HUGE SMOKE SCREEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25801, 23 March 1945, Page 5

HUGE SMOKE SCREEN

LOWER RHINE COVERED CANADIAN ARMY POISED CEASELESS AIR ASSAULT

(United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Rec. 1 a.m.) LONDON, Mar. 22. The Canadian First Army is watching the ceaseless Allied air offensive against targets ahead of Field-marshal Montgomery’s front, while the army is itself hidden by what one correspondent describes as the biggest, longest and thickest smoke screen of the war. It stretches for 60 miles along the lower Rhine from Nijmegen. The Germans are holding desperately to the Siegfried Line positions near Karlsruhe in an attempt to hold open an escape route across the Rhine, but General Patch’s Seventh Army is slowly forcing the defences in while Third" Army tanks crash into them from the rear. The latest advances by these two armies have reduced the enemy pocket west of the river to little more than a bridgehead. Armoured columns are carving up the disorganised German forces in the dwindling pocket, and it is estimated that nine enemy divisions have already been destroyed in the Rhine-Moselle-Saar-triangle. " ... t... - The British United Press representative with the Third Army reports that tanks from General Patton’s Fourth Armoured Division, advancing north from Worms, cleared seven towns, including Dalheim, 11 miles south of Mainz, where the division made contact with troops from the Ninetieth Infantry Division. General Patton’s Tenth Armoured Division entered Neustadt, only 19 miles from the Seventh Army forces advancing north from Wissembourg. The Remagen bridgehead is growing steadily, and American First Army forces now control a 14-mile stretch of the Cologne-Frankfurt autobahn. The veil of security restrictions was to-day lifted slightly to permit the disclosure that the United States First Army now has several bridges across the Rhine to the Remagen bridgehead, reports the Associated Press correspondent. One was thrown across the river in the record time of 10 hours. The German News Agency says the battle on the Rhine bank opposite the Remagen bridgehead is one of the most formidable of the war. The Americans are pumping in more and more reinforcements, and big operations will be launched from the bridgehead in the near future.