News of the War on this February 26, 1943:
Combined British and American forces threw Field Marshal Rommel’s tank columns into full retreat from the outskirts of Thala today, handing them their first defeat in Tunisia, and tonight Allied artillery lobbed tons of explosive steel Into German positions in the narrow Kasserine pass and on the beaten rearguard columns withdrawing through it. The big guns were giving the German tank columns twisting through the pass no chance to rest and re form, and hundreds of Allied planes racing overhead left a trail of smoking Axis transport and dying German soldiers all the way from Thala’s approaches to Feriana, far south of the opposite end of Kasserine pass. (Reuters reported in London that latest information indicated the bulk of enemy forces were retreating through the pass, with only a rearguard left to hold the mouth of the gap against furious continuing Allied attacks. (The British news agency also said increasing numbers of fighting units were now reaching the British eighth army before the Mareth defenses m southern Tunisia, and that supply was the main preoccupation at the moment).
Osami Nagano is chief of Japan’s Naval Staff, and last week his navy was up to no good in the South Pacific. Frank Knox, just back from the South Pacific with his chiefs, full of optimism, grew a little jumpy at a Press Conference when reporters began asking what the battleships were doing. Was a great big fight going on? No, said the Secretary. But the Japs had announced sinking of battleships in an air -sea clash off Rennell Island. That certainly sounded like a big battle.
Said the Secretary sharply: “A lot of preliminary dispositions are going -but no pitched battles of any kind as yet. Any assumption that last week’s communique indicated a tremendous battle in progress is an incorrect assumption “We don’t know exactly what the Japanese are. planning.”
And finally – The German front in south Russia is now incurably exploded, its single parts base themselves on the splinters of the broken communications system whose every line is cut. The German troops in the northwest Caucasus corner, the ones behind Rostov, on the Sea of Azov, those in the middle and western part of the Donets basin, those that stand between the Donets basin and the southern railroad, those behind Kharkov and those at Orel constitute six different, separated groups which are either altogether cut off from one another–or have direct no direct communication by through railroad route with one another. Cooperation among the German front sectors has ceased.
And while reports from Tunisia kept coming in, that’s just a small slice of what went on, this February 26th 1943 as reported by The Roma Wine News from Mutual.
