Grip of Situation Completely Lost

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 211, 6 September 1944, Page 5

Grip of Situation Completely Lost

LONDON, Bept. 4. The German High Command has completely lost its grip on the situation, said General Dempsey in an interview with war correspondents. The German retreat is taking place' against its orders, he added. The British Second Army had advanced 130 miles in lour and a-half days. Antwerp’s capture has completed the encirclement of the Germans in Pas de Calais, says Shaef. Explosions heard from the French coast all to-day indicate that Germans are carrying out demolition around Calais. A heavy pall of black smoke could be seen over the French cliffs, stretching from south of Calais some distance northward, covering between seven and eight miles. The smoke 1 hung heavily, suggesting that oil had been set on fire. The British thrust forward suddenly in the 70 miles drive from the frontier to Brussels. As the forward units approached each town and village men of the resistance movement came out to meet them. The Germans, before leaving Brussels, blew up the central telephone exchange and burned the Palais de Justice, where the Gestapo kept records, but- otherwise they did little to change the appearance of the city. AnotV • report states that R.A.F. pilots saw a huge horse-drawn German convoy on a road from Boulogne, They turned it upside down and the wrong way round, said a correspondent. So rapid has been the advance of General Eisenhower’s ground forces that fighter-bombers based in England are now nearer to the battle than aircraft based on Normandy. Every effort is being made to establish air bases as close to the front line as possible in order to support the ground forces when necessary and also to destroy enemy prepared positions. INDESCRIBABLE RUIN “The French tricolour flies from the tov/er of Rouen cathedral, which is still standing above a scene of indescribable ruin,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Northern Frace. “Nearly all the buildings seriously damaged in the town arc within 100 yards of the quayside. Three miles from Rouen the quayside on the southbank of the Seine is almost an unimaginable scene of death and destruction caused by the Allied air attacks. “Tanks, lorries, self-propelled guns, and all the paraphenalia of a mobile army make the biggest pile of wreckage I have seen. Lying nose to tail, crossways and piled on top of each other are the battered and burnt-out wrecks of von Kluge's mechanised army. Gorman bodies lie everywhere. “With the Seine bridges wrecked by the R.A.F. a week ago they were caught like rats and bombed and attacked with rockets to destruction. The German remnants in the ArgentanFalaise pocket paid a high price, but it was nothing compared with the carnage of the Seine.” DUTCH URGED TO PREPARE

Dr. Gerbrandy (Premier of Holland), in his broadcast urged the Dutch people to prepare for the Allies the reception they have earned, “The hour of liberation has struck. Soon the Queen will return to your midßt to govern in justice and peace. ’ ’ He then called on the people to maintain order and discipline r.d o'.:ey the leaders of the resistance movement. Dr. Gerbrandy reminded the people that when the Netherlands is freed there will remain the task of freeing the people of the Indies. He told the Dutch people that he’would call

on them to make one more supreme effort.