Bloody Struggles Along Beaches

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1943, Page 4

Bloody Struggles Along Beaches

DETERMINED EFFORT BY FIFTH ARMY IN SPITE OF GERMAN COUNTER-ATTACKS (By Telegraph. —Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received This Dliy, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, September 14. An Allied spokesman described the fighting in the Salerno bridgehead as “certainly the most bitter encountered by any landing force during the war.’’ An Associated Press of Great Britain correspondent says Air Marshal Kesserling is using panzers and infantry in an effort to hurl the British and Americans back to the sea, while overhead hundreds of Allied fighters are engaged with an increasing German air effort. The Germans on the° mountain slopes delivered a murderous artillery fire towards the beaches and launched counter-attack after countercittjElCk A British United Press correspondent agrees that the German counter-attacks are serious, especially around Salerno itself and along the Sele River, which runs inland from the coast south of the town. Bloody struggles are raging along the front, and although the Fifth Army has been forced back in a number of places its troops have penetrated inland for a considerable distance at several points. Our troops are trying to reach a low line of hills commanding our present position. Once these are reached we shall not only have eliminated the worst of the enemy artillery fire, but shall gain command of the enemy away to the east. The enemy at present is able to sweep our landing beaches at many points. Three crack divisions face the Fifth Army, namely, the 15th and 16th panzers and the Hermann Goering Division. They escaped from Tunisia and then from Sicily. They are undoubtedly tough fighters.