HARRIED RETREAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 November 1940, Page 5

HARRIED RETREAT

GREEKS USING CAPTURED TANKS RETIRING DIVISIONS MENACED. BOOTY CLUTTERING ROADS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, November 23. A Salonika message says reports from the Findus sector indicate that a Greek column driving through the mountain valleys has cut the Italian army in half. The Greeks are reported to be 10 miles from Pogradec. Five hundred Albanian rebels are reported to have ambushed an Italian detachment of 15 motor-vehicles on the Argyrokastron road, killing four officers and 35 soldiers and wounding CO. An R.A.F. communique from Cairo reveals that R.A.F. bombers yesterday raided Tepelene. R.A.F. reconnaissance planes were also active over Albania, securing valuable data. British and Greek dive-bombers bombed .a mechanised supply train and armoured units in the Argyrokastron Valley, scattering the drivers to the hills and allowing Greek cavalry to capture many units intact. This enabled the Greek left flank to rush on, increasingly menacing the retreating Italian divisions. A Government spokesman in Athens said the prisoners taken had not yet been counted, but there was so much booty that it was cluttering the roads and impeding the Greek advance. A communique states that the Greeks are pursuing the Italians northward from. Koritza in Italian tanks which were captured from reinforcements sent to relieve Koritza. The dispersal of the Italians from the Ivan heights would give the Greeks command of the whole of south-eastern Albania to a minimum depth of five miles from the frontier. Four batteries of mountain guns and 10 machine-gun nests have been captured on Mount Ivan. The capture of considerable war material is announced in a Greek communique which gives the following details: 88 heavy and light machineguns, 26 tanks, more than 250 cars, more than 1500 motor-cycles and bicycles, 55 anti-tank guns, and a considerable quantity of explosives and material of all sorts.

DUCE DENOUNCED DECLARATION BY GREEK PREMIER. LONDON, November 23. The Greek Prime Minister, General Metaxas, in a broadcast said the Greeks hated Mussolini because he desired to enslave Greece and because he had made Greece’s extermination Italy’s war aim. “We assure Mussolini that we are determined not to be exterminated, but will continue to live as a free and independent nation,” he added. “We are fighting not only for our country, but also for the other Balkan States and for the liberation, of Albania. “We will be victorious together with our British allies, whom I thank for their wholehearted aid, and specially for their naval and air exploits. Thank God Greece is again a champion of the cause of freedom and liberty.”