Big battle raging in South France
Nazis pinched in trap 100 miles up Rhône
By Eleanor Packard, United Press staff writer
Up the Rhône Valley went U.S. forces, meeting stiffening Nazi resistance in a triangle based on the Drôme River (1). To the east, a German attack from Italy caused the loss by U.S. troops of Briançon, five miles from the border.
Rome, Italy –
A fierce battle raged at the confluence of the Rhône and Drôme Rivers today as U.S. troops slashed at straggling remnants of the German 19th Army and swung a salient across the Drôme in an attempt to cut off enemy forces trying to flee north across the river on pontoons.
The Germans were pinched into a triangle formed by the two rivers, 100 miles up the Rhône Valley, and the Americans driving northward from newly-captured Montélimar.
Cross Drôme
Headquarters described the fighting in the vicinity of Loriol, near the apex of the triangle, as “particularly severe” and both sides were reported suffering considerable casualties.
As one U.S. force hammered the Germans frontally at Loriol, four miles east of the Rhône and a mile and a half below the Drôme, another force drove eastward to Grâne, four miles from Loriol, crossed the Drôme and captured Allex on the north bank.
The flanking movement threatened to cut off the desperate enemy troops, which had staggered to the Drôme after breaking out of a trap below Montélimar, 14 miles south of Loriol.
Capture 45,000
The Germans were losing heavily in the desperate fighting as they attempted to flee northward along the Rhône. In two days, the Americans captured 800 motortrucks and two batteries of 88mm guns on the front around Montélimar.
While there was no disclosure of German troop losses in the battles on the Rhône, an Allied communiqué reported that the number of prisoners taken in southern France had reached 45,000, of which 10,000 were seized at Marseille.
In occupying Montélimar, the Americans captured Maj. Gen. Otto Richter, commander of the 198th Infantry Division, which prisoners said was recently transferred to southern France after being mauled in Russia. He was the sixth German general captured on this front in addition to VAdm. Ruhfus, naval commander at Toulon, who surrendered to the French.
As the Americans continued their steady drive up the east side of the Rhône to within 13 miles of Valence, French troops of the 7th Army forged northward on the west bank of Bagnols, 18 miles northwest of Avignon and 28 miles southwest of Montélimar.
French and U.S. troops of the 7th Army have liberated more than 20,000 square miles of territory since they landed Aug. 15.
Although the German 19th Army has been written off as a virtually complete loss, the Germans moved reinforcements from Italy into France and recaptured the town of Briançon, where an Allied spearhead had thrust to within five miles of the Franco-Italian border. The Americans withdrew only to the southern outskirts of Briançon, but this left an important road junction under German control.
Eliminate pocket
Headquarters did not indicate the strength of the German forces from Italy, but only several days ago Allied patrols sighted what were believed to be German panzer divisions moving westward north of Turin, which is about 50 miles northeast of Briançon.
The loss of the town was the first acknowledgment by ground officers that the Germans were moving troops from Italy.
The communiqué also disclosed that U.S. troops in consolidating their positions in the lower Argonne Valley occupied the village of Valréas, 16 miles southeast of Montélimar. The move eliminated an enemy pocket bypassed in the drive northward.
