GERMAN LOSS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21671, 24 March 1945, Page 5

GERMAN LOSS

ROUT IN SAARLAND UP TO 90,000 TROOPS DRIVE ON KARLSRUHE LONDON, March 22. Nine German divisions, approximately 90,000 soldiers, have been wiped out in the Saar-Palatinate pocket to date, reports the Associated Press correspondent. General Patton’s Third Army forces yesterday took a record bag of 11,300 prisoners, including 2200 captured at Worms. Since the beginning of March, the Third Army has destroyed, with air force support, 350 tanks, 200 big guns, and 5000 motor vehicles. The commanding officer of one decimated German division committed suicide as a result of despondency over the ignominious end of the Wehrmacht west of the Rhine.

Third Army forces, in an advance of six miles, to-day cleared Mainz except for a small area. The Germans are still trying to escape from a small pocket between the Third and Seventh Armies.

The correspondent says that the Mainz perimeter defence from which the Germans fought hard for two days collapsed last night, after which American infantry moved into the town. The Germans are still fighting in the old section of Mainz, covering a small area of the heart of the city along the river.

The 10th Armoured Division is now only 19 miles north-w'est of Karlsruhe. The only main road leading out of the German-held pocket has been cut westward of Landau, and although secondary roads are available they will soon be of little use. Seventh Army units beyond Kaiserlautem are intermingling with General Patton’s groups.

There is still hard fighting at the eastern end of the Siegfried Line, particularly in the Wissembourg gap, where the Germans are laying down heavy concentrations of artillery and rocket fire.