SURGING FORWARD ON BROAD FRONT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 13557, 15 September 1944, Page 5

SURGING FORWARD ON BROAD FRONT

BRITISH SECOND ARMY IN NORTHERN BELGIUM

AMERICANS AT GRIPS WITH OUTER DEFENCES OF SIEGFRIED LINE

QFVERAL towns are captured INSIDE GERMANY

London, September 14. The British Second Army in Northern Belis surging forward towards the Escaut fanal on a broad front. The enemy has blown the bridges over the Escaut even at the lance of cutting off some of their own troops trvin <r to stem our advance, but the new line has already been broken by the Second Army ' ‘ other Allied forces to the south of this have made a second crossing of the Dutch frontier near the big town of Maastricht and a third crossing seems imminent by Canadian troops north-east of Bruges. In the last 12 days the British Second Army has taken 39,000 nrisoners and more are coming in. /. onnrtpfl that the American forces inside Germany are , AT,S wlih the outer defence* of the Siegfried Line, several small towns in addition to Enstorehen m toidseheads oyer the Moselle are being strengthened <? KMmTres?tanee is also stiffening against the French and . • „ ‘forces pressing on towards Belfort in east France. » are steadily losing their grip on the great AllanDescribing the German resistance in front of the Escaut Canal • northern Belgium, one correspondent said that every available 1™ being thrown into the battle in, an effort to hold np the m advance— aiddle-agsd men, air force and navy personnel, and fanatical Nazi youths. „ ~ In the north-west of Belgium, Canadian troops are fighting within three miles of the Dutch frontier. They advanced m the face of heavy machine-gun and mortar fire. It is estimated that more than 3000' Germans are holding the territory between the Belgian frontier and the Schelde Estuary and clearing them out is wof the tasks that has to be done before we can use the great port of Antwerp. Correspondents who report the capture of several small villages in Germany, in addition to,the town of Euslorchen, just south of Aachen, say that resistance varies. At some points it is very severe. The American ground forces are making good use of thousands of photographs of the Siegfried Line taken by reconnaissance planes. These photographs reveal the changes made by the Germans in their defence positions. , Far to the west in Brittany the Allies have taken a port about two miles east of Brest. ■ The Germans are holding on stubbornly to their defences.