LITTLE CHANGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 September 1943, Page 3

LITTLE CHANGE

IN HOURS OF HARD FIGHTING NO OCCASION FOR GLOOM. ACCORDING TO MILITARY EXPERTS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, September 15. No further official news is yet available of the Salerno fighting, but the mid-mOrning broadcast from the United Nations radio at Algiers said there had been no change in the hard fighting of the last few hours. A battle of attack and counter-attack is in progress. It is considered fairly evident in London that the main German attacks are on both sides of the River Sele, in the plain south of Salerno. The three German divisions so far identified arc the Fifteenth Panzer Division, restored after the North African campaign, the Hermann Goering Division, from Tunisia, and the Sixteenth Panzer Division, from Stalingrad. There will no doubt be other units which the Allied forces will meet, but an accurate assessment of the German strength is not possible at the moment. While the present time clearly is one of anxiety and while any loss of ground at this stage is of importance out of proportion to its size, there is no occasion for gloom, say military experts. On Monday night, American and British troops stopped vicious German counter-attacks against the centre of the Allied bridgehead in Salerno Bay, states a correspondent with the Fifth Army. The enemy struck in the area of the Sele and Carjre rivers and were bounding towards the junction of the rivers. •