TWO ALLIED THRUSTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 57, 8 March 1945, Page 7

TWO ALLIED THRUSTS

.ENEMY ESCAPE ENDANGERED

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. noon., LONDON, March 7. General Patton's 4th Armoured Division threatens to completely disorganise the German positions along the Rhine north of Coblenz, says Reuters correspondent at SHAEF. Third Army spearheads, after charging 36, miles over rolling, wooded terrain through scattered German defenders, are now officially reported to be four miles south-west of Mayen and 14 miles from the Rhine and 20 from Coblenz. Moreover, General Patton's forces are only 25 miles from advanced elements of the First Army operating south-west of Bonn.

These two thrusts threaten to cut into pockets all ■- the Germans who remain west of the Rhine from Coblenz to the north. . ,

The Germans'are still holding stubbornly on to both flanks of the Kyll River bridgehead from which General Patton's spearhead bounded forward They may not yet'know what is going on behind them. The Third Army has closed up to the Kyll River on a front of 35-miles, and the Germans opposing them are- fighting as though in complete ignorance of. the fact that they are in the greatest danger of being cut off from all avenues of escape. Correspondents with the First Army report that a military censorship has suddenly been imposed on news of operations by General Hodges's forces south of Rheinbach.

Reuters correspondent points out that if General Hodges's and General |Patton's spearheads joined up a huge trap would close on the Germans manning the area between the Kyll and the Rhine. Admitting - the loss of x ßheinbach,

which is an important highway junction, the German news agency stated that the Americans were concentrating strong tank forces between Rheinbach and Munstereifel, 10' miles to the south-west. The news agency claimed that a narrow armoured wedge which General Patton drove from Kelberg was threatened from all sides by German counter-attacks. Sertorius suggested that General Patton'3 armoured columns are heading for Sinzig and Neuwied, north-west of Coblenz.

The Exchange Telegraph agency's correspondent with the First Army says that General Hodges's troops are now along- the Rhine all the way from Cologne to Dusseldorf, except for a tiny pocket north-cast of Cologne. They made a maximum advance of eight miles today south of Cologne and also cut the German escape route from Cologne to Bonn. While the Germans regroup east of the Rhine their resistance is stiffening all along the perimeter of the Wcsei bridgehead.

Reuters correspondent with the Canadian First Army says that the enemy today beat off all efforts to penetrate the bridgehead. A Canadian force of infantry and tanks which tried to capture Veen was beaten back: with casualties after encountering a heavy German gun screen. German long-range artillery on the east bank are assisting self-propelled guns inside the perimeter. The only gain during the day was a few hundred yards in west of Alpen which the British cleared.

_ The Germans are also fanatically resisting the Americans to the south in the Ossenberg sector, says Reuters correspondent with the Ninth Army It; is evident that they still have quantities of material and equipment on the west bank which they are strenuously trying to save. They are using rapid fire from massed 88-millimetre guns, firing at a depressed angle. Shells from these guns come richochettmg down the road at the rate oi dozens every minute. This desperate desire to save the material is all the more marked because of what a Ninth Army, officer described as the absolutely fantastic amounts of equipment and materials which the Germans have already lost in the present operation.