ALLIED PROGRESS FROM EAST AND WEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1942, Page 3

ALLIED PROGRESS FROM EAST AND WEST

Fighters Harrying Enemy Transport 150 Miles Inside Libya DEVELOPING THREAT TO ROMMEL’S REMNANT HITLER SWITCHING DIVISIONS TO WESTERN EUROPE LONDON, November 12. In North Africa the Eighth Jkrmy continues to press westward, while simultaneously American and British forces are driving east to Tunisia and have occupied a port fifty miles from the frontier of that territory. A correspondent states that our aircraft are operating 150 miles inside the Libyan frontier. They are harrying enemy transport in the Gazala and Tmimi areas. The road between these places is jammed with enemy transport just as the coastal road in Egypt was a few days ago. Twenty-three enemy aircraft, including at least six large transport planes, have been destroyed in the latest operations. Our fighters are operating so well forward that they have caught up with the air rearguards of the retreating enemy and on several occasions have engaged enemy planes over airfields from which they were withdrawing. ( British long-range fighters attacked the main airport of Tunis on Tuesday. At least 19 enemy planes were destroyed and an equal number damaged. Attacks have been made also on the enemy bases at Tobruk, Candia (in Crete) and elsewhere. The Vichy radio reported that most of the British and American ships have left Algiers, and the movement of troops eastward continues. On the last report reaching London, the forces were 100 miles from Tunisia. From both east and west the Allies are advancing so rapidly that it is likely that Rommel will be forced to evacuate the remnants of his forces from Tobruk and Benghazi, or from Tripoli, though the Americans are seriously menacing the lastnamed port from the west, says the “Daily Telegraph’s’’ Cairo correspondent. Rommel will possibly make a stand near the Libyan border with regrouped forces before attempting an evacuation. Hitler is reported to be switching several divisions from Russia to the west. Messages from Istanbul say that the Rumanian and Hungarian railways are crowded with German troop trains passing in the direction of Greece and Italy, The Paris fiadio says Turkey has cancelled all military, naval, and air force leave. Ths order to all French naval and land forces in Algeria and Morocco to surrender their arms and return to barracks was signed in Algiers by Admiral Darlan, who announced that he had assumed the command of the French forces in North Africa “in the name of Marshal Petain.’’ Vichy radio, on the other hand, says that Cabinet, under Marshal Petain, paid a tribute to the fidelity of the French African Army and announced that it relied on them to continue the struggle to the limit of their powers. Fighting French circles in Cairo yesterday declared that Marshal Petain had left France for an unknown destination. Today the same sources said they believed that Petain and General Weygand had gone to Algiers to join the Allied command in North Africa. British forces are in the van of the Allied army which is marching through Algeria to Tunisia, where already 1000 Germans have been landed from troop-carriers at the Tunis and Bizerta airports. Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson, commander of the British forces under General Eisenhower, is understood to control highly mobile forces, including at least one which is fully armoured.