Rout

The Germans in Italy gave up all pretense of holding a continuous front. Along the last few roads open to the north they scuttled back in the worst rout of a German army on a western front since Tunisia. Allied forces raced up the peninsula after them, making up to 25 miles a day in near-bloodless pursuit. Town after town in Umbria, ancient land of the little-known Etruscans, fell virtually unharmed.

Occasionally the enemy turned, like a harried animal, to snap at his pursuers. On lateral Highway 74, from the Tyrrhenian coast to Lake Bolsena, the Germans held a line for three days until it was cracked in three places by General Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army. Grosseto, opposite Elba (see below), fell to the Fifth. With it went a major military airfield about 70 miles from Florence. In 38 days the Fifth had advanced almost 150 miles (see map).

Behind a thin shell of rear guards the Germans--at least on the western side of Italy--were a shattered rabble. Captured stragglers carried official passes authorizing them to get to Florence as fast as they could. Machines and equipment littered the roadsides, knocked out by the air force or just broken down.

Up the Tiber. In the mountainous center the Eighth Army kept the Germans more heavily engaged. British troops captured industrial Terni, ancient Spoleto, once famed for its castle where Lucrezia Borgia ruled. Then they moved northwestward up the Tiber valley. One armored regiment took so many prisoners that help had to be sent to bring them in.

On the Adriatic coast the Germans were fading out almost as rapidly as in the west. There the Eighth kept only occasional contact with the Germans, arrived in one town to find Italian partisans already in possession.

The Italian campaign was now a battle for the few good highways along which the Germans could retreat; crossroads were prime objectives. As the Allies took one road after another from the communications system, the escape routes narrowed and the enemy became an ever easier target for the unopposed Allied air force, flying 2,000 sorties daily. Germans were reported traveling only at night, hiding in the day.

Allied strafing and bombing planes were in the Arno River valley, behind which the Germans have been building the "Gothic Line" (see map). Its outposts were reportedly at Pisa, Florence, and Rimini. However, Allied sources revealed that an additional defense in depth had been constructed farther north--from Marina di Carrara, some 30 miles above Pisa, eastward to a point 18 miles above Florence.

Perhaps behind these barriers, manned by limited reinforcements from the north, Field Marshal Kesselring might still regroup his shattered units, turn them back to the fight. His chances were getting slimmer by the hour.

Spearheaded by French colonials, Allied forces landed on the historic island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy, methodically cleaned up this small (19 by 6 1/2 miles) German outpost on their flank. By nightfall of the first day, the Tricolor floated over the villa that Napoleon left for the Hundred Days and Waterloo. This week isolated pockets of Nazi resistance were being mopped up in the hills.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.