SECOND BRIDGEHEAD ACROSS SANGRO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 November 1943, Page 4

SECOND BRIDGEHEAD ACROSS SANGRO

Progress of Eighth Army Offensive ENEMY FLAME-THROWING TANKS DEFEATED & DRIVEN BACK BY ALLIED GUNS (By Telegraph.—Press Associal ion.—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 11.20 a.in.) .LONDON, November 29. The Eighth Army attack, in which the New Zealanders are participating’, was launched before dawn yesterday from the bridgehead on the north bank of the Sangro, against the enemy 65th Infantry Division, holding the German left flank anchored miles inland, in the vicinity of Castel. Di Fretano. The Eighth Army has firmly established a second bridgehead across the Sangro, at Archi, and has occupied high ground north of the Sangro. Castel Di Fretano is nearly four miles beyond the bangro, eight miles from the Adriatic coast and eleven miles inland. The Eighth Army turned loose all its artillery against the German hill positions across the Sangro to open its new attack, says Reuter’s correspondent. Hundreds of guns for nine hours pounded the enemy front line trenches, dugouts and gun positions. As the Eighth Army’s infantry advanced, yard by yard, up the olive and poplar covered slopes towards the villages of Mozzagrona and Santa Maria, the Germans, in a surprise move, sent in flame-throwing tanks, the first which the Eighth Army had seen. A furious action developed on the slopes of the enemy-held ridge, the flame-throwers sweeping ths village streets with a wall of fire. They, however, made no progres and a counter-attack against the advancing British and Dominion troops petered out. The flame-throwing’ tanks later retreated as the Allied artillery got the measure of the tanks’ positions and made it impossible for renewed German counter-attacks to last for more than a few minutes. Fifty thousand shells must have landed on the German positions between breakfast and tea time.