POLES CAPTURE MERZPLAS

Southland Times, Issue 25483, 2 October 1944, Page 5

POLES CAPTURE MERZPLAS

GERMANS ATTEMPT TO BAR METZ GAP

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, September 30. The Poles have captured Merzplas after advancing a mile north of the Turnhout Canal, says Reuter’s correspondent with the 2nd Army. The Germans are hurling muchI needed tanks and infantry into repeated, reckless counter-attacks to bar the Metz gap, says Reuter’s correspondent with the American 3rd Army. A Nazi battalion, several miles west of Dieuze, infiltrated the American lines at night. They were surrounded and wiped out to the last man by mortars and machine gun fire. The . German defence “door” along the Moselle, hinged on Metz, is being inexorably forced, open. The Americans are hammering this vital hinge day and night. Guns, are pounding the massive fortifications and patrols are constantly harassing the Germans. TRUCE OBSERVED AT CALAIS Evacuation Of Civilians (Rec. 7 pfm.) LONDON, Sept. 29. There was an eerie silence tonight in Calais, says Reuter’s correspondent with the Ist Canadian Army, when Allied gunners and infantrymen, observing the truce, were sitting on the outskirts of the port alongside their silent guns. The roads leading to Calais were crowded with civilians trekking away from their homes. The British United Press correspondent reports that the German commander, his chief of staff and two interpreters, who today negotiated at Calais the truce for the evacuation of 20,000 civilians, arrived in a sports car for the meeting with the Canadian general. The Germans explained that the civilians lacked food and that many had been killed and wounded. The Canadians agreed to cease fire from 2 p.m. on Friday to midday on Saturday, also to send a French liaison officer to explain to the Mayor that the civilians must obey the German order to leave, which they had been hitherto reluctant to do.

The discussions, lasting 45 minutes, were carried out pleasantly and correctly, the Germans, all small men, continually eyeing the two six-foot-two

Canadian provosts who accompanied the general. One of the Canadian party said: “The German commander was strictly a Prussian, a fat, pompous little guy, but pleasant enough. The Germans seemed very unhappy when we told them that aerial treatment would be resumed tomorrow.” GERMAN PLANES SHOT DOWN Air Battles Over Nijmegen (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 29. Forced to take to the air again today in a desperate effort to stem the pulverizing attacks by the Allied ground and air forces, the Luftwaffe lost 22 fighters and two, probably eight, others were damaged on the ground, says the correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Agency with the British 2nd Army.

Royal Air Force Tempests played a big part in these air battles which were fought out over the Nijmegen area where German planes appeared in large numbers.

Wing Commander Johnnie Johnson’s wing bagged six of the day’s score. Allied planes shot up barges northwest of Nijmegen and smashed five troop-laden ferries in the Pannerdensch River in the upper reaches of the lower Rhine. There are no further reports of the Germans using jet-pro-pelled planes, but significantly the oldtype Stuka dive-bombers are being used against the Nijmegen bridge. The correspondent of the British United Press at the 9th Air Force base

reports that a twenty-year-old American Thunderbolt pilot who had not previously shot down an enemy plane, destroyed six Messerschmitts in a 15-minute melee over the Arnhem area.