BRITISH SPEARHEADS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25172, 9 April 1945, Page 5

BRITISH SPEARHEADS

6TH AIRBORNE DIVISION ENGLISH COUNTY UNITS (Kecd. 6.10 p.m.) LONDON, April 8 The troops who formed the spearhead of the Allied armies when they landed in France are now leading the British drive on Hanover. They are the British 6th Airborne Division which jumped into Normandy in the early hours of D Day. For three months these men held on to their hard-won gains while the rest of the Allied armies prepared for the great surge through France and Belgium. They returned to England to refit and re-form, for their casualties had been heavy. Last Christmas Field-Marshal Montgomery rushed them back to the continent to help check von Rundstedt's thrust into the Ardennes, where they fought as infantry. Among the battalions which took part in the crossings of the Rhine are a Somerset Light Infantry Parachute Division and parachute battalions from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Midland Counties, Eastern and Home Counties and one from Canada. Glider-borne battalions came from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Royal Ulster Rifles and the Devonshire Regiment. Men of the loth Scottish Division were given the task of making a speedy link-up with the Allied airborne forces across the Rhine. For 14 days they trained in Belgium, making two crossings of the River Maas in rehearsal. LAST STRONGHOLD NAZIS IN BAVARIA LONDON, April 7 The former Berlin editor of the New York World-Telegram, after a visit to unoccupied Germany, returned with secret Nazi information on a plan for continued resistance in the Bavarian Alps. says Hitler and other Nazi leaders'abandoned all hope of a successful Reich defence, at their Berohtesgaden meeting oti March 2!). After the meeting the retirement of elite leaders into a chosen Alpine stronghold began. The retirement is now going on at great speed. An x important conference held at Sigmaringen this week settled all details. Himmler is Reich Fuehrer.

Petain, Laval and other Vichy members are installed in Garmisch Partenkirchen. The civilian population has been evacuated from Sigmaringen, which is rapidly filling with Gestapo agents and has now become a new Nazi military headquarters. Ranging far ahead of the Third United States Army, 19th Tactical Air Force pilots saw much road traffic moving south into the Bavarian mountain fastnesses, where the Nazis may attempt a last stand, says the Times correspondent in Germany. There is ground for supposing that Nazism .will receive its death blow in the area which saw its birth, and for saying that a withdrawal into this region—"the national redoubt," the Nazis call it —ifl taking placa.