Into the North

In Italy the Nazi commander. Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, had watched the Russians closing his Austrian escape routes, but made no move to pull out. His supplies of fuel and transport were low. No one knew better than he that once he took to the roads Allied airmen could cut his columns to bits. Here he must stand and fight.

And suddenly the four-months' lull on his "forgotten front" was over, the fight was on. The roads, towns, supply depots of his natural fortress were being blasted from the air. In the British sector 3.400 high-explosive bombs. 180,000 fragmentation bombs, rained on his troops. Allied flame-throwing tanks moved up.

On the Adriatic side of the-front Lieut. General Richard L. McCreery's Eighth Army, soldiers of five different nations in the van, struck from the Senio River across the Santerno and then the Sillaro. The Germans gave ground carefully, holding village strongpoints until the last. By week's end the Eighth had driven farther into the Po basin and was reaching to link up with the Americans below Bologna.

On the Ligurian coast Lieut. General Lucian K. Truscott's Fifth Army thrust for the old naval-base town of La Spezia. Working a pincers, the 442nd Regiment (Japanese-Americans) and the 473rd Regiment (Negroes) cleared enemy defenses around the famed marble center of Carrara. Italian Partisan units swarmed out of caves and quarries to help the troops capture the village.

The attack spread. In the mountainous center of the peninsula below Bologna Allied artillery poured 75,000 shells into the enemy lines and the troops drove ahead. The advance, measured in yards in the early hours, gradually picked up speed as the German mortars, dug in almost baseplate to baseplate, were overrun.

Over the radio came a message from Field Marshal Sir Harold R. L. Alexander: "The moment now has come for us to take the field for the last battle which will end the war in Europe." The French high-command added a word: their troops were attacking along the Italo-French border to strike for the German rear.

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