South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 10 April 1943
Coming Events
An unmistakable tendency for the fighting in North Africa to impinge more and more on the mainland of Europe can now be noted. So far it is only the air war which is overlapping, but in the last few days it has done so to especially good purpose. Air bases in Sicily and Sardinia have been pounded by intimidating forces of heavy bombers and as the ring tightens round the trapped Italo-German army in Tunisia British and American planes range ever more persistently over the first outposts of that “soft under belly” of the Axis, of which Mr. Churchill has so significantly spoken.
The Italian News Agency already is talking about fighting “to the end for the defence of Tunisia, a bastion of Italy and of Europe.” The Italian soldiers having the less enviable duty of discharging this grandiloquently described task are not so confirmed in its necessity. They also surrender the more readily because of an undeniable lack of sympathy between them and their Nazi allies. Beyond all doubt, Mussolini faces a deteriorating situation, which promises to become rapidly worse. The towns of Southern Italy, already ravaged by bombs, nurse with acute anxiety a fear of the foot of the invader, a fear which is hardly calmed by the not infrequent peppering their coastal railways receive at the hands of the Royal Navy.
At the moment Rommel and Von Arnim stand between Italy and what may be in store for her. They also hold the pass for the rest of Europe, which Hitler insists “is a fortress” capable of withstanding any Allied attack. As to that, time will show. He who seeks to be strong everywhere is stronger nowhere. However, the sooner these “fortress” walls are tested the sooner they are likely to be broken down.
The plain task of the United Nations is to make an end in Tunisia with all possible despatch, and clear the decks for the preparations for what must follow. It has to be admitted that the Germans are not yielding an inch of ground without stubborn resistance. They have used every physical feature of the Tunisian landscape which gave the slightest promise as a defensive position, but formidable forces are arrayed against them and our leadership is not a whit less astute than that of these commanders of a forlorn hope.
From the latest onslaught on the Afrika Corps, it appears that the Eighth Army is still the ace of trumps in the United Nations hand. Other forces in the Allied battle line seem more favourably placed, but it is the Eighth Army which gets the enemy on the run every time. At the Wadi Akarit it took not much more than a couple of hours to smash a way through the German lines. There was no stopping these desert-hardened warriors, and now at last there is a junction between the Eastern and Western Forces.
What this will mean for the defenders of Tunis and Bizerta is for the future to show, but it should spell defeat and unutterable disaster. It must and will be the aim of our High Command to secure this end swiftly and decisively.