FLUSHING CLEARED

Evening Star, Issue 25324, 4 November 1944, Page 7

FLUSHING CLEARED

Zeebrugge and Domberg Captured

Scheldt Pocket Rid Of Enemy Grim Battles Along Dyke Tops Press Assuciation-By Telegraph-Copyright, (Received 11.55 a.m.) LONDON, November 3. A bitter north wind swirled winter's first snowflakes over Walcheren to-day as the British and Canadians cleared Flushing, captured Domberg, and stormed and silenced Domberg's great gun batteries, says Reuter's correspondent at Twentyfirst Army Group Headquarters. British commandos are winkling out the last snipers from Flushing. They captured Lieutenant-colonel Reinhardt, Flushing's garrison commander, and presumably the commander of the whole island defences. The fiercest fighting is still going on on the causeway from Beveland, but the Canadians managed to reinforce their Walcheren bridgehead. Six hundred Germans were taken prisoner in this sector to-day.

The fall of Zeebrugge, from which the last Germans have now been cleared, means/ that all Belgium is now liberated. The British United Press military correspondent, commenting on the clearance of the Scheldt pocket, says it was a war in which each ditch was a barrier, and each dyke a rampart. The battlefield was nearly always a bare road on a dyke, 15 feet above the surrounding country, which was covered by German 88mm guns and snipers.

This country is man-made, but although the Dutch have kept out the sea they cannot keep out the water, and" the Canadians, when shot down, sometimes drowned in an inch of water.

The battle was v fought along the dykes. On these bare exposed stretches men lived and fought for days. The weather was appalling. It rained most of the time, and from dusk until midday there were mist and penetrating cold. The first snow this year fell in Brussels to-day.'