AMERICAN ARMOURED COLUMN

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25157, 21 March 1945, Page 7

AMERICAN ARMOURED COLUMN

GERMANS DESTROY BRIDGES FRENCH ENTER REICH FROM SOUTH By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received March 20, 11.10 p.m.) LONDON, March 20 Further gains were made yesterday along the whole Third Army front. Armoured units were reported at Vendersheim, 12 miles south-west of the Rhine town of Mainz, after having captured Sprendlingen, six miles north-east of Kreuznach. Another force, slashing into the centre of the German pocket, was four miles from Kaiserlautern. The Daily Telegraph correspondent with the Third Army says the Germans are reported to have destroyed all four bridges across the Rhine in the Mainz area. The Associated Press correspondent said earlier that the Germans had blown up a four-lane road bridge across the Rhine at Mainz. This was one of the escape routes for the enemy in the rough triangle of the Rivers Saar, Moselle and Rhine. The destruction of the bridge apparently meant that the Germans had abandoned any hope of rescuing any sizable number of their forces from this part of the front. Further west American tank columns, driving from the north and west, have linked up and trapped about 2000 Germans. Any Germans who manage to pull out of this trap will find their way of escape to the east barred by other American columns throwing out steel arms from the north.

Between Saarbrucken and the Rhine American Seventh Army troops have breached the Siegfried defences at more than a dozen points. Some American units have smashed right through the fixed fortifications. French forces of the American Seventh Army, pressing up from the south, have crossed the Alsatian frontier into Germany near Lauterbourg. The Germans have thus been cleared from the whole of north-east France and the French have made their first penetration of Hitler's Reich since France fell in 1940. Some sources report that Algerian troops have captured Lauterbourg, which is on the Rhine west of Karlsruhe. The fall of Lauterbourg, according to correspondents, should be followed by the swift collapse of the Siegfried defence positions at the Rhine end of the line. * American troops have entered Weiss.enburg, west of Lauterbourg.