SAAR BRIDGEHEAD

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21579, 5 December 1944, Page 3

SAAR BRIDGEHEAD

THIRD ARMY PUSH STRENGTH - BUILT UP FORCES EAST OF RIVER (9 a.m!) LONDON, Dec. 4. General Patton’s Third U.S. Army infantrymen are receiving the full benefit of the bridge across the Saar at, 1 Saarlouis, which they daringly captured on Sunday, says Reuters correspondent with the Third Army. Tttoks and tank-destroyers have already roiled across the river to aid in fighting in the streets of Saarlouis. Another and smaller bridge across the'Saar north of the one captured on Sunday has been destroyed by artillery fire. The Third Army's iront in uermany now extends almost 40 miles.

The German Overseas News Agency says that German counter-attacking units, early on Sunday, blew up the only bridge across the Huening’en Canal, five miles north of Basle, thereby cutting off five battalions of the Fourth Moroccan and Ninth Colonial Divisions of the French First Army. ■ “We continue to press the surrounded troops together, 7 ’ states the message.

Twenty-five Germans who came out of a pillbox at Linnich to surrender were mown down by machine-gun fire from another German pillbox as they marched out with their hands up, says the British United Press correspondent with the U.S. Ninth Army.