WEDGE SHRINKS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21607, 9 January 1945, Page 3

WEDGE SHRINKS

NAZIS IN ALSACE SEVENTH ARMY BLOWS THREAT TO STRASBOURG LONDON, Jan. 7. The German salient into Alsace on the Palatinate border is steadily shrinking. The Americans in the last few days have regained 12 square miles at the southern encl of the salient. They launched an attack in order to mop up 500 Germans who were practically encircled in Wingen, but found the main enemy force had gone. They had slipped out through a pass in the hills where they met another American force which engaged them.

Aerial reports show that the Germans have established a good-sized bridgehead about seven miles north of Strasbourg, even to the extent of having considerable motor transport, says Reuter’s correspondent at Supreme Allied Headquarters. Refugees are reported to be streaming out of the Strasbourg and Hagenau regions, thus bringing into startling prominence the swift deterioration of the Allied positions in northern Alsace in the past week.

Heavy German railway guns, firing from the east bank of the Rhine, shelled Hagenau aIL day. The latest information places the Germans in Herlisheim and Ofl’endorf, from which they were previously believed 1o have been cleared, and also Gambsheim and Brusenheim, all of which are along the main Strasbourg-Seltz road arid railway. The Germans brought up more troops this morning and attacked toward Rohrwiller, six miles south-east of Hagenau, but American artillery, tanks and lank-desfroyers met the onslaught, setting fire to four German tanks. Allied fighter-bombers attacked the river crossing where German tanks were seen moving on both sides of the Rhine. Farther south, French First Army outposts withdrew from Neunkirch, nine miles north-west of Schlettstadt, in face of a tank attack. The German News Agency says that the Americans launched attack after attack along the front from Sarreguemines to the south of Bitche. A number of advanced German groups fell back in the lower Vosges.