COSTLY FIGHTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 134, 4 December 1944, Page 5

COSTLY FIGHTING

WORSE THfik IN LAST WAR

I NEW YORK, December 3. ] The regulations prevent publication [of the casualties suffered by the four American armies participating in the present offensive on the Western Front," says the "New York Times" correspondent at supreme headquarters "but the present advances are being made at the cost of considerable and sometimes.severe casualties,'which are likely to-increase as the "Allied armies close in on the centre of the Segfried Line. •• *•

Many reports concerning the cost of the battles have been received from the front in the past four'days. One commanding officer who has fought in France in.both wars says that this is; the hardest and costliest fighting he has ever seen—worse than anything in the last war. A captain in one of the most experienced of the American infantry divisions said: "Every enemy line is a stone, wall. We have to hit again and again to open up a hole.'" The correspondent adds: "Three American divisions have ,been badly battered in the first. fortnight of the battle. The Americans are fighting and dying under incredibly bad condi-

tions. They are conditions which the Germans, who have the advantage of their prepared positions and pill-boxes, do not.share." .