NORTHERN FRONT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 13 April 1945, Page 5

NORTHERN FRONT

POSITIONS CHANGING HOURLY BRITISH FIGHTING TO SECURE BREAK-THROUGH (Rec. 11.20 a.m.) London, Apl. 12. British forces are fighting to secure a big break-through, says Reuter’s correspondent with the Second Army. Armour and infantry south-east of Bremen are racing towards the Bremen—Hamburg autobahn only a few miles away. Early to-day the whole front was covered with dust stirred up by convoys racing shells and stores to forward positions, which are changing hourly. A Canadian column driving at top speed across north-eastern Holland advanced 22 miles in 15 hours, reaching Beilin and liberating about 30 Dutch towns and villages, says a Canadian Press correspondent. This is the division’s greatest sweep and brought it alongside the Polish Armoured Division driving northward between the Canadians and the Ems River. The Canadians have extended their Yssel River bridgehead, which is now about 4000 yards long and three thousand deep. They are six miles from Apeldoorn at the farthest point of penetration. Opposition from a variety of German units, including police and marines, stiffened during the day. The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain at SHAEF says the Canadian First Army’s drive to liberate western Holland was deliberately delayed and the enemy’s escape corridor around the Zuider Zee intentionally held open in the hope that the Germans might pull out or be squeezed out and forced to fight in north-west Germany, which would have spared the Dutch further sufferings, but about 200,000 Germans remain and the Canadians are going in to root them out. Celle was captured to-day. STIFF RESISTANCE There is no sign of a break-up of the Germans holding on in the north, says a correspondent with the British forces in Germany, and it is becoming obvious that they intend to try to hang on to Bremen and Hamburg the same as they clung to French Atlantic ports and Dunkirk. The enemy is contesting every inch of ground at Bremen and at some points have been counter-attacking during the past 24 hours. Another correspondent says the present trend of the battle for northwest Germany points to an attempted fixing of a North Sea protection line, which may be only a temporary holding device while priorities are evacuated from the coastal area, to run roughly from the Weser River to Bremen, Oldenburg and Emden, using Bremen, already strongly reinforced. as the pivot. To hold these lines the enemy has five or six divisions, including elements of two parachute divisions and the Fifteenth Panzer Grenadiers reinforced by garrison troops from Denmark and other places. The vital junction town of Celle, 65 miles south of Hamburg and 130 from Berlin, was stormed to-day by the Fifteenth Scottish Division after columns had fought their way through Fuhrberg Forest, west of this road centre.

Celle was formerly the principal gas training school for the German army. Troops of the Fifty-first Highland Division pushed back German paratroops in the centre of the British Second Army front to-day to take Lohne, a traffic centre south-east of Cloppenburg.