounded by New Zealand guns, but the gun positions of which I knew were difficult to pick up. Most of them now are surrounded by tall wheat crops and some have already been filled in as is the case with a great number of shell-holes. The people are back in the houses we occupied. They speak well of the New Zealanders, and it is the same in the towns of Castel Frentano and at Essa, where there were so many of our men. Tiki Bridge, an iron girder structure erected across the Sangro by our sappers, has been dismantled.