SURRENDER OF BREST

Waikato Times, Volume 195, Issue 22460, 22 September 1944, Page 3

SURRENDER OF BREST

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION THOUSANDS OF PRISONERS (Received Sept 22, 11.30 a.m.) LONtDON, Sept. 21 The battle for Brest, which occupied a month, resulted in thousands of prisoners, says the Exchange Telegraph’s correspondent with the United States forces in Brest. The total for the campaign was more than 35,000, while the military cemeteries around the fortress are filled with crosses over those who died fighting. Appropriately enough the surrender ceremony occurred in the Place President Wilson. There is not a whole building in the city. It is possible to walk for miles among the blackened, gutted shells, through desolation reeking with the smell of death, and see nothing but a stray animal looking for food or a forlorn human searching for some fragment which may remain of his smashed, pulverised belongings. Three Phases of Surrender A correspondent says that the capitulation of Brest came in three distinct phases. First the fighting ceased east of the river, where the Americans scaled the old city wall and swung south to take the submarine pens and dockyards; then on the west of the river, where the Americans, fighting from house to house, surrounded the German command post within the city; and finally on the peninsula across the bay, where strong forces of the enemy were steadily forced back. At 3.30 p.m. the German colonel commanding the forces within the old city handed over his revolver in token of surrender.

A Rome correspondent says that up to 500 heavy bombers successfully struck today at bridges and railway yards in Hungary and Yugoslavia. No enemy fighters were met.