ENEMY EFFORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 December 1943, Page 4

ENEMY EFFORTS

AGAINST EIGHTH ARMY USE OF FLAME-THROWERS. FAILURE TO DRIVE WEDGE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.0 a.m.) RUGBY, December 9. Making fresh use of their flamethrowing tanks, the Germans have launched a series of fierce coun-ter-attacks against the Eighth Army in the past 24 hours, writes a war correspondent. The counterattacks were the most determined efforts the enemy had made to drive back our forces since the battering of the Sangro line.

It is more than a week since the enemy last used flame-throwers and on Tuesday night he reintroduced them in the foothills of the Majella Mountains at the western end of the Eighth Army’s 15 mile Adriatic front. With tanks and infantry supporting the flame-throwers, the enemy threw in two attacks before midnight against our troops holding high ground near Orsogna. The enemy carefully screened the flame-throwers with his remaining armoured vehicles, as though not wishing to risk exposing them. When his infantry closed on our positions, heavy fighting took place. Further evidence of a stiffening of the enemy’s resistance came at the other end of the front, near the sea, where fie made three counter-attacks against bridgeheads across the Moro. In this sector the enemy concentrated most of his available artillery, including three batteries of self-propelled guns. The enemy used tanks in small groups of five or six to support the attacks made by his infantry, but all his attempts to drive a wedge into the bridgehead close to the village of Rotti failed and cost him casualties. For the first time in six days there has been no rain and our bombers and fighter-bombers were able to plaster troops and positions in Ortona and Orsogna.