The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-09-12
First U. s. Invasion Of Reich Gains Impetus
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Dutch border near the great fort- reSs city Of Maastrlcht.
 It was in the extreme east tip of Belgium below Maastrict that the Americans seized Fort Eben Emael, There the Na2iS unveiled their "blitzkrieg in the west. in ie40 and swamped the fort In e myster. ious manner never fully eXplanied.
 With Eben Emael and It's adja. [. cont Qualifications overrun and with MaaStrict set up for frontal assault, the barriers before the German frontier in the Aaehen area were erumbling.
 Light Resistance
 The Nazis offered comparatively light resistance at Ebcn Emael, which was held strongly by the Bel- gians in the first phase of the war but nevertheless toppled immediate. ly under tho German onslaught, touching off rumors of secret wea- pons" of dread potency.
 Marauders and HavocS of the U. s, Ninth Air Force dropped bombs or German soil for the first time to- day. They hammered concrete plll- boxes, antl-tank supplements, and troop shelters in the Siegfried line and the transport lines immedaite- ly behind the fortified belt in the 5aarbrucken area.
 Marauder mediums dropped 200 tons of bombs on the Siegfried line at Scheid, 32 miles south of Aachen Two forces of Havoc light bombers attacked rail yards at St. Wendell, l7 miles north of Saarbrucken. Thousand-pounders sraShed on pillboxes in the loop of the river Our near Echternacht on the Lux. embourg- German frontier.
 First Army troops striking in the direction of Cologne and Coblenz captured Eupen, in the Liege area Six miles short of the German iron. tier, and Malmedy, nine west of the frontier. Its advances brought the vanguard almost to the border along 20lmile front in that area.
 Occupation
 The Americans almost completed the occupation of the Grand Duchy Of Luxembourg, from which the first penetration of Germany was made.
 Gorrell disclosed that the pene- tration of Germany was made by a U s. armored division which swept across Belgium in 10 days. He said orders for the border crossing were issued from a bleak barracks build ing which only few hours earlier had housed German troops.
 A dispatch from It. Gen. Omar N. Bradley's 18th Army group head. quarters said 1t was apparent that the American vanguard had not yet reached the Siegfried Line proper, which in the Trier area lies some 10 to l2 miles beyond the frontier.
 A Nazi-controlled dispatch to Stockholm reported "heartrending scenes" during the evacuation of the German-Belgian frontier districts, when crying women were separated from their husbands and families were split up. The stream of refu- gees is crowding the roads :"
 (The British radio reported that the German garrison of Le Havre surrendered today and $500 of its men were captured. The commander had been wounded seriously by bombs, the broadcast said, and the deputy commander surrendered the garriSon.)
 Moving under a blistering artillery bcmbardment that ripped into the Nazis' vaunted Siegfried Line, It. Gen. Courtney H. Hodges lst Army rolled across the German frontier yesterday afternoon and early today were reported advancing steadily into the Great Forest belt of the Rhineland.
 Terror of Invasion
 The terror of invasion that Hit ler's armies carried into more than a dozen European states in the first flush of Nazi power was visited upon the German homeland for the first time in more than a century, and preliminary reports from the front said the Germans were offering only the feeblest resistance.
 Trier, birthplace of Karl Marx and probably the oldest city in Ger many, was by-passed as the Amer ican tank and infantry columns famed out through the densely- wooded hills to the east, probing at what appeared to be a soft spot in the Nazi west wall defenses.
 At the same time, other lst Army units in eastern Belgium battled 10 to 20 miles past Liege through sav- age German opposition to within five miles of the reich and moved up their heavy artillery to pour salvo after salvo into the German city of Aachen.
 The Germans were reported hur- riedly erecting field Qualifications across the gap to meet the threat of a new invasion poised by the faaunfllFn