Allies Edge Forward

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1944, Page 7

Allies Edge Forward

BITTER FIGHTING ON ROER RIVER

'' _ ■ ' ■ LONDON, December 1. . Troops and tanks of the American Third Army, in the centre of the Western Front, today broke through to the west bank of the Saar River in Germany along a front of eight miles. They now hold the west bank of the river from a position two or three miles north of Merzig:, in the Siegfried Line, down to a point about five miles from the industrial city of Saarlautern. _ Allied troops are closing in on .Saarlautern. The 95th Infantry Division struck forward from the north, west, and south-west and took several German towns, including one three miles from Saarlautern. The road leading from Saaiiautern was today .crammed with civilians moving out of the city.

A correspondent with the Third Army says that American troops are now virtually in the suburbs of Merzig, and half a'mile from the centre, of the town, but they still have the river to cross, and the Germans blew up the bridge befoje falling back into the town itself. German artillery fire across, the river is very heavy. The enemy are not only, using guns from fixed positions in the Siegfried Line, but' have also brought up substantial concentrations of mobile field pieces. Troops of the American Seventh Army are 10 miles from the Rhine at ,H&genau. They are still pouring ] through the passes of the Vosges on ■ito the Alsace plains north and south ■of Strasbourg. . They are near .the j:river on both sides of the city, arid the Germans today admit a deep penetra-| tion into their defences north of Strasbourg which they say may cause a narrowing of their Rhine-Vosges bridgehead. Strasbourg is being iheavily bombarded by German guns £r,ing across the river. The lFrench First Army in the southern Vosges is pressing forward on a wide front and has flung back a powerful counter-attack west of Mulihouse. Correspondents in Basle ' say that, the enemy has now been cleared out of the French. Rhine port just north of Basle. > At the northern end of the Allied front, troops-.-of the American First and Ninth Armies are still engaged in -bitter fighting in the Roer River area. ■Ninth Army men have captured two imore small. German towns west of the river, and are pressing forward against stubborn positions. British v Second- Army troops" have taken two isolated enemy strongholds west of the Maas above' Venlo. General Eisenhower and General Dempsey toured the Second Army .front yesterday.