ROAD TO COLOGNE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 125, 23 November 1944, Page 7

ROAD TO COLOGNE

GRIMMEST FIGHTING

"ONE HUGE MINEFIELD"

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

LONDON, November 22. Nine miles of the great motor road from Aachen to Cologne, to a point south of Durwiss, is now in the hands of the American First Army, States the British United Press correspondent, cabling from Eschweiler, from which the troops pushed on to Durwiss after the capture of Eschweiler,

The German armies are tonight falling back on" the twin road hubs, Duren and Julich, the main gateways to Cologne, says Reuters correspondent. The Americans, hacking and slashing forward along the rain-swept front, met their most serious resistance at Weisweiler, east of Eschweiler. There the Germans threw in even their headquarters companies to hold open the corridor for the garrison withdrawing from Eschweiler. The centre of Duren has been'reduced to rubble by gunfire and bombs.

The "Daily Express" correspondent at Eschweiler says: "This is a town where nearly everything has to be labelled 'Don't touch,' and every road 'Dangerous.' It is packed with mines and booby-traps. An Army chaplain has been blown up by a mine while attending to our dying men." Heavy fighting at close quarters is going on tonight inside the Siegfried Line east of Geilenkirchen, says Reuters correspondent with the British Second Army. For sheer grim ness of purpose on both sides it has had few parallels in. this war. The heaviest German pressure has been around the little village of Beeck, 34- miles northeast of Geilenkirchen. Here the Germans counter-attacked with infantry and tanks. The Germans still hold Beeck tonight. Six enemy tanks have been knocked out in this area today. Judging from their strategy in the past few days the Germans intend to convert Germany into one huge minefield. Every wood through which we fight is sown with explosives of every description.

A German radio war reporter, in a broadcast from the front line, stated that one thousand Allied guns opened up a barrage tonight against the main German defence line on the Aachen front. "Concentrated forces and bombers, besides tanks in numbers beggaring description, attack us ceaselessly."