AMERICANS ON BANK OF RHINE

Southland Times, Issue 25548, 16 December 1944, Page 5

AMERICANS ON BANK OF RHINE

STIFFENING ENEMY RESISTANCE NEAR COLMAR (United Press Association—Telegraph Copyright) ’(Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, December 15. The heavy artillery of the American 7th Army is shelling the German industrial city of Karlsruhe, which lies about seven air miles across the Rhine. The Americans are meeting stiff resistance as they extend their grip on the west bank of the river. Two of Lieutenant-General Alexander M. Fateh’s spearheads raced around the Hagenau forest and are now threatening the defences of the gap leading to Mannheim. Lieutenant-General Patch is making the most of the fluid position on the Rhine front and his divisions are operating in top gear so as to get into the most advantageous position possible before the Germans can co-ordinate their defences. Further to the south, units of the French Ist Army under the command of General de Lattre de Tassigny, are having some hard fighting near Colmar, on the southern Alsatian border. The Germans here are trapped in a pocket flanked by the southern Vosges. They are apparently about to make an all-out effort to get through to the Rhine and make good their escape. In the central front the American 3rd Army is pushing deeper into the inner Siegfried defences through the Saar bridgeheads. The American Ist and 9th Armies in the northern sector now hold a 15-mile stretch of the Roer in the Duren area. The fighting on this sector is still the hardest on the whole western front. The Germans have orders not to move a yard back, so each small advance has to be fought for, and paid for. A new tank, the Jaguar-Panther, is being used by the Germans on the southern fronts. It carries an 88mm. gun on a heavily-fortified 45-ton chassis.