Battle Turning Into a Rout

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 208, 2 September 1944, Page 5

Battle Turning Into a Rout

LONDON, Aug. 31. The battle towards Belgium is being turned into a rout, says Reuter’s correspondent with the American First Army. The German front has broken completely. The Americans are on the outskirts of Sedan. The battle for France is won, says the Times’ Paris correspondent. Along the whole front the Germans are on their way out. Nearly all Trance has been liberated. The last great battle on the Western Front cannot long be delayed. American armour with infantry in close support presses on persistently, and the enemy inevitably falls back. Pockets of resistance remain here and there behind the surge forward of the main forces, but they take little liquidation. It seems that the Germans at last have been thoroughly frightened by the possibility of being trapped. They have decided to fall back to Metz and Verdun and the Maginot and Siegfried Lines, and here tbe battle for Germany proper will begin. The Daily Mail’s correspondent, cabling from Amiens Boad, says that the pace of the British advance is growing faster hourly. The German Seventh Army is fleeing for its life. All flyingbomb bases south of the Somme are as good as won. It is no longer a campaign, it is a pursuit. Our whole army is always on the move. It is not really a rout because the Germans have it under control. It is a confession of complete inability to defend the flyingbomb sites, which are all they have left worth defending. Most of the villages and towns liberated are intact. Our line has swept swiftly and straight forward from Vernon. FABULOUSLY FAST Away to the right on the American front it is going fabulously fast, and we hardly believe half the news we get from there. From the German viewpoint the whole front, if it can be called a front, is tilting tbe wrong way. They are being cut off from Germany and trapped among their own flying-bomb sites, but there is nothing they can do about it. The Seventh Army has been thrashed within an inch of its life and is helpless. It is hard to see where the Germans have any defensive position in all Western Europe, says the Dally Express correspondent, Mr. Alan Moorehead, with the British troops. He adds: Some pitiful attempts are being made to hold parts of the Somme. Sections of the valley have been flooded and mined and a screen of infantry left south of the river, but the German armour has withdrawn to the other side beyond Amiens. The enemy around Amiens has been blowing up flyingbomb sites. This does not mean an immediate cessation of the bombardment of Southern England, since the installations in Holland will still remain unmolested for a little time and some bombs are being launched from aircraft. The Germans everywhere are showing an increasing desire to surrender. Tho rearguard yesterday was exchanging a few shots and then coming out under a white flag. A British United Press correspondent with the Americans says: The First Army which crossed the Meuse Elver and is driving on towards Sedan and Charleville, is practically on the Belgian frontier. The Third Army meanwhile is fanning out from Chalons in the direction of the German border.

The first F.F.I. units are cooperating fully. Thus scores of vital bridges are being captured before the Germans are able to blow them up. The F.F.L is often clearing minefields. This afternoon strong forces of B.A.F. Halifaxes again attacked the fortified island of Cezembre from which coastal guns have been shelling St. Malo, says the Official Wireless. There was cloud over the island but the crews came down below it and bombed from 2500 ft.