TRAP CLOSING

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25160, 24 March 1945, Page 7

TRAP CLOSING

ENEMY WEST OF RHINE GAP ONLY NINE MILES WIDE ALLIES CAPTURE PIRMASEUS fHecd 9 5 p.m.) LONDON, March 23 Pirmaseus has hen captured by the Seventh Army 'and the Third Army stands along the west bank of the Rhine for the greater part of the 100 miles between Coblenz and Ludwigshafen. Mainz has been cleared, as well as Ludwigshafen. The American® have captured the well-known I. G. Farben factory near Ludwigshafen, which employed 15,000 workers. The factory has been engaged in the manufacture of chemicals and was reputed to be one »of the largest poison gas factories in Germany. The shattered remnants of the German armies have been pressed into the south-east corner of the Palatinate; their last main escape route to the Rhine has been cut; and an American war reporter says that by last night their escape gap was only nine miles wide.

General Pattern's armoured columns are closing in rapidly on two of the chief bridges used by the retreating Germans. One .column was last reported about five miles, from the bridge at Speyer, while another is racing for the bridge at Germersheim. The Germans are still trying to escape from the small pocket between the Third and Seventh Armies. The unrelenting Allied air attack on the escape routes yesterday caused one large German column to halt, wave white flags and await capture by the Seventh Army says Renter's correspondent at Supreme Headquarters. Ihe Germans west of the Rhine were then herded into a MOO-square mile triangle. Jhe pocket na? orginallv 5000 square miles The German positions on the east side of the Siegfried Line were holding fairly strongly yesterday in a desperate effort to"keep open the last avenues for flight. There was hard fighting, particularly in the Wissembourg Gap, where the Germans were laying down heavy concentrations of artillery ana rocket fire. , German troops have been evacuated from the Saar-Palatinate according to the .Berlin radio. A German war reporter stated that the American s novel methods of tank warfare had beaten the Germans in the Saar. _ "American tanks," he added, "are dashing through the country with escorts of self-pro-pelled guns." RUHR DEFENCE GERMANS BELIEVED WEAK LONDON. March 22 "We anticipate finding odds and ends of infantry, paratroops and panzer divisions drawn up in some sort of order ■along the east bank of the Rhine," says Renter's correspondent at Twentyfirst Army Group headquarters. "The Germans, although they speak of army groups and divisions, have an unbelievably small number of troops for the defence of the vital Ruhr areas. We probably outnumber them by hundreds to one in tanks, guns arid planes. "The blowing up of bridges across the network of'canals and rivers which criss-cross the whole area will be one of the engineering problems we will have to face, but we have obviously anticipated this and, when our assault troops jump off. they will be accompanied by engineers with all the equipment necessary to keep our armies rolling. "Our forward observers have seen slave labourers across the Rhine digging long lines of ditches. Farther back they are constructing concrete and steel blocks on roads. Everybody is digging and building or felling trees to place across the roads."- i