"LIKE TOURISTS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 55, 2 September 1944, Page 7

"LIKE TOURISTS"

PASSAGE THROUGH VERDUN

Rec. 12.10 p.m. LONDON, Sept. .1. Verdun and the great ring.- of forts around it fell without a fight, says the; British United Press correspondent with the United States Third Army. Pteims' and Verdun were linked in less: than 24 hours at a cost of only a few tanks and amazingly light casualties. "It was simply a chase with tanks and motorised infantry across the; famous battlefield where, in the last I wear, nearly a million lives were lost," I the .correspondent says. ' ,; Lieut.-Colonel McConnell, who led i the first units across the Meuse below , Verdun'and "then came in behind the town while another column approach-' ed from another point, told the correspondent: "Neither column met with any great resistance, except from some 88-millimetre guns outside the city.' Verdun is only slightly damaged. We passed thousands of w.ell-kept graves marked with white crosses—the graves of men who had died -on the battlefields we were crossing at 35 miles an hour. We passed a great of former trenches, the grooves of which were stiH plainly visible, and then rolled through the town-while: French people lined the streets and cheered. There was no gunfire and no vmud. We rode comfortably, with planes wheeling overhead. We might, have been tourists. From each joyous village came the news that the Germans had left only a 1 few hours -previously. They hadn't time to make a stand, even in the Argonne. ' Bridges in some cases weren't touched."