REPORTS IN CONFLICT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1943, Page 3

REPORTS IN CONFLICT

REGARDING EVACUATION ATTEMPTS

LARGE GERMAN-FORCES STILL FIGHTING. IN PERIL OF BEING TRAPPED. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, August 9. A report in London says there is no sign of a German sea evacuation having started. On the other hand the “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent says that hundreds of Allied planes are smashing against enemy attempts to evacuate sec-ond-line troops from Sicily across the Messina Straits.

Our aircraft are ceaselessly bombing the beaches and small craft in the fourmile channel. The Germans are hurrying to get the troops away, and are now using boats in the daytime, singly or in small convoys. The enemy air resistance in the last 24 hours has been almost neglible.

Though commentators in London are sounding a note of caution in view of the fact that 40,000 to 60,000 Germans are still fighting in Sicily, the Press Association’s military correspondent, summing up the genera! feeling, says that the'end is inevitable. The Allies’ advance is continuing successfully and steadily, with the Germans, in country which lends itself to defensive action, fighting determined rearguard actions and gaining as much time as possible with the lavish use of mines, boobytraps and demolitions. Large German forces are in peril of being trapped north-west of Mt. Etna between the Eighth Army, which has captured Bronte, and the American Seventh Army, which is still meeting with bitter resistance just east of Troina, says the “Daily Telegraph's” correspondent with General Montgomery’s forces. The Eighth Army can strike north of Bronte up the Simeto River valley against the flank and rear of the Germans, who are believed to have concentrated on hills round Cesaro.

The Algiers correspondent of “The Times,'’ referring to the reports from Allied pilots that Randazzo was blocked to traffic as a result of air attacks, says that this is a most important strategic point, the occupation of which would enable the Allies to cut off the Germans who have too long delayed a withdrawal eastward through trying to hold the Allies at Troina. SAVAGE FIGHT FOR TROINA. The Germans have managed to get most of their troops from Troina, where they experienced one of the hardest battles of the campaign, reports the British United Press correspondent with the Seventh Army. Americans who had fought in Tunisia say that the battle for Troina was worse than anything there. One hill south of Troina was taken and retaken six times before the Germans were driven out under a hail of artillery fire and dive-bombing. A “New York Tinies” correspondent says that the Americans on entering Troina found a town of horror, emptied of Germans but amazingly alive with weeping and hysterical men, women and children. The Germans had made the town a fortress, and they deliberately neglected the elementary humanitarian duty of evacuating the civilians, who underwent two terrible days of bombinb and shelling. The Germans shot civilians who attempted to escape, and they looted every house before departing.