NINE MILES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 217, 13 September 1944, Page 5

NINE MILES

PUSH INTO HOLLAND

British Tanks Moving Forward

According To Plan

N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 12. A British armoured drive yesterday advanced nine miles into Holland. Reuters correspondent with the British Second Army says the bridgeheads across the - Albert and Meuse canals have been strengthened.

British tanks are moving forward according to plan through the ditch and dykeland of Holland, while our infanti-y and armour units, coming up from Belgium, are mopping up everything they have by-passed, says Reuters correspondent on the Dutch frontier. General Dempsey split the last professional army ahead of the British Second Army. There remain hotchpotch German formations trying to check, slow up or annoy the British as much as possible. They are not likely to achieve noticeable results because of the lack of personnel, training, weapons, reserves and resources. Dutch S.S. men, who are good soldiers in the German sense of the word, are opposing the British farther north, and near the Dutch frontier members, of the Dutch Forces of the Interior have accounted for a good many of these renegade Dutchmen, each of which they have buried under a little cross saying simply, "Traitor." Some of the Germans the British ■ encountered in a sector of the ex- 1 panding bridgehead across the Meuse Canal did not fire a shot before being driven into the prisoners' cages. It was a deep humiliation for the elite

paratroopers to find themselves fighting beside third-class infantry and raw recruits of the Luftwaffe ground staff.