To The Line

The slow fight through northern Italy began to speed up again. Both the Fifth and Eighth Armies made their most rapid advances in weeks, passed Arezzo in the center, on the west drew close to the German Arno River line, outpost of the Gothic mountain line where the Germans hope to stand and hold.

Along the Tyrrhenian Sea Lieut. General Mark W. Clark's Fifth Army, stymied on the coastal road, threw its shoulder against a sector farther inland. It heaved through the hills to outflank the port of Leghorn, Italy's third largest, which the Allies must have for the assault on the Gothic Line.

It was the Fifth's most important advance in ten days; by week's end its guns were shelling the city from four-mile range. At the same time vanguard troops, which included the 100th Battalion of tough, American-born Japanese, pried further through the hills, only six and a half miles from the Arno.

To their right the French troops won Poggibonsi (pronounced Poe-je-bon-see), junction of five important roads, out flanked the German defenders and battered toward Florence, 22 miles away.

Near Poggibonsi the French also captured, virtually unharmed, one of the delights of medievalists -- the town of San Gimignano "of the beautiful towers." The allied Control Commission had proclaimed the town a protected monument "of the first artistic and historical importance"; it was carefully outflanked and spared direct assault.

Once a rival of Florence, San Gimignano had already dropped to commercial obscurity by the 15th Century, had drifted on to modern times almost unchanged, a perfect relic of Dante's Italy. Thirteen of its original 72 square towers still survived.

Two days after the capture the Germans began shelling. In 36 hours, Allied officials reported, the witness of many centuries was a pile of dusty rubble.

In the center the Eighth Army broke a three-week deadlock by bursting through four German divisions to capture the high way hub of Arezzo, controlling German lateral communications, then tooled on across the Arno.

Both Allied Armies found the Germans using mines so profusely that even veteran troops were amazed. Fifth Army soldiers reported meeting an increasing number of young Germans given to crafty tricks like fake surrender. Complained one lieutenant: "I don't know what the hell has got into them these last few days."

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