NO RESPITE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1943, Page 4

NO RESPITE

FOR RETREATING GERMANS

SOME CHASED INTO MOUNTAINS.

ALLIED PROGRESS ON COASTAL ROADS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, August 15. The Americans, advancing in North Sicily, are now 18 miles from Messina. The latest reports indicate that the Seventh Army is now ten miles from Milazzo, while the Eighth Army, pushing up the east coast, is five miles from Taormina. The Allied front is becoming more and more pincer-like. A majority of the Germans who are trapped in the pincers are hastily retreating over 3,000 feet mountains, in the hope of reaching evacuation beaches. The British and American troops are giving these Germans no respite. The only German hope of a temporary stand before the Allies close in is in the mountains north-west of Messina.

American warships bombarded Milazzo.

Reuter's correspondent, cabling from Fiumefreddo, says the Germans left Italians to cover their retreat in his sector, but first made a devilishly thorough job of blocking roads. The only things at present delaying our advance are the enemy’s extensive minefields and thorough demolitions. It is a sappers' war now.