GERMAN LOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1943, Page 3

GERMAN LOSSES

' IN ATTACK ON LEROS EXCEED STRENGTH OF BRITISH GARRISON. OBSERVATIONS BY GENERAL WILSON. LONDON, November 18. German casualties in the attack on Leros, General Sir H. M. Wilson (Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East) stated today, including those drowned at sea, amounted to more than the total strength of the British forces engaged. In their first attack on Leros, General Wilson said, the Germans employed a force of 2,500 men, including first-class troops from Crete and elsewhere and highly-trained parachutists who could not be replaced. The proportion of the British troops evacuated was smaller than it might have been owing to the state of complete exhaustion to which the garrison was reduced. The Leros operation was described by General Wilson as having paid good dividends from the diversionary point of view. It recalled the campaigns in Greece and Crete, which were recognised to have served a valuable purpose. He thought the same thing would be said of the occupation of Kos and Leros. In the Aegean operations 36,000 tons of enemy shipping had been sunk' and German air losses had exceeded those of the Allies by three to one. The Berlin radio claims that Samos, the only major island in the Aegean Sea which is left in Allied hands, is isolated by the capture of Leros. “The British had occupied not only the entire Dodecanese but also many of the islands in the Cyclades and Sporades Groups,” it said. “All these are again in German hands, with the exception of Castelrosso, close to the coast of Asia Minor, though they were stubbornly defended by the British Fleet and air forces.” The German news agency declares that Leros strategically was the most important of all the islands in this area. It was a base for control of the eastern entry into the Aegean. FULL REPORT SOUGHT “DAILY MAIL” CRITICISM. LONDON, November 18. “The time has come when the fullest possible report should be made of our incursion into the Dodecanese,” says the “Daily Mail” in a leader commentI ing on the fall of Leros. “We seem to have captured islands in the Dodecanese with no certainty of holding them. It would have been better never to have set out on the enterprise. Failure at this juncture is bound to have an unfavourable effect on neutral, Axis and satellite opinion. AIR ATTACKS ON SAMOS I REPORTED BY GERMANS. GOEBBELS MAKING'MOST OF LEROS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) LONDON, November 18. The German news agency announced that German bombers and dive-bomb-ers yesterday dropped bombs of all calibres on military targets in Samos Island. Goebbels is making the most of the capture of Leros, says Reuter. His propaganda machine is attempting to dwarf events on the’ Eastern front by the capture of the island as a major victory. “Leros is being talked of on every Berlin street corner,” says the German news agency. Reuter

adds that the Germans are being told, as an antidote to their defeats in Russia, that “Leros has shown that the German armed forces do not limit their activities to defensive operations.”