The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-01-04
BY EDWARD W. BEATTIE

dive bombing planes, advices from Africa disclosed today.
 Rommel is making his stand on the Wadi Zem Zem, ::30 miles from Tunisia and only 170 miles from tripoh, capital of Libya.
 His Stukas and other planes are offering strong challenge to the Allied air force which for weeks had ruled the Libyan skies.
 United Press advices reported that an Italian rear guard, left to defend the Blu Ngem fort, on the eastern arm of the Wadi Bel Fl Chebir, had been knocked out. They set the place on fire and fled vest ward.
 Stronger Axis rear guards were now holding the Wadi or dried river bed, of Zem Zem, however, and the approaches to it and British mobile armored forces were hacking at them all along their front.
 The main Eighth Army had now reached the Wadi Bei Fl Cheibir, 1t was disclosed, and 1t was indicated that Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery, commanding the British Eighth Army, was getting ready for the big push which he expected to take him on to Tripoli.
 But the dispatches revealed why communiques of the Middle Eastern Command had reported no sub- stantial progress on the Libyan | front for many days.
 Todays communiQue said merely that there was no report from the land forces and there had been no aerial activity over the battle area yesterday.
 Middle Eastern Command planes joined, however, in the ferocious Allied offensive on Axis positions in Tunisia by bombing the ports of Sousse and TuniS Saturday night.
 African dispatches said American planes and anti-tank units had now joined the French forces under Gen Aphonse Juin who are holding 100 miles of the front south of Ttlnis facing the east coast.
 Juin in a communiQue last night reported that German troops had made an attack in force, with many tanks, on his line southeast of Pichon, 30 miles south of TInis early yesterday.
 The Germans succeeded in driv- ing back the French in the first phase of their attack but the French cOunter-attacked with such vigor that the Germans gave ur and retreated toward their base oi Kairouan, 9 miles to the east on the road to Sousse, the east coast reinforcement base.
 American aviation and anti-tank units effectively participated in the fighting, the French communique said.
 Brig. Gen. Jacques Le Clerc's French motorized column advanc- ing from the Lake Chad area of re- mote interior French Africa was re- ported pushing steadily northward through the Libyan desert toward Tripoli.
 Tn a communique last night Le Clerc radioed that his motorized men had now advanced several hl1rl- dred kilometers northward of the French-Libyan fron1er and contin- ued their march.
 Le Clerc's planes were raiding en- emy posts along the route and danking it, he reported. (One hundred kilometers equal 62.l miles. It is 705 miles from the southern Libyan frontier to Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast)
 The Allied radio AlgierS suggest ed that 1t was not certain Le Clerc would strike at Tripoli. It was pos- sible, Algiers said, that he would aim for the -Tunisia frontier to the west to aid the other Allied troops in cutting of RommePs Afrika Korps from the AXis-held northern area of Tunisia.
 Spanish advices from Algiers said Allied patrols had found that both Rommel in Tripoli and Colleen. Walther Nehring. in Tunisia, had re- ceived endorsements from Sicily and Italy throughout last week.
 An Exchange Telegraph dispatch from Allied headquarters said the Germans were using glider-borne troops as saboteurs behind the AL lied lines in southern TuniSia.
 Though the Allied ground forces in Tunisia were having their trou- bles, the Allied air forces were strik- ing with terrific impact at enemy bases all the way from Tunis to Crete, between Greece and Egypt.
 Twenty eight enemy airplaneS were destroyed Saturday on the big gest Allied day in the air since the campaign started.
 Flying FortresseS of the 18th United States Army Air force shot down IT enemy planes and Lockheed P-38 fighters shot down two. One German bomber was shot down over the battle area. Intercepting planes attacking the Allied base of Bone, Algeria, American fighter planes down three and the Royal Air force destroyed five.
 For this total, the Allies lost seven planes, but the planes were lost in devastating offensive operations in which the great Boeing Flying Fort resses scored bomb hits on two ships at Lagoulette, in the Tunis harbor area. and scored hits on the power houses.
 Docks and the military camp at Sousse on the east Tinisia coast and the railroad between Sousse and Sfax, to the south. also were attacked.
 An attack on Heraklion (Candia), Crete. by daylight Saturday by planes of the ninth U. s. Army Air force and the British Air force based in Egypt was the heaviest of the war. Hits were scored on airplane runways and among grounded planes. Heavy and light American bombers and light British bombers took part.
 Radio Morocco broadcast that the first French convoy since the fall of France in loz0 had reached north- west Africa from Dakar on the west coast of Africa. Warships escored N,a kka .~...,~., A.