TANKS CLOSING IN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 95, 23 April 1945, Page 5

TANKS CLOSING IN

ATTACK ON HAMBURG AND BREMEN

Rec. 12.10 p.m

LONDON, April 22

British infantry and tanks are closing in on Bremen and Hamburg and cleaning up the diminishing German rearguard forces west and south of the banks of the Lower Elbe, report agency correspondents at Field-Marshal Montgomery's headquarters.

British troops who entered the junction town of Rotenburg yesterday repelled Panzer Grenadiers who counterattacked along the Bremen-Hamburg autobahn. Scots south-east of Bremen reached the village of Achim in the movement against Bremen. Guards' tanks, developing a rush between Bremen and Hamburg, stand outside Bremen on a front of 15 miles. The British south-east of Hamburg control the Elbe for more than 30 miles, but they are doing a good deal of mopping up to clear such a strong-point as Blechede. Patrols which pushed on between Zeven and Buxtehude report very few Germans south-west of the Elbe.

The British 2nd Army's "mixed bag" in the past 24 hours included Admiral Siegfried Engel, 500 German "Wrens." wearing bell-bottom trousers and navyblue jackets, a circus with two wounded elephants, and two wounded bears, Marlene Dietrich's sister, a Luftwaffe officer named yon Cramm, brother of the Davis Cup player,.two genuine "Werewolves," over 4500 assorted German soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and scores of liberated British prisoners. Reuters correspondent says that the "Wrens" were found when the whole administrative staff of the German commander-in-chief in the North Sea surrendered at Buxtehude. The girls waved goodbye to the Admiral when Royal Marine commandos whisked him off in an armoured car. and wept bitterly when the naval garnson was taken off in a. truck to the prisoner-of-war cages. The American 9th Army,/continuing the offensive on the northern flank of their front, made gains up to 10 miles yesterday, says the British United Press correspondent. Infantry mopping up close behind the armourqfl units on the right flank reached tbe Elbe on a new sector, extending the 9th Army's hold on the river north-we'st'of Wittenberge. ,

Troops of the French Ist Army have reached the Swiss frontier south of Donaueschingen and have sealed off 1000 square miles of 'thpV, Germans' defence sector in the Black. Forest, report correspondents at SHAEF. !