The Pittsburgh Press (September 7, 1944)
2 U.S. ARMIES SMASH AHEAD
Yanks drive 30 miles in day; Siegfried outposts stormed
Allies massing forces for final phase of struggle in Europe
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
Converging on Germany, U.S. forces today were battling hard on the approaches to the border. Meanwhile, along the coast (1), Canadian troops drove into Boulogne and Calais, and neared Dunkerque. To the north, British troops (2) were reported close to Rotterdam. The U.S. 1st Army (3) smashed across the Meuse River near the German border, while the U.S. 3rd Army was across the Moselle River in force (4) and attacking the approaches to the Siegfried Line. In southern France (5), U.S. and French troops were driving toward a junction with U.S. forces in the north and were closing on the Belfort Gap gateway into Germany.
SHAEF, London, England –
A dispatch from Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley’s 12th Army Group headquarters said tonight U.S. forces had advanced 30 miles or more in some sectors of the Western Front yesterday, and that the Siegfried Line fortifications likely would be under artillery fire soon.
Powerful U.S. armored forces today were storming through the Ardennes Forest and across the Moselle River toward the Reich frontiers less than 35 miles distant, driving back battered German forces seeking refuge behind the Seigfried Line, United Press writer Joseph W. Grigg reported from 12th Army Group headquarters.
Both the 1st and 3rd Armies were on the move again today, Mr. Grigg said. He reported “substantial progress” throughout yesterday by armored spearheads, with the main forces following closely. For security reasons, the location and direction of the gains were not disclosed.
One of the toughest blocks of Nazi resistance appeared to be around Metz, as well as along the Moselle where the Americans had to fight hard to get across against German troops dug in along the wooded banks.
The intense Nazi opposition along the 30-mile Moselle battlefront between Metz and Nancy – both of which the Germans appeared to hold – seemed designed to act as a breakwater against the American onrush until the main enemy forces reach the Siegfried Line.
Allied headquarters reported that Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges had driven a 1st Army spearhead from the Auchamps crossing of the Meuse “well into” the rugged Ardennes Forest to the area of Thilay, nine miles northeast of Charleville near the Franco-Belgian border.
Robert C. Richards, United Press writer with Lt. Gen. Patton’s 3rd Army, said U.S. assault forces were hammering ahead in the Moselle Valley between Nancy and Metz in a crunching assault on the steel and concrete fortifications before the Siegfried Line.
Supreme Headquarters disclosed that Gen. Patton’s army massing in the Moselle Valley includes the U.S. 5th Infantry Division, whose troops were the first of the U.S. Army to go overseas in this war. The division landed in Iceland in September 1941 and has not been home since.
Other units named
The 35th Infantry Division and the 4th and 7th Armored Divisions were also revealed to be taking part in the 3rd Army drive now menacing Germany proper.
Mr. Richards’ dispatch from the Moselle Valley did not make clear the situation at Metz and Nancy. It said the Americans were at the “approaches” of each. Unofficial reports said fighting was going on in Nancy and that the Americans held a part of it.
The U.S. 1st Army and the British 2nd Army were nearing a junction in Belgium. The Yanks captured Jodoigne, about 15 miles southeast of Louvain, which had been captured by the British. Louvain is 15 miles east of Brussels.
The London radio quoted its correspondent with the 2nd Army as saying British columns were about 30 miles from Germany east and northeast of Louvain, and reconnaissance units were ever nearer.
Reported at Yoncq
A U.S. column was reported at Yoncq, 10 miles southeast of Sedan, which was still in German hands, but official reports did not make clear whether it was a First or Third Army formation.
A general feeling was manifest at headquarters that another phase of Allied operations in Western Europe was finished, and that an interim period had set in preparatory to a new and probably final phase of the war, to come as soon as the buildup of communications and consolidation of newly-won territory is completed.
The German Transocean News Agency reported that the Americans had concentrated strong forces between Namur and Sedan. The Nazi agency acknowledged Meuse crossings at several places “behind a creeping barrage.”
Report Yank thrust
Transocean said powerful U.S. forces “thrust against the Moselle” on either side of Pont-aa-Mousson, midway between Nancy and Metz, where “crossing attempts and counterattacks followed each other in rapid succession throughout the day.”
The Allied sweep along the Channel coast closely invested Calais and Boulogne, and troops who bypassed Calais were reported approaching Dunkerque. Latest advices placed them in the area of Gravelines, 13 miles west-southwest of Dunkerque. The Canadian Army was in a period of buildup and preparation while conducting limited operations.
Canadian troops reached the famous World War I town of Ypres, 12 miles north of Armentières, and front reports said the city was captured.
Rain hampers raids
Rain and heavy clouds held down air operations early today. Headquarters disclosed that the German 1st Army, a relatively small force formerly stationed in the Bay of Biscay area, had been mauled after being withdrawn to the Paris area and eastward. This made a total of four German armies defeated in northern France – the 7th, 15th, 1st and 5th Panzer Army.
Today’s early reports at headquarters disclosed that the British had captured Ghent, Courtrai and the French border town of Armentières, immortalized by its Mademoiselle song of World War I.
Mr. Richards’ dispatch from the 3rd Army front in northeastern France disclosed that the stiffening German resistance had turned suddenly into a full-dress stand against Gen. Patton’s forces pushing stubbornly toward the Reich.
Supplants blitz
Mr. Richards said:
It is evident that for the next 48 hours at least the blitz type of warfare has been supplanted by grim, close-range infantry attacks supported by mortars, 105s and Long Tom 155s.
In many sectors of the Metz-Nancy front, Mr. Richards said, the Germans were exploiting to the utmost the advantage of the pillboxes studding the region since the early days of the war.
Fortifications of the old Maginot Line reached to this area, and it appeared that the Nazis had refurbished them in the week that Gen. Patton’s forces had been stalled by the lightning overextension of supply lines to prepare for a stand in the Moselle Valley.
Hamper air support
Clouds scudded low over the battleground, Mr. Richards reported, impeding Allied air support in the heaviest fighting the 3rd Army has done since it sped into eastern France.
The latest reports indicated that Gen. Hodges’ 1st Army was finding the going easier in the push across the Meuse in great strength – a drive which if entirely successful would roll up the flank of the German forces facing Gen. Patton’s army.
First Army troops were reported pushing beyond Namur, Dinant, Givet and Auchamps. The four spearheads were pointed at Luxembourg and the Rhineland.
Attack Channel ports
Far to the west, Allied ground and air forces attacked diehard enemy garrisons in Brest and the French Channel ports with a fury that presaged the early conquest of those bypassed German strongholds.
While hundreds of Allied planes shuttled overhead unlading blockbusters and fragmentation bombs on the cornered Germans, U.S. troops pushed in their siege lines on Brest.
Cross last barriers
But the decisive battle of Western Europe was shaping up swiftly on the borders of the Reich where the U.S. 1st and 3rd Armies were pouring tanks, troops and guns across the last water barriers before the Rhineland.
Berlin said heavy fighting was raging along a front of more than 200 miles from the Belgian North Sea coast to the Lorraine Gap, and the Allied march had admittedly slowed at a number of points, particularly in the U.S. 1st and 3rd Army sectors.
Headquarters spokesmen were confident the battered Nazis had neither the men nor the will to make a successful stand on the Siegfried Line or any other barrier on the road to Berlin.
They revealed that German casualties in the battle of the west already exceed 500,000, excluding thousands killed by French Maquis.
Captured 230,000
The U.S. 1st and 3rd Armies were alone disclosed to have bagged more than 230,000 prisoners in their triumphal sweep across France and the Low Countries, including 25,000 taken by the 1st Army in the now-destroyed pocket southwest of Mons, Belgium.
Gen. Patton’s hard-driving troops were estimated to have taken 76,000 prisoners since Aug. 1, wounded 65,000 and killed 20,000 – a five-week total of 162,000 casualties inflicted on Nazi divisions now attempting to hold the borders of the Reich.
