HEROIC TROOPS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25085, 26 December 1944, Page 5

HEROIC TROOPS

HAVING OF LUXEMBURG ASSAULTS UPON TANKS (Reed, 5.35 p.m.) LONDON. Dec. 21 ' A single American regiment saved the City of Luxemburg when the Germans on December 16 threw in an entire division in a direct drive for the city, says the British United Press correspondent. The battle raged for two days along a ten-mile front in the Echternach area. Cooks, clerks and military police were called in for frontline duty. The Germans over-ran many American forward posts but were not able to make a big break-through which would have engulfed Luxemburg. Renter's correspondent says American infantrymen in the first days of von Rundstedt's offensive halted 70-ton and 80-ton tanks by the desperate use of bazookas, rifles and grenades—even by pouring petrol directly upon them from five-gallon cans and turning' them into flaming ovens.

One infantry unit which stemmed the rush of an S.S. panzer grenadier division near Malmedy is credited with disabling from 50 to 70 tanks.

An engineer detachment facing at least 20 tanks and half-track vehicles laid mines in the path of the advancing column. An American infantry battalion joined in the fight. When the tanks were almost upon them they left their foxholes, rushed the tanks with petrol cans and drenched the treads and sides of the huge Mark IV. and Tiger tanks, then fired trader bullets to ignite them. The correspondent says such heroic last-ditch stands held the Germans near St. Vith. They cost the blood of the men who were suddenly over-run by the enemy armour., Rows of blackened American vehicles stand where they were smashed bv German shells.