FIFTH ARMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1943, Page 3

FIFTH ARMY

CONTINUING ITS ADVANCE IN SPITE OF FIERCE RESISTANCE. ALL OBSTACLES OVERCOME. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.35 a.m.) RUGBY, September 27. Despite demolitions and obstacles, in the shape of machinegun nests which had to be taken one after another, and despite blown-up bridges, minefields and booby traps, which the Germans are using freely in their delaying action, the Fifth Army continued to advance yesterday, west and north of Salerno. A correspondent says the fighting in this area has been fiercer than anything our troops have experienced in the Middle East, North Africa or the Sicilian campaigns since El Alamein. Time and again the outcome of combats was decided by man to man encounters.

Our troops are advancing towards Naples apd the Germans are withdrawing on the eastern part of the front, fighting rearguard actions and pivoting upon Casano, which we captured yesterday.

The Eighth Army, in the face of slight resistance, has advanced along the coastal road right to the salt marshes of Margherita Di Savoia and in the interior to Cerignola, on a direct line to Foggia.

Leaving the Salerno plain right behind and following the withdrawing Germans, our troops on the right flank of the Fifth Army have captured positions dominating a nest of road crossings in the north-west sector. For seven days these troops, fighting without rest, have been consolidating their line, strengthening avenues of supply over the mountains and repairing bridges and roads blown up by the enemy in their retreat. There was little air activity yesterday, as the bulk of the North- West African air forces were grounded by bad weather. Mitchells found some gaps in the clouds, however, and bombed enemy troop concentrations' in the Sarno area. Fighter-bombers located forty trucks and destroyed four of them. Fighter-bombers attacked forty trucks parked beside a road. The landing ground of Pomigliano Arco, near Naples, was attacked by fighterbombers, two direct hits being scored on a runway and another on parked aircraft. No Allied aircraft were lost. The number of planes captured, slightly damaged or intact, on airfields in Italy amounts to a considerable figure. Six bases have already yielded 244 planes. Of these 77 were at Montecorvino and Ravello and 69 at Taranto. In Sicily, 1,200 planes were found abandoned in July and August. The Foggia Aerodrome, with at least a dozen satellite airfields, has been evacuated by the Germans, on their own admission. Its possession will bring Allied bombers within 500 miles of the groat industrial regions in Australia, to which much German war production has been removed since the destruction wrought by British bombers in ihe Rhineland and in Westphalia.