NINE DIVISIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25802, 24 March 1945, Page 7

NINE DIVISIONS

WIPED OUT IN PALATINATE IGNOMINIOUS END OF ARMY LONDON. Mac. 22. Nine German divisions, or approximately 90,000 soldiers, have been wiped out in the Saar Palatinate pocket to date, reports the Associated Press’s correspondent. General Patton’s forces yesterday took a record bag of 11,300 prisoners, including 2200 captured at Worms. Since the beginning of March the Third Army has destroyed, with air force support, 350 tanks, 200 big guns, and 5000 motor vehicles. The commanding officer of one decimated German division committed suicide as the result of despondency at the ignominious end of the Wehrmacht west of the Rhine.

Third Army forces, in an advance of six miles to-day, cleared Mainz except for a small area. The Germans are still trying to escape from the Small pocket between the Third and Seventh Armies.

The correspondent says the. Mainz perimgter defence, from which the Germans fought hard for two days, collapsed last night, after which American infantry moved into the town. The Germans are still fighting in the old sections of Mainz, covering a small area of the heart of the city along the river. The Tenth Armoured Division is now only 19 miles north-west of Karlsruhe, and the only main road leading out of the German-held pocket has been cut westward of Landau. Although secondary roads are available, they will soon be of little use. Seventh Army units beyond Kaiserlautern are intermingling with General Patton’s troops. There is still hard fighting at the eastern end of the Siegfried Line, particularly the Wissembourg Gap, where the Germans are laying down heavy concentrations of artillery and rocket fire. The Americans captured the wellknown I. G. Farben factory near Ludwigshaven. Employing 15,000, the factory was engaged in the manufacture of chemicals. It was reputedly one of the largest poison gas factories in Germany. . ' First Army forces m the Remagen bridgehead pushed the Germans southward within seven miles and a-half of Coblenz, and northward the Americans fought their way into Hennef, three miles south-east of Siegburg, and extended their hold along nine miles of the south bank of the Sisg River, says the Associated Press correspondent. The opposition was comparatively light. The bridgehead is now 29 miles long and 9 miles deep. For the first time in the European theatre a low-flying troop-carrier today snatched a casualty-filled glider from the Remagen bridgehead to inaugurate a new shuttle service for evacuating wounded men from the front line area. Glider evacuation was previously carried out in India and Burma. The new service will evacuate about 450 men a day. They are put in hospital five minutes after leaving the bridgehead.