RUHR GLOWING LIKE GREAT TORCH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 84, 10 April 1945, Page 6

RUHR GLOWING LIKE GREAT TORCH

AWFUL DEVASTATION Trapped Germans Trying To Hammer Way Out N.Z. Press Association —Copyright Rec. 2.30 p.m. LONDON, April 9. When American Ninth Army forces entered Essen they found the great Krupps armament works badly damaged, says Reuters correspondent. No work has been done in the factories since the R.A.F. put them out of action in the big raid of March 11. "The Ruhr to-night is glowing like a great torch," says a British United Press correspondent who has just completed a road tour right around the Ruhr pocket. "The great industrial basin, once the heart of Germany's war machine, is blazing from end to end and the Ruhr is in ruin, and flames are coming down over the heads of about 100,000 trapped Germans. Time and time again they fling in desperate eleventh-hour efforts to hammer a way out of the trap of steel and flame. Allied guns are simultaneously blasting centres of resistance. Even farmhouses are being pulverised when it _ is discovered that they are being employed as strongpoints. Our tanks, mortars and artillery have joined in a systematic job of planned destruction. Smoking and Burning Nazis Out "I have seen much of this war's devastation," the correspondent adds, "but never anything like the destruction in the Ruhr. The trapped enemy fights back with the courage of fanaticism. The paratroopers and S.S. men who try to hold on to the death inside basements must be flushed out before our advance can proceed. Sometimes the flushing process is done by fire. Buildings are being set alight above the Germans to smoke them out or burn them out. "I saw three such fires in the Wesel area. American military police said: 'We are simply roasting them out until they quit.' V weapon sites are also being captured in and around the Ruhr. We captured intact two which the Germans are believed to have prepared as alternative sites in the event of Holland being overrun. „ Labour "Slaves" Set Free "We also continue everywhere to free foreign labour 'slaves.' I saw Russians, Poles, Czechoslovaks, French, Greeks, Dutch, Italians, Norwegians and Estonians flowing back from liberated districts. This released human flood is one of the most heartbreaking spectacles of the whole war. Some had sacking around their feet instead of shoes, some were on crutches, some were trudging with bleeding feet." The Ruhr pocket, still shrinking, now measures about 43 miles by 60 miles, the correspondent added. Reconnaissance pilots reported that the Germans appear to be building up at least two concentrations for a possible attempt to break out. Four of our divisions are pushing into this great industrial area through factories, pithead buildings and residential areas. Ninth Army infantry slipped into the Ruhr pocket between Essen and Gelsenkirchen to-day to reach the Ruhr River. Correspondents at Supreme Headquarters were told to-day that the Germans have no chance of breaking out of the Ruhr pocket, even if they are able to launch a co-ordin-ated attack.