ARMIES MEET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1943, Page 3

ARMIES MEET

PRIOR TO THE ENTRY INTO RANDAZZO THROUGH AXIS MINEFIELDS DEAD TOWN OF WRECKED HOUSES. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. August 14. Not one of Randazzo’s 1000 houses was found to be intact when British and American forces entered this last Axis stronghold in the Etna line. Even as the troops en- ■ tered the destruction continued with mines exploding every few minutes. The perilous entry described by a Press correspondent with the American forces. At one spot they found a half-open door to a house whose roof was missing, and they peered through into what had been the living room. “The table seemed to have been laid as for a meal,” he added. “There was a great round cheese on the table, and a stone flagon that must, we agreed, contain wine. It looked very tempting, we thought. “I picked up a big stone and hurled it at the door. There was a loud expolsion, and the cheese came whistling through the air into the street. “The entry into Randazzo appears to have been very much of a joint affair. The correspondent' says: “Infantrymen of the Seventh and Eighth Armies met a mile east of Randazzo at 9 a.m. yesterday and marched singlefile into the demolished and heavilymined town. I spent the night on the roadside with the Americans within a few yards of our rendezvous with men of the Eighth Army. “The Americans were in high spirits as the hour approached for our meeting with the British, who had an enemy pocket to clean out on the slopes of Mt. Etna on the way down, for the taking of this mountain town opposite Etna’s smoking crater was the culmination of nearly three weeks of bitter campaigning in the mountains with wearying uphill marches living on hard , rations, and breathing pulverized lava. It would be all down hill from Randazzo, with the roads to the coast macadamised. BRITISH MARCHING SONG. “At a few minutes to nine I heard lusty English voices singing: ‘We’ll be Coming Round the Mountain When We Come,’ and round a bend in the dusty road swung the Tommies, dead on time. They brought German and Italian prisoners whom they had captured during the night. As the Tommies caught sight of us a Lancashire voice called: “Blimey, it’s they Yanks.” “British and American colonels who were leading the parties shook hands while the troops exchanged greetings. Then the American colonel said: There let’s go. Everyone be careful: There are mines everywhere, and we are ahead of the sappers.’ There certainly were mines everywhere—of the heavy kind that is capable of destroying a two-ton truck, and the anti-personnel jumping mines that can kill everyone within a radius of 20 yards.” The correspondent adds: “In two . hours which we spent wandering through the town we did not encounter a single sign of life. In many of the bomb-wrecked houses that had been occupied by the Germans many bodies had been left. Randazzo was as dead as though mighty Etna had breathed again and smothered every living thing in it.’