MUD ON THE ITALIAN FRONT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1943, Page 4

MUD ON THE ITALIAN FRONT

As Well as Stiffening Enemy Resistance HINDERING PROGRESS OF ALLIED ARMIES AND MOVEMENT OF SUPPLIES BEHIND LINE (By Telegraph—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, October 11. Appalling weather is affecting not only the Fifth and Eighth armies, but the vast movement of supplies behind the lines, says Reuter’s correspondent at Allied Headquarters. The whole military effort is developing into a dogged fight, not only against ever-stifiening resistance, but worsening campaign conditions. The British United Press Algiers correspondent says this is the problem facing the Fifth Army: The Volturno River varies from 600 to 1,000 feet in width and is flooding rapidly. Bridges have gone and pontoons must be erected under German fire from the north bank. The north bank itself is slippery and treacherous. Our guns, which had to be manhandled into positions in mud like that of Flanders in the last war, are now hammering the German emplacements on the north bank. The crossing is a problem which needs tough genius to solve. The Allied troops who captured Ponte Landolfo are now only 18 miles south of the next big road communications centre of Vinchiatura, which is on the main Foggia-Rome motor road. According to the German news agency Allied reconnaissance troops have been engaged at Santa Croce, about eight miles north-east of Ponte Landolfo. Along the Eighth Army front, from the Adriatic to the mountain backbone, General Montgomery’s troops have advanced between two and three miles in the past 24 hours. Bad weather is temporarily bogging transport. Each advance means arduous footslogging through mud brought down by the hill streams during fierce rainstorms. _______