Allied forward troops yesterday met growing German resistance while advancing cautiously inland from their strong bridgehead south of Rome, indicating that large scale clashes with the Nazis may be expected hourly in the battle to decide the fate of the Italian capital and Kesselring's armies
imperilled on the southern Fifth Army front.
Persistent reports last night said the Germans had evacuated Cassino and were dispatching forces northward to stem the Allied drive from Nettuno.
Exact disposition of the Allied troops in the bridgehead area was uncertain last night. The official communique today merely announced that troops had extended their foothold south of Rome to 12 miles inland, while Cairo radio claimed the Allies were not only astride the Appian Way itself, but also, had crossed the double-track railway from Naples to Rome.
A German radio commentator said the British had thrown tanks into the battle
for the first time in an engagement north of Nettuno.
Powerful Allied air armadas continued to hit the enemy's vital supply lines, blasting bridges, road and rail junctions to hamper the transfer of Nazi reinforcements. Providing cover for the troops fanning out from the bridgehead, fighters of the Tactical Air Force flew more than 1,000 sorties Tuesday in spite of bad
weather.
Less intense German resistance and fewer counter-attacks along the southern front suggested that Kesselring had dispatched troops to the north.
Decreased German activity was reflected in the capture of Ceracoli, two miles west of Castelforte, the crossing of the Rapido by Americans and reports that Cassino had been evacuated.
U. S. Army Signal Signal Corp photo
At the jump door, paratroops tense for the jumpmaster's signal
which will send them out into 750 feet of air.
________________________________
Chutists, Glider Troops Here
Training Hard for Invasion
By Philip H. Bucknell
Stars and Stripes Staff Writer
AN AMERICAN PARATROOP SCHOOL, Jan. 26—The presence of American airborne units, paratroops and glider troops in the ETO was announced today. To the thousands of men who have been undergoing the most rigorous of training for months in Britain's green and muddy land, this announcement is welcome.
Of all the troops that "America has in this country it is doubtful if any have had more intensive all-round indoctrination into the task ahead than these men—ground troops with their own methods of transportation.
Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery, Britain's invasion chief, came to see them here recently, and told them that American 'chutists were the equal of any fighting unit in the world. They liked that.
Artillery Flies, Too Both parachute and glider outfits are ':''.',. ; '-i ."'•',:': r,; l,'.'.",-.i ./ .; /(.,; i; ,/ ('• >'t . ' . • : > , ! ' i'ti iVl. f i . ' v i ' j ' . ;..(Illegible) infantry, artillery (paratroop equipment naturally being of a smaller caliber than that carried in gliders), engineers and signal companies. Gliders, in addition, have transport, anti-aircraft, field kitchens, etc. ~
In normal operations paratroops would be used for making the first thrusts at enemy positions behind enemy lines with gliders coming in as support. Airfields are obvious targets for such operations.
In Sicily paratroops were used alone as
(Continued on page 4)Chutists, Glider Troops Here
Training Hard for Invasion
Airborne Forces, Able to
Make 50-Mile Marches,
No Longer Secret
___________
(Continued from page 1)
shock troops, landing well inland and effecting junction between various Allied troops making landings from the sea. From that action, and from others, there are stories that will be told to compare with anything that has happened in the history of war.
Gliders can carry guns of high caliber, jeeps, baby bulldozers and-other heavy equipment. The gliders now in use weigh 3,750 pounds and carry 15 equipped men, or their weight equivalent, and are towed by C47 and C53 transport planes.
Paratroops land heavily-loaded and equipment 'chutes and material.
Men for both these arms of the service are volunteers, and any man not making the grade in training just isn't an airborne troop any longer. Paratroops, whose high boots and parachute wings are now familiar in the ETO, receive an additional $50 a month for EMs and $100 for officers.
The paratroops earn it.
.50-Mile Forced March
To qualify they undergo a full commando tqughening-up course, and then have to make five jumps before they rate as jumpers. At the end of their course they have to make a forced march of at least 50 miles. But that is only the start of their training.
"The real training starts when the men leave school," says the commandant of carrier.school here. "This is only equipping them to enjoy a fast method of transport.
When they make a combat jump, their problems start after they have landed."
This reporter wishes to testify that the training is rugged. This afternoon the four and a nail hours toughening up process -started with 75 toe-touching calisthenics and the same number of full knee bends, with variations.
And that, likewise, was only the start.
Nazis Face New
Peril As Fort
In North Falls
Foe's Last Escape Route
To West Now Severed;
Reds Gain in South
Soviet troops on the northern front blasting their way forward street by street, overwhelmed the Nazi fortress of Krasnovardeysk yesterday arid took from the Germans southeast of Leningrad their last escape route to the west.
A quarter of a million Nazis faced encirclement a-s the Russians chopped their way through the enemy's crumbling defenses, employing artillery on a scale described by a German spokesman as "hardly equalled during the whole Russian campaign."
Fall of the key railway junction miles southwest of Leningrad, controlling the lateral line west to Narva in Estonia and the line south to the German Baltic bases of Luga and Pskov, was announced last night by Marshal Stalin in an order of the day.
Russians Charge Germans Shot
11,000 Poles in Mass Execution
SMOLENSK, Jan. 26 (AP) —
The ghastly graves on the goat hills in a nearby forest have given up evidence which the Soviet Special Commission calls "indisputable proof that the Germans conducted a mass gxecution of Polish prisoners in August and September, 1941."
The commission, after reconstructing the crime, offered its solution of one of the major mysteries of the war and a major political issue.
It found that the Germans killed 11,000 Poles by shooting them in the back ofthe head, cast them in mass graves, had them dug up again by 500 Red Army men who were prisoners in their hands,who were in turn shot, and then prepared the "provocation" charge that the Russians killed the Poles.
British and American newspaper correspondents who saw the exposed and documentary evidence, and heard the commission, experts and witnesses, are convinced that this is the best possible explanation of the crime.
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