INCH BY INCH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1942, Page 3

INCH BY INCH

PROGRESS OF THE EIGHTH ARMY THRUSTING INTO POWERFUL DEFENCES. SAPPERS TOILING TO CLEAR MINEFIELDS. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, October 28. The pattern of today’s brief news from the Egyptian fighting remains broadly the same as the last few days—-the Eighth Army, with the heaviest artillery support so far produced, is moving forward inch by inch in the face of stubborn resistance from the enemy’s vvellprepared positions, the British United Press correspondent with the Eighth Army says. Field-Marshal Rommel has a strong screen of 88 millimetre guns behind which is grouped the main weight of his armoured forces. The screen of artillery must be breached frontally or turned by a flanking move. Neither alternative is easy. Our sappers are toiling at the task of cleaning up enemy minefields to give our armoured and supply vehicles room to manoeuvre and disperse. Meanwhile, Italian and German sappers are equally busy sowing new minefields to plug threatening gaps and slow up our progress generally. Yesterday’s tank battle developed after Rommel threw tanks against the positions we had captured on the previous night. The infantry held on and enabled our tanks to come up and drive the Germans off. It was not an all-out armoured engagement, but headquarters states that the Germans received a substantial blow. The clash occurred at the point where we achieved the deepest penetration. Reuter’s Cairo correspondent says that the fact that a tank clash occurred indicated that the corridor driven into the enemy’s front has been sufficiently widened to permit tank manoeuvres. This is, perhaps, the beginning of the second phase—a phase in which the threat to sections of the

enemy line forces him to armoured combat. • Progress may seem slow and information meagre, but the wave of our attack daily washes a little further up the enemy beach. The Berlin radio says: Enemy bomber formation have been coming over for days in parade formation without deviating an inch, surrounded by swarms of fighters which hover m the'air like bees. We have never seen such a picture.”