AMERICAN FORCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25625, 28 August 1944, Page 5

AMERICAN FORCES

MOVING TOWARDS REIMS GERMAN RETREAT ADMITTED (Rec. 11.40 p.m.)' LONDON. Aug. 27. American troops are moving northeast to Reims, 90 miles beyond Paris and 130 miles from the German frontier. , General Eisenhower, in an order broadcast to the French in Alsace-Lor-raine, declared that the ■ elimination of the German Seventh Army had decided the battle of France. He warned the people of Alsace-Lorraine that they might soon be in the theatre of war. The Germans are withdrawing from Belfort to'Malhouse, states Tribune de Geneve’s correspondent at Belfort. The correspondent adds on good authority that the Germans are taking up positions along the Siegfried Line. The strongly-fortified area of Belfort, commands the Belfort gap leading into the Rhine Valley. “The German High Command must develop new methods of fighting, enabling a smaller force to withstand • numerically and materially large enemy and establish a barrier outside the German frontiers capable of resisting whatever may be thrown against it,” said an official spokesman in Berlin. : \

“ The Germans are, therefore, shortening their lines and retreating to the lower Seine. British and Americans are pressing hard on our heels, but the German High Command maintains complete control over its own movements in this great disengaging movement.”

Panic-stricken Germans threw away their arms and began to swim the Seine at the ferry crossing below Rouen, says the Daily Express Normandy correspondent. Allied air forces have been patrolling the Seine for two days waiting for this opportunity. We hardly dared hope after the terrible slaughter at the Falaise Gap that the Germans would panic, but our luck held. The Germans for some reason, which at present is not clear, suddenly went back with a rush. The German dead and wrecks of barges and paddle ferry boats litter the 50-mile stretch of the Seine between Quilleboeuf and Barnville, says Reuter’s correspondent with the Tactical Air Force. They are the remnant* of German daylight attempts to cross the river, which have been hampered for hours by Tactical Air Force planes. The Daily Telegraph’s Normandy correspondent says the German bridgehead west of the Seine is growing tiny, and it may be only a matter of hours before the battle for the river begins. The tail-end of the Seventh Army is now crammed in the area between the Seine and the Risle. German ferries are vulnerable, but well organised, and there are good covered approaches to the river, so we may count on the fact that the most valuable German equipment is already across the river. Men and horses can always swim across and it is not likely, therefore, that the Germans were badly caught this time. It is announced that Lieutenant-gen-erals Ritchie, J. T. Crocker, and Horrocks, all of whom are veterans of the North African campaign, are corps commanders with the British Second Army.