BITTER CONFLICT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1943, Page 3

BITTER CONFLICT

IN ADRIATIC COASTAL SECTOR GERMANS BEING PRESSED BACK. ON FIFTEEN MILE FRONT. LONDON, December 15. Bitler, unrelenting fighting is reported on the Adriatic sector, but elsewhere activity is confined to artillery fire and patrols. The Allies are pressing back _ the Germans in the Adriatic corridor, tlong a 15 mile front, on which the Canadians are-in the coastal area, the Indians in the centre and the New Zealanders in the hills. The Indian troops have driven a wedge into the 'German defences by the capture of a small village half a mile ‘from the lateral road to Rome. Tire two bridgeheads across the Moro River have now been joined to form one front of assault.

For the fifth successive day, bad weather has. interfered with air operations on the Italian front. Bostons made another attack on a bridge and fighterbombers went for shipping in a part north-west of Rome. Fighter patrols were active all along the Fifth and Eighth armies’ fronts. They beat off a formation of over 100 German fighter-bombers which tried to attack Allied advanced troops. In the day’s operations, 15 German fighters were destroyed. Five Allied planes were lost.

RAID ON VILLAGE

CANADIANS TAKE 146 PRISONERS INCLUDING GRENADIER OFFICERS (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, December 15. The weather on the Eighth Army front, although clearing, is still bad and the ground is.soggy. Enemy resistance is tougher and more determined than ever, but the Eighth Army is movingon. The two bridegheads over the River Moro—one established by the Canadians and the other by the Indians—have now been joined and combined. The Canadians carried out a daring raid on Sunday night on a village half a mile off the Ortona-Orsogna Road. They captured 146 prisoners, including the, commanding officer, adjutant and four other officers of the Third Battalion of the 361st Panzer Grenadier Regiment, a unit of the once-famous Light Division. In this audacious raid, the Canadians cleared the village of enemy troops and material before withdrawing under cover of darkness. Further inland, on the same night, after successfully repulsing enemy counter-attacks south of Caldari, Indian troops attacked and captured a village which is five miles from Ortona. On the left of the Indians, the Second New Zealand Division has restricted its activities to customary patrolling and consolidation of its sector on the left wing of the Eighth Army.

GERMAN FORCES

COMPELLED TO EVACUATE DALMATION ISLAND.

UNDER ALLIED AIR ATTACK.

(Received This Day, 9.35 a.m.) RUGBY, December 15

The Yugoslav Liberation Army Headquarters announces that owing to the action of Allied aircraft, the Germans have been compelled to evacuate the island of Uljan, opposite Zara, in Dalmatia. .This is described as a heavy defeat, in which the Germans suffered severely. Uljan. is 13 miles long and three broad. It is 120 miles from the Allied right flank at Ortona and probably further from the nearest aerodrome.