NEAR TO COLLAPSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 3

NEAR TO COLLAPSE

GERMAN TROOPS ON SLOPES OF ETNA HOPES 01- ESCAPE TO MAINLAND FADING. ALLIED WARSHIPS PATROLLING STRAITS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 4. Writing prior to the fail of Catania, the “Daily Telegraph” correspondent in Algiers said: Hopes by the Axis of being able to withdraw the remnants of its forces to the mainland of Italy, should they be able to make a fighting retreat, are rapidly fading following upon a disclosure that Allied warships are now constantly patrolling the Straits, of Messina.

. A belief that the German defenders in. front of Mt. Etna and .the AdernoPaterno road are near to collapse as a result of the strain of battle is expressed by the “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent on the Eighth Army front. 1/

“It is still a hard slogging match, and we are driving the enemy back position by position from his intermediate hill strongholds,” he says. “Each position has' to be stormed by

infantry attacks, usually at night after softening by artillery. “This process has been going on in the upper Dittaion Valley for the last five days, and evidence is now beginning lo appear that the Germans are getting very near the end of their physical endurance on this sector. We have brought fresh units into the line, but the Germans have not yet been able to do likewise, and the sheer weight is telling. However though they are being forced to retreat from the north coast right down as far as the western foothills of Mt. Etna, the enemy troops arc continuing to fight desperately and are not yielding an inch of ground that is defendable ■even l temporarily. “House-to-house fighting through the villages on the British and Canadian sector west of Aderno is the grimmest we have yet experienced.”