ALLIED PROGRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25803, 26 March 1945, Page 5

ALLIED PROGRESS

FASTER THAN EXPECTED LONDON, Mar, 23.

“The whole operation has gone faster than we dared hope,” said General Omar Bradley, reviewing the Rhineland battle at a press conference of Twelfth Army Group correspondents. General Bradley added: “The necessity for keeping the Remagen bridgehead small has now been removed, so there is nothing to keep us from crossing the Rhine almost anywhere at any time.” General Bradley disclosed that during the whole operations from February 8 to March 22 the Allied forces took prisoner 203,000 Germans, excluding some 30,000 which the Red Army captured, but had not yet interrogated. The total included 51.000 taken by Field-marshal Montgomery’s Twentyfirst Army Group between February 8 and March 9.

General Bradley did not disclose American casualties, but said the greatest number of Americans killed on any single day between February 22 and March 21 was 269 on February 28, the day on which the First and Third Armies took prisoner 3101 Germans. The lowest number of Americans killed was 80 on March 11, when the First and Third Armies took prisoner 3996. General Bradley warned against over-optimism. “I think we should not write too glaring head lines that the war is finished. It may be almost finished, or it may last a long time.” Referring to Marshal Kesselring s appointment. General Bradley said: “He has always been considered a rather good general, but he has arrived at the western front at rather a bad time.”