RHINELAND BATTLE

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 March 1945, Page 5

RHINELAND BATTLE

GENL. BRADLEY’S REVIEW 203,000 GERMAN PRISONERS (Rec. 11.0 a.m.) LONDON, March 23. The whole operation has gone faster than we dared hope,” said General Bradley reviewing the Rhineland battle at a Press conference of Twelfth Army Group correspondents. General Bradley added: “The necessity for keeping the Remagen bridgehead small has now been removed, so there is nothing to keep us from crossing the Rhine almost anywhere and at any time.” General Bradley disclosed that during the whole of the operations from February 8 to March 22 the Allied forces took prisoner 203,000 Germans, excluding some 30,000 which the Red Army captured, but had not yet interrogated. The total included 51,000 taken by Marshal Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group between February 8 and March 9. General Bradley did not disclose The American casualties, but said that the greatest number of Americans killed in any single day between February 22 and March 21 was 269 on February 28, the day on which the First and Third Armies took prisoner 3103 Germans. The lowest number of Americans killed on any one day was 80 on March 11, when the First and Third Armies took prisoner 3996. . General Bradley warned against over-optimism. “I think, we should not write too glaring headlines that the war is finished. It may be almost finished, yet it may last a long time. Referring to Kesselring’s appointment General Bradley said: “He has always been considered rather a good general, but he has arrived on the Western Front at rather a bad time.