GERMAN TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 4

GERMAN TROOPS

ARRIVAL IN NORTHERN SICILY NOTED BY THE ALLIES. SECOND ENEMY AIR TRANSPORT DISASTER. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) RUGBY, July 27. The 29th German Motorised Division is stated in London to have just arrived in Sicily. This was one of the best divisions in the early days of the war, but it was practically eliminated at Stalingrad. It has now been recreated, but whether it has arrived in Sicily fully armoured, or only as an “attack force,” is not known. Agency reports from Allied Headquarters say that German troops, evidently reinforced, have been identified along the northern coast of Sicily. The enemy apparently feared that the resistance of the Italian troops, to whom this sector had been entrusted, was weakening. The Germans, led by the 15th Panzer Division, made s a violent counter-attack, north-east of Enna, on Canadian and American troops, who repulsed it after severe fighting. Allied patrols were very active m the Eighth Army sector. German losses on the River Dittaino have been very heavy, the casualties sometimes amounting to 400 in one attack. Enemy air transport suffered a second disaster in a week when 21 Junkers 52s (transport aircraft) and eight of their fighter escort were shot down by . Spitfires near Messina on July 25. On July 18 Lightnings destroyed an entire fleet of Junkers 52s near the island of Ustica, north of Palermo.