The War Week by Week WAITING FOR I THE FLAG I By Capt Bernard Acworth

AT the time of writing, Monday evening, the offensive in Italy is being as fiercely pressed by the Allies as it is being stubbornly opposed by the Germans. The fiercest opposis lion is being encountered by the veteran Eighth Army, which seems to have had to fight for every yard of ground won since the offensive was
launched eleven days ago. Expectenon of a supporting attack from the Anzio beachhead is general, and may well have started by the time this appears. No comment or forecast about the Italian battles can be of any value at this stage. Facts will speak for themselves in the coming days.
Neither is there anything more that can profitably be said about the invasion from the Wen or the Russian steam roller in the East The huge invasion forces remain " poised " and the Russian steam-roller is stationary, though not, we must assume, for lack of steam. The starting-flag, so to speak, is hi the hands of Mr. Churchill and his associated war-chiefs, and all the world waits breathlessly for the dipping of it. And not least, we may be sure, the fighting men in Italy who. accosding to newspaper gossip, were under the impression that the invasion had already been launched, and was well into France, when their own assault on the Gustav Line corm meneed.
LAST week mentioned the 1-4 " desert " that Allied bombing forces had created in North-western France. To-day the nevonalaets give graphic accounts of this awful desolation which one pilot likens to " a lost
continent." War commentators are now speculating on the use Hitler proposes to make of this " desert " over which our fleets of bombers are, apparently, free to roam unhampered. But here again speculation is profitless.
We shall soon know.
The tense expectation of tremendous events in Europe at any moment tends to throw events in the Far East into the background. And yet there, from all accounts, the Japanese are getting a gruelling. especially in Northern Burma According to report, the three main Japanese bases in Central Burma are now virtually isolated, and it is only a question of time before they are in Allied hands. in the meantime the fierce fighting lately reported in Assam has, for some days, vanished from the news. Let us hope that no news is good news, and that the enemy's threat to imphal and Kohima and to General Stilwell's c.ommunicae tions has been finally dispelled.