LAST PHASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1943, Page 3

LAST PHASE

OF THE ALLIED ATTACK ON PANTELLERIA DEFENCES SMASHED COMMANDERS’ RADIO TALKS WITH MUSSOLINI. CHASE AFTER ITALIAN ADMIRAL. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 14. The blasting of Pantelleria as Pantelleria felt it is the main theme of full dispatches which are now to hand from the island. ’'Each day.” says one correspondent, “the bombing became a little heavier. One by one the two and three-story houses of Pantelleria village were pounded into dust, and jetties were smashed and communications were wrecked. The water distillery plant was broken, and it grew steadily more difficult to distribute supplies. “The 15,000 troops, mostly of the Fifth Infantry Regiment and the Fascist Militia .began to live most of the time underground, and the civilian population scattered to isolated houses. “On Tuesday came the first shower of leaflets inviting surrender, and Admiral Pavesi, the commander and governor, called up Rome by radio. He said: ‘The bombing is bad, but the island can hold out if it gets no worse. I need not surrender.’ Sentries were posted at 200-yard intervals all round the island. The port was scarcely habitable.

TORNADO OF BOMBS. “Then came Thursday's tremendous tornado of bombs, and the island simply stopped functioning. The roads were blocked, all communications were ruined, workshops were destroyed and the airfield was pockmarked with craters . Everybody spent all the day underground. One German Luftwaffe sergeant who watched from a safe loophole told me that he counted more than 1800 Allied bombers in the course of the day. “General Maffei, the commander of the military force, got in touch with Rome by radio. He told me he had communicated with Signor Mussolini and had said: ‘The situation is unendurable. If this happens again we cannot carry on. Everything. is disrupted. We cannot even resist an invasion now.’ The Duce told Maffei to do the best he could not to let Italy’s honour down. “The bombing went on all night, and it started again on Friday morning. At 9.50 a.m. an Allied armada was seen approaching, and a little later it was reported that the armada included assault craft. Once more Admiral Pavesi called up Rome. ‘I cannot oppose the landing. Now I must surrender,’ he said. Rome gave permission.

“At 11 a.m. the Admiral got into radio communication with Malta and surrendered. He said he had no water. It was not true; there was plenty —in bottles, wells and cisterns. But he wanted to salve his pride in finding some non-military excuse. And he wanted to surrender to someone other than the invasion fleet.

“The Italians had left it so late that our invasion had to roll on some time by its own momentum. The bombing programme was dragged finally to a halt, but not before several of the Italian positions had been raided superfluously and Pavesi, apparently bewildered by the situation, had fled into the hills. They did not find him till 6 p.m. Our commander sent an emissary with an interpreter to chase him and finally he consented to walk down to the airfield. CAPITULATION SIGNED. “They all went into a place that looked like the entrance to a railway tunnel and sat down round a table. The Allied comamnder producer a sheet and a half of typewritten conditions and gave it to Pavesi to read. After suspiciously . querying several items, Pavesi signed. So Pantejleria surrendered.”

According to a correspondent of the British United Press, Maffei said that Pavesi in his message to Mussolini on Thursday stated that the garrison had been without food and water for three days.

The correspondent adds that he saw about 50 German air technicians, who scorned the Italians and seemed eager to tell their captors what they thought of their allies. One said: “You would never have done this if there had been any German anti-aircraft fire or even a few hundred German troops.”