DARING STROKE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1943, Page 3

DARING STROKE

AMERICAN LANDING ON NORTH COAST

CONVOY WIPED OUT & GERMAN FRONT CRUMPLED.

UNITED STATES NAVY GIVES

USEFUL HELP.

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, August 9.

An American broadcast describing the successful landing by

troops of the Seventh Army to the rear of the enemy positions in Sicily says it was one of the most daring actions of the whole Sicilian campaign.

“Slowed down and practically halted for nearly a week by tough German artillery, machine-gun and mortar crews, who were on high ground in lhe San Agata and San Fretello area,” the broadcast states, “the American command adopted a tactical trick to bypass the enemy. American assault troops, under cover of darkness, so that enemy planes could not spot the manoeuvre, embarked in a small fleet, skirted the coastline for a short distance behind San Agata and stormed inshore. Along the highway near the beachhead a convoy of trucks carrying troops of the German Twenty-Ninth Motorised Division was sighted. The Doughboys attacked and wiped out the convoy, but some of the Germans may have escaped afoot towards. Messina. The American seaborne force attacked San Agata and San Fretello line from the rear, while the remaining units advanced frontally. The German line collapsed like cardboard. American troops pushing east along the road joined up with the landed force, which in the landing had the co-operation of the United States Navy.”