Word: messina
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...Collapse. The campaign in western Sicily was all but over. Other ports fell: Marsala and Trapani, naval bases where there was no Italian Navy and no fight on land; Termini, Imerese and Cefalú, east of Palermo on the upper coastal route to Messina and Italy. In twelve days the Seventh Army had fought for its beachheads in southwestern Sicily, fought inland past Barrafranca (see p. 34}, fought for Caltanissetta and (with the Canadians) for Enna in central Sicily. After that, the Italian Army in western Sicily simply quit fighting. Two divisions, the 206th Coastal and 4th Livorno...
...might desert them in their rear. They were in the northeast, facing the Canadians and British of General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery's Eighth Army. But the Germans were not unmindful of the Americans in the west and in central Sicily. Unopposed, the Seventh could close in on Messina behind the Germans, shutting their only way out. This week Allied headquarters reported that the Germans had flung a line from Catania and volcanic Mt. Etna in the east to the northeastern coast, between the Seventh and Messina...
...port. Planes bombed it. The Italians confessed that its fall was near. General Montgomery's eyes must have glinted as he remembered the interview he had given. Once Catania was his, the battle for Sicily could be little more than a battle for more coastland, then for Messina, if the Hermann Görings survived in enough strength to fight for that port. In Messina, Monty could look across three miles of water into Italy itself...
From the separate but coordinated Middle East Air Command, Liberators crossed the Mediterranean and struck Naples, the airdromes of Foggia and the ferry terminal at Reggio Calabria, where supplies are shunted across the Strait of Messina to Sicily. To give the Italians more trouble, the Liberators set a forest ablaze with incendiary bombs. Middle Eastern Liberators also attacked the island itself, joining Fortresses and medium bombers from western Africa in a 24-hour raid on Messina, the Sicilian terminus of the ferry run. Night-bombing Wellingtons, and heavy, medium and fighter-bombers by day, kindled and rekindled the fires...
...bombs on Messina and Palermo crippled that system. Coningham's medium bombers, light bombers and fighter-bombers struck its inner vitals-at Enna, Leonforte and Caltagirone, at the tunnels which pierce the Sicilian hills and offer rare opportunities to block the rail lines. By week's end the R.A.F. reported that the main line along the east coast from Messina to Catania had been blocked, the north Coastal railway from Palermo to Messina cut in one place, the winding line from Palermo across Sicily to Syracuse "destroyed...