FRONT ABLAZE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25056, 21 November 1944, Page 5

FRONT ABLAZE

GATEWAYS OF REICH BRITISH AND AMERICANS APPROACHES TO COLOGNE LONDON, Nov. 10 The three northern armies of the Allies, battering against tho forefield of the Iluhr defences, are through the concrete fortifications of the Siegfried Line at one point and across the German frontier along a 25-mile stretch, says Reuter's correspondent at Supreme Headquarters. Villages on the Cologne Plain are falling one after another before the big offensive. A spokesman at Field-Marshal Montgomery's Headquarters said: " The whole front is now ablaze. It has been a day of steady progress, but the Germans have not given up the idea of pushing lis back. They are still putting in armour." Driving On Unchecked General Eisenhower's three-pronged drive into the main gateways to the Reicli is going on unchecked, says another report. British Second Army troops today captured the German town of Geilenkirchen, 12 miles north of Aachen. Earlier British and American forces which by-passed and isolated Geilenkirchen took Prummern and Hunshoven, east of Geilenkirchen. These forces are now fighting more than seven miles inside Germany and threatening the road junction of Linnich. The troops who over-ran Geilenkirchen at three o'clock this afternoon were still cleaning up isolated pockets of resistance after dusk. Only about 300 of the population of 20,000 remain in the town. American Ninth Army forces are making progress south-east and east of Baseweiler, five miles south-east of Geilenkirchen. British and American forces southeast of Geilenkirchen are advancing across the snowbound marshland against resistance which, without exaggeration, can be dmcribed as fanatical, says Reuter's correspondent at 21st Army Group Headquarters. United States Ninth Army forces overran seven villages, and spearheads of the United States First Army are less than four miles from the Roer River and eight miles from the communications centre of Ditren. Softening of Resistance The Associated Press correspondent with the American First Army says there has been no break-through, although enemy resistance has softened under the weight of heavy artillery fire, which at one stage was greater than the El Alamein barrage. The Germans have fought back strongly from behind prepared positions and have probably been able to make an orderly withdrawal to their next line of defences along the Roer River. The Americans, advancing to the Roer River, established a bridgehead across an anti-tank ditch 25 feet wide and eipjht miles long, which is one of the main German positions west of the river. The Germans east of Aachen laid a smoke screen two _ miles long across tho front, possibly in order to cloak the withdrawal of vehicles and guns. British tanks at one stage yesterday moved right in among the German infantry, spraying machine-gun bullets in all directions. _ Flame-throwers also took toll. Allied troops encountered abount 6000 civilians in the area north of Geilenkirchen, but the whole of the Wurm Valley, along which they drove from the frontier to Geilenkirchen, was entirely deserted. Tho Allies here are right in the heart of the Siegfried Lino.