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Yank Armies Push Into Germany
on 100-Mile Front
By HOWARD COWAN
[Web Editor's Note: Due to censoring restrictions at
the time, specific Army divisions and their sub units were commonly
omitted from newspaper articles covering combat operations. For
this reason, neither the 3rd Armored Division nor the 991st Field
Artillery Bn was named in this article.]
Supreme Allied HQ., Sept. 16 (AP) - The U.S. 1st Army, driving
through the famed Westwall in 24 hours, fought out into the open
today on·one of Hitler's super-highways within 26 miles
of Cologne, as six Allied armies pounded forward on a 500-mile
front.
The battered German armies were fleeing to the east bank of
the Rhine as American troops poured into Germany along a solid
100-mile front extending the full distance of the Belgian and
Luxembourg frontiers and part of Holland's, the United Press
reported.
(Berlin said Lieut. Gen. William H. Simpson's 9th Army had gone
into action in the Maastricht sector, crossed into Germany and
speared toward the Rhine.)
The hard-hitting U.S. 3rd Army freed the western half of the
town of Thionville, only 15 miles from the rich German industrial
Saar Basin, and in a lightning move sent tanks cutting in behind
Metz, the most important French fortress city still in enemy
hands.
Aachen Surrounded
The approach to Cologne was reported in a front dispatch which
said Lieut. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges' infantry had moved on 12
miles east of the surrounded German frontier fortress of Aachen,
and asserted the Westwall breach south of the city was so wide
the whole German defense system was in peril.
Patrols at a number of points were beyond the last fortifications
before the Rhine. Doughboys fought into Aachen, guarding the
shortest road to Berlin, and it appeared to be toppling.
(The Paris radio, adding to the picture of spreading German disasters,
said that American 7th Army forces had reached Belfort, guardian
of the Belfort gap into Germany at the Switzerland border, and
declared that Americans had fought into the center of the great
Breton port of Brest, and had taken 12,000 prisoners.)
The Saar Basin, with its wealth of coal, iron and industry, was
imperiled by Lieut. Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army fighting
inside Thionville, only 15 miles away. Here the 3rd seized a
section of the Maginot Line, which had been remodeled to form
outworks for the Westwall, and turned its German-installed 105-mm.
guns on the enemy holding the half of the Rhone by way of the
Durance. An old monastery at St. Maximin is revered as containing
the supposed tomb of St. Mary Magdalene.)
Says Nazis Exhaust Reserves
Other American forces shot out northward to the vicinity of
Grasse, eight miles northwest of Cannes, and LaBastide, 23 miles
northwest of Cannes, thus deepening up to 30 miles their solid
foothold along more than 50 miles of the curving French Mediterranean
shores on which they landed Tuesday.
An Allied staff officer said the Germans were withdrawing so
rapidly that they were unable to accomplish their usual demolitions.
He said they were expected to stiffen somewhat as the Allies
progressed northward but declared that German reserves in France
already had been virtually exhausted. He highly praised the American-French
tactics in by-passing and cutting off enemy strongpoints.
Only on the coast a dozen miles directly east of Toulon was German
opposition described as truly determined.
The Toulon garrison, however, already was outflanked by the American-French
drives farther north. One of these took La Roquebrussanne, 14
miles north of Toulon, and another Sollies-Pont, six miles northeast.
Report Cannes Drome Taken.
Another five miles west from Sollies-Pont would put Lieut.
Gen. Alexander M. Patch's men on an open coastal plain across
which they could move a dozen miles to the sea, cutting off Toulon
entirely. They already were reported less than 30 miles east
of Marseille, which with Toulon is one of the two big prizes
on the Mediterranean French coast.
On the east of the beachhead front the Germans announced they
had abandoned Cannes, but official information at Allied headquarters
indicated the eastern front was relatively stable and there was
no word of entry into that one-time resort of the rich.
(The United Press said American troops had captured an airfield
on the outskirts of Cannes.)
Four E·Boats Destroyed
The Germans made a belated attempt to interfere with the beachhead
unloading operations, but it resulted only in destruction of
four enemy torpedo boats by American destroyers. For consolation
the Germans only could report that the Americans "and their
French auxiliary forces" were suffering losses in building
up their forces and that isolated German shore batteries had
"held out until the last grenade was fired."
The Germans contended their force on the island of Port Cros
still was holding out, but Allied headquarters disclosed that
that island and neighboring Isle du Levant were cleaned up by
an American-Canadian outfit the night before Tuesday's invasion.
Some Germans remained on the nearby islands of Sainte Marguerite
and Saint Honorat, south of Cannes, and were firing periodically
at the mainland with heavy caliber guns.
Allied air forces continued to support the invasion both from
land bases and from nine auxiliary aircraft carriers.
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