New Zealanders Entrusted With Great Task

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 65, 20 March 1944, Page 5

New Zealanders Entrusted With Great Task

(Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) Received Sunday, 9 p.m. NEAR CASSINO, March 15. “As great clouds of smoke and dust lifted across the mountains from the rubhle of Cassino village after its fourhour bombardment, New Zealand troops to-day began one of the hardest tasks they have been given in three years of hard campaigning. Their job is attackink key points and deep defences even more formidable than the German winter line they fought through a few weeks ago on the Adriatic front. On the New Zealanders’ success against the network of strong points which held out against several determined Allied results, depends largely the progress that can be made in an important new phase of the Fifth Army's advance towards Rome. It was cleat when they were taken from the Eightn Army front that they had been chosen for an important role but not until to-day, after the greatest prelude of heavy bombing they had ever seen, was the weight of the New Zealanders' Striking force unleased against the German line. “Strong winds and a few days of winter sunshine had hardened the mud sufficiently for the long-planned attack to begin. If you imagine the battlefield spread out across some steeper foothills of the Southern Alps, you nave roughly a picture of the New Zealanders’ front below the Apennines. Jutting out in a snow-topped wall of rock acipss the path of the advance along tm nch Liri Valley, is a mountain ridge honeycombed with German dugouts. Its highest peak, Mount Cairo, dominates the whole countryside for at least 10 miles on our side of tne line and to a greater distance behind the German front. Nestled against its steep foothills and clustered about Via Vasilina, the oldest highway south of Rome, are what are now the ruins of Cassino. “It was against tne aug-in guns ana machine gun pits of this area that the New Zealanders began the attack on foot and tanks, a few hours ago. For some weeks the New Zealanders have held a stretch of the front along the valley of Cassino. Some of it was among battered houses only 50 feet from German outposts and almost all of it directly overlooked by the Germans in the hills. Before the first wave ol Allied bombers came over this morning to pound the enemy defences, the New Zealanders had been withdrawn several hundred yards but within an hour after the main bombing programme ended they had regained their old line. Knowing full well that once they give up the ridges behind Cassino they will have lost command of the approaches to Liri Valley, the Germans have spent months lining hill after hill with their best defences. Their test has begun. As yet this battle is only a few hours old but already the New Zealanders have made considerable progress.