STEEL BARRIER OF TANKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25797, 19 March 1945, Page 5

STEEL BARRIER OF TANKS

FALL OF COBLENZ

LUNGE INTO SAAR ENEMY FIVE WAYS (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Rec. 1.10 a.m.) LONDON, Mar. 18. The offensive of General Patton’s Third Army is moving l forward with mounting weight while a harassed enemy tries frantically to pierce the obscurity of the “ black-out ” imposed on the Americans’ movements. This afternoon the central span of the Remagen bridge collapsed and fell into the Rhine, but it is not expected that this will threaten, or even affect, the situation of the Allied bridgehead across the Rhine, as for a week past it had been used only for personnel traffic. All 1 vehicles, armour, and supply have been using the Allied pontoon bridge. The German forces have been split into five groups, all disorganised and lacking direction, and at the same time confronted by the steel barrier of General Patton’s tanks. Two armoured divisions are approaching from the north, and one from the west, converging on the Nahe River that runs from the Rhine dead into the heart of the Saar Palatinate. The Americans early on Saturday stormed Coblenz in a frontal amphibious assault across the Moselle near its confluence with the Rhine, and already nearly two-thirds of the city has been cleared. Troops in assault boats began pouring into the northern section of Coblenz in the darkness at 3 a.m., meeting with very light resistance, while others who crossed the river below the city moved up from the south-west. Air bombing has almost completely destroyed the city. Third Army forces have crossed the Nahe River at Kreuznach. Gains up to seven miles in the Hardt Mountains are reported by Agency correspondents with the Seventh Army. Partial penetration has been made of the Siegfried Line at the hinge fortifications where the line splits into two belts, four miles east of Saarbrucken. The Germans counterattacked, but were beaten off. Intensive patrolling across the Rhine has developed on the entire Ninth Army front in the past 24 hours. Both Americans and Germans are crossing the river in assault boats on probing missions. Third Army forces have entered Bopald and cleared nine-tenths of Coblenz. The Americans have captured 17 towns, cleared four, and entered three. The Fourth Armoured Division has advanced 33 miles in 60 hours.

First Army troops in the Remagen bridgehead to-day fought their way forward against steadily increasing resistance, and the Germans have been rushing up reserves, composed mostly of the remnants of divisions battered on the west side of the Rhine, in an effort to contain the expanding bridgehead, which is now. 14 miles long and seven and a-half deep. The Americans possess, or control by direct fire, a four and a-half mile strip of the Cologne-Frankfurt autobahn.