Evening star., 1944-10-07
Four T owns Fall
After Americans
Open New Attack
BULLETIN.

tense north of Aachen col
lapsed suddenly today under
growing American 1st Army
pressure, and United States :
tanks and infantry surged
forward on a sweeping drive.
The defenses which yesterday
were so stubborn and ap-
peared to be holding firm un-
der heavy artillery support
gave way this morning when
the doughboys launched an
attack. More than 800 pris-
oners were taken in the first
two hours.
Four towns were captured in
a 3-mile advance which car
ried to points 6 miles within
the Reich.
BY the Associated Press.
LONDON, Oct. THE Ameri-
can attack on the Siegfried Line
broke out on a new sector today
as infantry jumped Off in the
dark forest lands Is miles south
of Aachen and drove through
the first of the German dragons
teeth antitank traps, mines and
concrete obstacles.
The attack on the Siegfried de-
fenses, already preached in their
main lines at Aachen and north of
Aachen, broadened to about 40 miles
as fierce fighting ragged from Geilen-
kirchen to the area of the new as
sault.
The newest attack, by the better
part of division, was launched in
a 3-mile-wide forest below Mon
schau at a point about Is miles
south of Aachen and Is miles north
west of Prum.
Advance North of Aachen.
Above Aachen the American 1st
Army of 1t. Gen. Courtney H.
Hodges drove on, pushing back Ger
man stop-gap tanks and infantry
half mile north of Beggendorf and
to point liz miles southeast of
Ubach.
1t also pounded nearly a mile
through the Hurtgen Forest, 10
miles inside Germany, and third
of the way to Cologne in the CEN
trail Aachen sector.
Meanwhile, to the south 1t. Gen.
George S. Patton's Sd Army men
gained 100 yards in savage fighting
in the six-day-old battle for Fort
Driant, miles southwest of Metz
on the Moselle River.
The Americans here had taken
everything the Germans could throw
at them both from the inside and
the outside while holding on to their
northwest and southwest corners of
the fort. They then began their
assault on the enemy holed up in
the underground honeycomb of the
Notifications.
7th Army Advances.
Farther south French and Amer
ican soldiers of the 7th Army beat
their way eastward to miles to
positions on three sides of the
copper mine town of LIE Thillot, 18
miles north of Belfort and only 6
miles from the 2,398-foot Bussang
Pass through the heart of the
VoSges.
In Lower Holland, Allied forces
closed within a few thousand yards
of the stronghold of Tilburg. Cana
dians established bridgehead over
the Leopold Canal west of Antwerp,
meeting exceptionally fierce re-
sistance. Other troops fought to
Ossendrecht, IA miles above Ant
werp, and only 3 miles from cutting
the German escape road from the
flooded Dutch lowlands at the mouth
of the Schelde
In the fighting around Aachen,
Gen. Hodges wioened his Ubach
breach to miles at the base, wrest-
ed back a good part of the yardage
the Nazis won in counterattacks yes
terday and hammered out new gains.
His troops pushed as far as the
outskirts of Geilenkirchen, miles
north of Ubach. Pried out of Beg
gendorf, 2 miles east of Ubach, they
lashed out anew late yesterday and
by-passed the town in a thrust a
half mile to the north.
They pounded their way to point
a mile and a half down the road
southeast of Ubach, in the battle
of the barracks" and fought part
way back up the shot-swept slope
of Pillbox Ridge a mile and half
south of Ubach, regaining about half
the ground they lost to German
counterattack yesterday.
Other forces of the 1st Army
pushed on at daybreak into the sec
ond day of their heavy going drive
to clear the Hurtgen fir forest belt
of the Siegfried Line, southeast of
Aachen. They had battled through
(See WESTERN FRONT, Page A-2
1 /