The Wilmington Morning Star

Nazi Forces
Retreat North
From Greece

Allied Minesweepers Begin
Clearing Aegean
For Operations.

GREEKS AID ALLIES

British Planes Shoot Up
Transports And Trains
Near Larissa.

By ROLAND NORGAARD

ROME, Oct. 15.-(P)- Germans withdrew from Greece today as Allied troops were reported fleeing northward.

Minesweepers began freeing the Aegean for naval operations and RAF warplanes and U. S. transports began using at least one airport in Athens, liberated capital of the gallant Hellenic nation.

The comparatively few Nazis remaining in Greece were heading for Yugoslavia as fast as limited transport facilities and Allied aerial attack permitted.

Close on their heels came the forces of liberation - British seaborne units, Greek patriots who buried their factional differences and joined in the immediate job of ousting the hated Germans, and finally the first shipments of food and medical supplies promised by the Allies to alleviate the suffering of three years under the Nazi whiplash.

Planes Attack
The only indication of the whereabouts of the fleeing Nazis was an airforce announcement that British Mustangs had shot up enemy transport, troops and locomotives in the vicinity of Larissa, 135 airline miles northwest of Athens and an important junction of rail and highway routes.

British units did not appear to intend trying to catch the Germans and forcing them to fight. The main concern of the Nazis was to run the gauntlet of Marshal Tito's partisans and the Red army in Yugoslavia to the north. It is 500 airline miles from Greece's northern border to the German frontier and nearly every feasible land route is already cut.

Athens and its port of Piraeus were occupied yesterday by seaborne units after the Germans fled. Once the breakup of the Ist German hold on Greece began developments came too fast even for the planning and execution of Allied follow-up operations.

Greeted By Greeks
A British paratrooper formation jumped at noon yesterday in a 30-mile gale for the purpose of securing the Megara airfield, 28 miles west of Athens. Instead of being greeted by bullets from Nazis the paratroopers were met by jubilant Greek civilians, grinning British soldiers and war correspondents.
A column of British daredevils operating under the sober appellative of "land forces of the Adriatic" had taken both the town and airport of Megara the preceding Sunday night. RAF planes were already using the airport.
The parachutists landed among American made bulldozers brought in by gliders and busy restoring runways damaged by Nazi demolition.
Beyond the bare announcement Saturday night that the capital and its port were freed, Allied headquarters gave no report on the situation in Athens.
In a delayed dispatch from Megara Associated Press War Correspondent Sid Feder quoted reports that part of Athens was burned by the Nazis in retaliation for Greek guerrilla activities. Explosions heard at Megara for three consecutive days indicated apparently that extensive demolitions were taking place within the capital.
Three nights before the announcement that Athens was in Allied hands Feder on a hillside outside Megara saw great flashes lightening the heavens above Athens. Reverberations shook the ground underneath him. Apparently the Nazis were venting their spite on the Greeks who continued to defy the invaders after three years of starvation and deprivation.

GERMAN SOLDIERS FLEE FROM GREECE
(Continued from Page One)