Trouble on the Ring

jTHE ENEMY

Twelve days after swaggering Nazi Field Marshal Baron Maximilian von Weichs took command in the Balkans, a few plucky British parachutists and seaborne troops stole three plums: Greek Samos and the fabled islands of Cos and Leros in the Dodecanese.

Last week the Germans retaliated. In their first effort to regain a lost point on Europe's fringe, they launched an air and seaborne assault against tiny Cos and its excellent airfield. The Allies admitted the loss of several strongpoints on the island to the German counterattack. Field Marshal von Weichs was evidently determined to hold the outer ring of Balkan defenses and exact a good price for any Allied landings on the mainland. Other ring positions recently secured by the Germans: strategic Corfu at the entrance to the Adriatic, Cephalonia farther south in the Ionian Sea, and Albania. On the Dalmatian coast, above Albania, "General Tito's" Partisans lost the port of Spalato last week, but they are making the iron ring uncomfortably hot to hold.

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