THRUSTS IN HOLLAND SALIENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25673, 23 October 1944, Page 5

THRUSTS IN HOLLAND SALIENT

ADVANCE TOWARDS LEK (Rec. 1 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 22. British Secpnd Army troops in Holland launched a new attack at dawn, and have fought their way into two villages, one of which is lfess than a mile from the Lek, or North Rhine. The villages were heavily mined, but they are now firmly held. At the same time other British forces struck out in a twopronged drive from the western flank of the salient towards s’Hertogenbosch and made substantial progress in the initial stages of the attack. Both thrusts' took the enemy completely by surprise, and his , outposts were over-run before the alarm was given. Some miles to the west British and Canadian troops have gained more ground north of Antwerp in a push towards Rozendaal which threatens to outflank Bergen op Zoom, the main communications centre for the Germans on the Scheldt islands. They have already crossed the Rozendaal canal, but correspondents point out that contact has not yet been made with the main enemy forces at Bergen. The battle of Breskens in the Scheldt pocket is still going on, and half the town is now in Allied hands. The last Germans in the city of Aachen have now* been mopped up and the Americans are advancing a mile beyond the town towards Cologne. * “ The chances of a decision in the west being won in 1944 are slight unless there is a revolution within the Reich,” says Mr Drew Middleton in the New York Times. “ The campaign for the Rhineland has entered a new phase with the fall of Aachen, a phase in which if the operations of the past 19 days are any. criterion, progress will be slow and difficult in - the face of bitter enemy resistance and adverse weather The prospects of reaching the Rhone on the front of the American First Army before 1945 are appreciably diminishing.”