NEW BRIDGEHEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1944, Page 5

NEW BRIDGEHEAD

VS. ARMY 'ON SAAR

THE ADVANCE TOWARDS SAARBRUCKEN LONDON, December 5. Troops of the American Third Army established a new bridgehead over the Saar today south of Saarlautern (Saarlouis). The Americans have already won control of a mile of the east bank. . Correspondents say that fires are raging in Saarbrucken, which has been bombarded by American guns for the Pfst week. Shells have been falling at the rate of more than two a minute, and already 6000 have been fired. Troops and tanks completed the capture of Saarlautern this morning and pushed on a mile or two beyond the town. A few miles to the south other Third Army troops are striking forward from three directions towards Saarbrucken. At some points the Americans have advanced today four and- a half miles, and were last reported six miles from their objective. Still further south, French troops of the Seventh Army are making progress south of Strasbourg, and men of the French First Army are striking up tp meet them. The Germans are fighting bitterly to hold the flanks of ! their Alsace bridgehead until their i troops still in the Vosges can pull back I 3«d get across the Rhine. j At the northern end of the Allied iv.on }> tn© vecent German destruction of dams has flooded a considerable area between Nijmegen and Arnhem. A group of German paratroops tried to take advantage of the flood and innlirate into the Canadian positions, but they were badly cut up and forced to withdraw. The number of prisoners taken by the Allies on the Western Front since D Day has now reached 750,000—an average of more than 4000 a day