THREE MILES FROM VALLEY CITY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21582, 8 December 1944, Page 5

THREE MILES FROM VALLEY CITY

FRENCH TROOPS CLOSING ON COLMAR

ENEMY FORCED TO ECONOMISE POWER (11 a.m.) ' lB7 Telepaph - I>MS ASS “- C)OPJ I i !Ni)Oir, Dec. 7. With American troops of General Patton’s Third Army now within three miles of the city, Saarbrucken is not only under fire from Allied artillery but is also under threat of ground action by Third Army troops. They, have to fight their way through a maze of fortifications, from fox-holes and bunkers to major tank obstacles, but it is a bad hour that brings no word of something new on this sector of the front. The U.S. Third Army has shown exceptional impetus in its drive into the heart of the Saar Valley. Its leading elements are now eight miles inside the German frontier. At Saarlouis, the Americans still have to deal with pockets of resistance, but this process is going on steadily, and the winkling out of the German snipers and machine-gunners placed to harass the Allied troops is only a matter of time. In Saarguemines, mopping-up is proceeding also. Southern sectors of the Western Front present their most active picture in the neighbourhood of Colmar, where French troops are streaming down across the plain below the Vosges towards ; Colmar, the last German Rhine bridgehead in the Alsatian sector. The enemy is using his men economically here, and there is evidence that he is feeling the pinch of economies necessitated by the more desperate threat to the Reich in the Saar Basin, and further north. There was slight activity on the U.S. First Army front, on the west bank of the Roer River, and the Ninth Army still had a difficult position to overcome in the Julich locality. British troops in the most northerly sector are still fighting floods and bad weather constantly, and meeting the Germans at only a few points along their river lines.