Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1943. FEARS WELL JUSTIFIED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 March 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1943. FEARS WELL JUSTIFIED.

SOMBRE broadcast by the Rome radio in which it warned i,ts home hearers that the Allies have chosen Italy as a landing place for an invasion of Europe and that: “The Italian people must know that their gravest hours lie ahead” no doubt is to be read primarily as a comment on the present and anticipated course of events in Tunisia. The fears thus expressed by the' enemy radio appear to be in every way warranted, Already there are positive indications that the attacks launched recently by the Axis in its last remaining bridgehead in Africa have accomplished little and are destined to fade speedily into insignificance in face of powerful Allied attacks from the north, south and west. Incessant air attacks and submarine and other naval attacks on the enemy’s Mediterranean communications have also, of course, their very vital bearing on the outlook.

Such results as the Axis forces have secured within the last few weeks in areas extending from west and south of Tunis to west of the port of Sfax, including the attack in which, they are now reported to have gained some ground in the Beja area, seem to be fairly summed up as short-term local successes. Tunisia is a territory extending for about 300 miles from north to south and about 160 miles wide at its broadest from east to west. Much of the interior country is hilly, but along the greater part of the eastern coast there are plains well equipped with roads and railways. Six great valleys run across Tunisia to the east coast and in their recent attacks the Germans have been trying to block these valleys and so to retain command of the coastal corridor and keep open a line by which Rommel may retreat to a junction with von Arnim on the north.

According to the latest available reports, however, Rommel is very far from being in a position to make an unimpeded retreat." He is said to be concentrating his forces on the Mareth Line, almost in the extreme south of Tunisia, where they are now being bombarded heavily by the Eighth Army. The Allied forces in the north, south and west are developing an increasing pressure of attack.

In the north, the British First Army holds positions about 30 miles distant from Bizerta and 20 miles from Tunis. In the areas between those occupied by the First and Eighth armies, American and French forces are making headway to the east in the valleys in which the Germans lately gained some ground. To maintain their present holdings, the enemy forces would have to defend successfully a line extending over nearly 300 miles from north to south. This would mean not only withstanding the First Army in the north and the Eighth Army in the south, but effective resistance to any and all Allied attacks developed by way of the six great lateral valleys running to the coast.

There is no reason to suppose that the enemy is capable of a defensive achievement of this magnitude. On the contrary there is every indication that if it attempts to stand on the Mareth Line, Rommel’s Afrika Kor,ps will be assailed from both front and rear and that the Eighth Army, in that ease, will have an excellent opportunity of rounding off the task it began so well at El Alamein and continued at intervals in the 1,500 mile pursuit across Libya.

Taking account of the possibilities of both frontal and flank attack, there are good prospects, in the conditions of freedom of movement to be expected with the ending of the rainy season, that the Allies will be able soon to close in on Tunis and Bizerta with such a power of converging attack as will speedily make an end of the enemy in his last foothold in Africa. A substantial basis thus appears for the apprehensions now being expressed in Italy, though an invasion of that country is not by any means the only .possibility that will be opened up by the clearance of the North African shores.