20-MILE GAP

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 56, 4 September 1944, Page 1

20-MILE GAP

ALLIES PRESS FORWARD

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, September 2. The Eighth Army is pressing forward in a 20-mile gap which it has torn in tlie Gothic Line, having penetrated in places through five to six miles of German defences. The Germans are now digging in desperately on heights further back. \ Following upon the sudden Eighth Army assault, the Fifth Army has swung into the offensive. Troops have crossed the lower Arno and captured Pisa, and are pushing on within 15 miles of the western fringe of the Gothic Line. New Zealanders, South Africans, Polish, British, Canadian, and Indian troops helped to breach the Gothic Line, according to correspondents' reports from Italy. The Eighth Army's powerful thrust against the Gothic Line caught the Germans completely off their guard. The last known prepared German positions in Italy are now useless, and *«-s 1 °« Iy a matter of t»me till the Allied forces over-run the Po Valley. The British United Press correspondl?l^™ 11 t, he Ei§hth Army says that Field-Marshal Kesselring gave the battered First Parachute Division another dle or,der> de«ianding that they hold Pesaro for three weeks. KesselS^° rd.!,M(? inted " out that pesaro was the Adriatic anchor of the Gothic Line, whicn was described as the last A Rv?A° Pt? % r£ ths Brenner Pal. nrTtS rfv mJ ed- Press correspondent tL 5 q "alian-Swiss frontier says that me b.b commander in northern Italy is reported to have ordered all Ger--2 hea^ to return to clrwir/mi^Se" *" * '«*«