CLOSE TO MAAS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25054, 18 November 1944, Page 7

CLOSE TO MAAS

BRITISH IN HOLLAND IN SIGHT OF ROERMOND NO HEAVY RESISTANCE LONDON, Nov. 16 British patrols tonight are only three-quarters of a mile from the Maas at one point, and the whole advance is going faster than was expected, says the British United Press correspondent with the British Second Army. British infantry are now crossing the last few thousand yards before the Maas, and are in sight of Roermond, with its vital bridge over the river. Travelling in armoured vehicles and troop carriers, they have advanced 11 miles through strange, silent country in the past 48 hours, capturing Horn, two miles from Roermond, and reaching Halen, three miles north-west of Roermond, but taking prisoner only 200 Germans.

Infantry, with the support of tanks, broadened the wedge pointing toward the Maas in the Roerirond area to a width of six miles. There were apparently only scattered Germans on the southern flank of this wedge, and northward there was an empty wilderness as far as the Zig Canal, 2000 yds away, which is apparently the lipe to which the enemv has withdrawn in this area. The Zig Canal links the Noord Canal, south of Meijel, with the Maas, south of Kessel. Reuter's correspondent quotes a spokesman as saying that Roermond, from which the British are now only one mile, is the only place hereabouts where the Germans have any strength. Elsewhere they appeared to have withdrawn east of the Maas. Opposition north of Roermond, where the British are approaching the town of Neer, is described as "negligible to nil." All British bridgeheads across the Noord and Wessen _ Canals _ are now linked up into a solid ten-mile front. GERMAN BARBARITY MASS MURDER OF DUTCH (Kecd. 6.30 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 17 "In the little town of Heusden, on the Maas River, west of Hertogenbosch, today, I checked every detail of a hideous crime perpetrated by the Germans. who here deliberately murdered 135 men, women and children," states Reuter's special correspondent. "Heusden, a town over 1000 years old, is the Dutch Lidice. The British were nearing the town and many people had gone to cellars when German soldiers, led by an officer, went through the streets telling the people to go to the Town Hall, saying: 'You are safe there from British shells.' At 2 a.m. there was an explosion and a tremendous* roar of toppling masonry, and then the screams of trapped and dying people. , TT "Wlien Allied troops entered Heusden townspeople were standing numbly around the wreckage, beneath which there had been 200 persons, 65 of whom had got out alive, and the rest killed. The burgomaster showed me a list of the victims. It included 52 children, many of whom were infants." LOSS OF THE TIRPITZ (Reed. 6.10 p.m.) LONDON. Nov. 17 Tlie German news agency describes the loss of the battleship Tirpitz as 'a painful event for Hitler's navy.' It says that this British bombing success leaves Germany with no battleships to tie down British ships in European waters. In a frankly worded apology to Japan, the agencv says the German Navv, in the interests of .Tanan, very much regrets that the loss of the Tirpitz releases British battleships for use in the Far East.