LIBYAN BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 May 1942, Page 4

LIBYAN BATTLE

GOING WELL FROM BRITISH STANDPOINT I AND NOT ACCORDING TO AXIS PLANS SOME DETAILS OF ENEMY LOSSES. FREE FRENCH DEFEAT ITALIANS. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, Noon.) LONDON, May 29. While, ,according to the ' latest Cairo reports, Axis forces are approaching Tobruk; British military quarters in Cairo describe thd campaign as “satisfactory ftdm blir viewpoint.” They say that General Ritchie is confident and that indications appear to suggest that things have not gone quite according to Axis plans. The main tank battle is now proceeding betvVeen Acrohla ahd Knightsbridge. A Free French division repulsed an Italian attack at Bir Hakheim. It is claimed that it destroyed 35 Italian tanks. The Free French division ineludes a battalion from the Pacific. It consists mainly of white troops. The division also includes troops from Guiana and Tahiti and other colonials, motorised infantry and Spahis. Most of the division’s seventy-fives (field guns) were captured in Syria from Vichy fdreds.

DEFENCES INTACT * " “ IN SPITE OF EM£MY INFILTRATION. DESPERATE ATTACK REPELLED WITH HEAVY LOSSES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day; 11.20 a.m.) RUGBY, May 29. The position of the British in the battle now being fought in Libya is described by an agency correspondent as being not unsatisfactory. Despite Axis infiltration behind the British lines, at no point has the line been broken, and desperate efiemy attacks south of El Adem have been, repelled with heavy losses by British mobile artillery. The Free French destroyed 35 out of an attacking force of 70 tanks of the Italian Arriete Division. Throughout the battle there has been perfect co-operatidh between the R.A.F. and lahd forces, while Axis air activity has been bn a sinall scale. The number of vehicles destroyed by the R.A.F. since the battle began funs into many hundreds. It is estimated that 250 enemy tanks carhe rdurid the British sdutherii positions, but the fact that the Fifteenth Panzer Division, which went as far as Sidi Rezegh, had to withdraw, indicates the heavy losses sustained. After a fourth day of battle it appears likely that the Axis High Command had only the objective—Tobruk —and that the push was initiated on Hitler’s orders, to give the Germans a major success which they badly needed. ■ The correspondent says he was recently able to see the tfembfiddus work ’ cari’ied out on the Tobruk defences since November.