Through Muddy Grapevines

For one day in Italy, it was a little like what it used to be. For the first time since the capture of Rimini (Sept. 22), the Allies took another town of some size.

Through the ankle-deep mud of the Emilian plain, Canadians of the Eighth Army fought from grapevine to grapevine toward Ravenna (pop. 78,000), Byron's favorite Italian town, once an early Christian metropolis and a naval base in the days of Augustus Caesar. Finally the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards drove in from the northwest while the 27th Lancers pushed in from the south. The Germans backed out so quickly there was no time for house-to-house fighting. Residents turned out for the kind of flag-waving reception the toiling troops in Italy had almost forgotten.

Other forces of Lieut. General Sir Richard L. McCreery's Eighth were now across the Lamone River north and south of the Emilian Road town of Faenza, home of faience pottery. In the heavy rain, the British inched to within a mile and a half of the town against hard German counterattacks, in one day netted only 500 yards.

The Fifth Army, in positions at right angle to the British, held quiet. The Fifth was waiting for its new commander, rasp-voiced Texan Lieut. General Lucian King Truscott Jr., who last week succeeded Lieut. General Mark Clark, now commander of the Allied armies in Italy. But a new commander would not necessarily mean a swift drive to the north. Mark Clark's armies were short of men; the Allied push, and almost all of its European pushing power, was in France.

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