“OUR SHOW”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 January 1943, Page 3

“OUR SHOW”

DESTRUCTION OF ITALIAN EMPIRE BROADCAST BY BRITISH WAR SECRETARY. EIGHTH ARMY’S GREAT FEAT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 23. The Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, broadcasting after the fall of Tripoli was announced, said: “For months past we have been filled with admiration and gratitude for the tremendous exploits of the Red Army. Today we have cause to extend to our own Army that admiration and gratitude. For the destruction of the Italian Empire in Africa is overwhelmingly our show —ours, India’s, Australia’s New Zealand’s, South Africa’s and that of the inhabitants of British East and West Africa.” Ungrudging help had been given by the United States in supplies and air forces in the later stages, he said, but the troops of the British Commonwealth had cleared me Italians out of an empire over 12 times the size of the British Isles. The final stage—since the Eighth Army attacked at El Alamein—had occupied just three months, and in that time the greater part of Field-Marshal Rommel’s armoured forces had been wiped out and five or six Italian divisions had been destroyed or captured. The Eighth Army had kept up the pursuit of the routed enemy from the edge of the Nile delta to Tripoli, advancing nearly 1400 miles in 80 days. “THE EXTRA KICK.” It was not an unopposed advance; all the time there had been fighting and skirmishes between the armoured forces, which had whittled down the enemy and cleared the way for a speedier advance. Twice Rommel had halted and put up resistance, but General Montgomery had used these pauses to bring up reinforcements and supplies, and then gave Rommel the extra kick which drove' him on in his flight again. It’ was not easy going. There was no railway, and only a road which had been systematically sabotaged by the enemy so that our cars had to plough their way across the desert till the obstacles were cleared. In spite of all this, the average rate of advance was 17J miles a day, or, if the pauses were excluded, 30 miles a day. The problem of supplying the army during the campaign, Sir James Grigg said, was well illustrated by the fact that during one week over 8,000,000 gallons of petrol and 8000 tons of ammunition was delivered to the front. The Navy brought stores by sea to one Libyan port after another as they were captured, and aircraft carried supplies to the font and evacuated the wounded. The Army, in return, seized and cleared advanced landing grounds, which enabled our fighter aircraft to keep in contact with the retreating enemy. It was an unparallelled feat of military organisation that had flung such a great force with such speed so far across a hostile desert, and much of the credit must go to the quartermastergeneral’s staff under General Lindsell AIR FORCE AND NAVY. Sir James also stressed the fact that the advance had been impossible with-

out the full co-ordination between the ground and air forces. Complete mastery in the air had enabled our most advanced forces to be serviced by lorries, often without hindrance from the enemy, while at the same time the enemy’s communications had been constantly harassed from the air. At the same time, in the narrow waters of the Sicilian Strait and along the Tunisian coast, the Navy took heavy toll of the ships which were attempting to carry supplies and reinforcements to Rommel’s hard-pressed forces. In 1940 the Italian African empire had been held by more than 1,000,000 Italian troops, and since then another eight divisions had been sent into Libya. Of these Jhordes it was safe to say that within a few hours not one would be left with arms on what was once Italian soil.