DOCK AREA ALONE UNTAKEN

Evening Star, Issue 25469, 27 April 1945, Page 5

DOCK AREA ALONE UNTAKEN

RUBBLE BIGGER OBSTACLE THAN GERMANS BULLDOZERS IN FRONT LINE (Wee. 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, April 26. The great German North Sea iport is now in British hands except for the port area. This area, which includes Bremen's huge shipyards and submarine pens in the western part of the city, has been reached, and it is not' likely that complete occupation will be long delayed

The Allied planes did their Job against the city so effectively that one of the major difficulties for the British advance to the dock area is rubble. The bulldozers are in the front line—they are as important as the tanks and infantry. Fifteen hundred tons of bombs have smashed the German defences in the past four days, opening the way for concentric infantry attacks. The burgomaster of Bremen surrendered the city to the British to-day. while cheering civilians thronged the streets; but the S.S..garrison commander. General "Becker, together with the notorious Nazi evangelist, Bishop Weidemann, ,and some troops, refused

to surrender. They took refuge in a concrete underground shelter which is now being shelled. The Scottish division which captured the railway station took a large number of 88iiim guns. The English division which took the airfield captured a Fockowulf factory.

Correspondents cabling from Bremen report that good progress is being made in cleaning up the port area, and the British infantry are mopping up the last snipers amongst the rubble that was once a city.

The surrender followed a night of fighting in bright moonlight, in which the infantry of the Fifty-second Scottish Division took prisoner 5,000 Germans. The Scots found a large contingent of German troops drawn up near the post office as if on parade, waiting to be taken prisoners. Communists and anti-Nazi civ.ilians clieercd the Scots and offered them wine. Many said: "We have bad enough terror to last a lifetime." The British found great areas of Bremen devastated. The main shopping centre is practically flattened. The" cathedral appears outwardly undamaged, but is actually Little more than a shell, as the result of bombblast and fires As one of the burgomaster's assistants said: "We are not sad to see vou because we know that it mentis that the war is over for Bremen

A big Genuaii 250-millimetre gun began "shelling the city Swarms of freed 'slave labourers who are making free with Bremen's plentiful liquor supplies are a problem for the British.