CRACKED OPEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 4

CRACKED OPEN

WHOLE ENEMY FRONT DIFFICULTIES OF COASTAL ROAD LOCAL STAND BY AXIS STILL POSSIBLE.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.45 p.m.) LONDON, August 5. The fall of Catania has cracked open the whole of the enemy front and gives the Allies the opportunity for which the present offensive was planned, says Reuter’s Algiers correspondent. The Eighth Army is pursuing the retreating Germans, who are faced with an untenable position on the southern slopes of Mt. Etna and are being forced to withdraw along the vulnerable coastal highway to Taormina and Messina. While the Algiers correspondent of

the Mutual Broadcasting System declares that the end is now only a matter of days, a Columbia Broadcasting System correspondent says the capture of Catania does not mean that the Eighth Army can now simply roll up the coastal highway. The German position) on a new line north of the city will be just as hard to crack as was the original position. There is no wide coastal road, on which the Allies can thrust forward swiftly. There is only a highway hewn out in. some places from high cliffs, with an escarpment plunging steeply to the sea. Great distances of this highway have been damaged by demolition and two or three well-placed demolitions can effectively hold up things. The latest messages from Sicily report the capture by the Allies of Paterno and Gerbini. Gerbini’s big air base and network of nine smaller fields, 12 miles west of Catania, are now completely in Allied hands.