Friday, February 25, 2011

Current Events February 25, 1943; COUNTER-ATTACKS FORCE ROMMEL RETREAT / U. S. TANKS USED TO RETAKE SOVIET VILLAGES :


                      Times News
                  TWIN FALLS, IDAHO, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1943
Counter-Attacks
Opened as Enemy
Troops Retreat
By DANIEL DE LUCE
ALLIED HEADQUARTERS IN NORTH AFRICA, -Feb.
25 (AP)—Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, British commander of
allied ground forces, today swung his American, French and
British troops into a fierce counter-offensive in central Tunisia
where they were shaking loose the last grip of Marshal
Erwin Rommel's crippled colmns on strategic Kasserine
ass and menacing two other strong points at Sbeitla and
Ousseltia to the northeast.
Combining a three-pronged alack in the north with armored car
advances by the British eighth army into the outpost area of the
Mareth line in the south, Alexander had the enemy in trouble on
two fronts.
As British and American troops swarmed into the Kasserine pass
near the Algerian border for moping up operations, the strong .
Amerlcan and royal air forces spread their assault deep Into the
enemy's rear, blasting airdromes, roads, railways, and strafing troops,
vechicles and gunposts.
Italians Captured
As Rommel retreated he again was leaving Italian infantry behind
as a rearguard, as he did in Egypt, and hundreds of crack Italian infantry
and mountain troops were takcn prisoner.

Soviets Use U.S.,
British Tanks to
Speed Offensive
MOSCOW, Feb. 25 (U.P)—Russian troops led by American,
British, and big Klim-Voroshilov tanks captured several villages
south of Orel today and to the southwest a strong German
defense line athwart the outer approaches to Poltava fell
apart under Soviet blows.
Field dispatches said the American-made tanks were giving
a good account of themselves alongside the 52-ton Klim-
Voroshilovs in setting the pace for the close-in on Orel,
German base at the junction of the central and southern
fronts.
A Stockholm dispatch credited to Berlin said Soviet forces using
American-made tanks exclusively had attacked German positions west
of Moscow along the Smolensk highway.
Maintaining the initiative, the red army reported local gains south of
Orel, west of Kharkov in,,the push against Poltava, southwest of Voroshilovgrad
in the Donets basin, and west of Krasnodar toward the sea of Azov.
Spring Thaws
The first thaws of approaching
spring impeded the campaign in the Ukraine, but official dispatches
said the Russians smashed bitter resistance, beat off counter-attacks
Aerial combat was mounting all along the southern front. With better
weather the Germans were reinforcing their air units arid throwing
strong fleets into the effort to check the Soviet offensive.
Simultaneously with the high command's announcement of new
gains along the southern front, the Soviet information bureau in a special
communique denied as an "unscrupulous fabrication" German
claims that the red army has lost 18,200,000

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