The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-22

or no enemy opposition. Two task forces converged fro mthe north and northwest on Speyer. river crossing point 10 miles south of Ludwig shafen. One reached Bohl, six miles northwest of Speyer, and 8 second drove four miles south of Ludwig shafen along the river bank to 6 point six miles north of Speyer.
 The Third Army's 90th Infantry Division, possibly supported by ele- ments of the Fourth Army Division rushed north from Worms, were meeting unexpectedly bitter resist ance from the German garrison in Mainz, 34 miles northwest of Lud- wigShafen.
 Almost 48 hours after the 90th broke into the Cathedral City on the Rhine a band of fanatical Naz troops still was fighting desperately for every house and barricaded street corner. The garrison was cut off on all sides, however, and It's elimination appeared to be only matter of time.
 Everywhere else on the Third Army front were sllrrendering In droves. An estimated 2,200 Ger mans were taken almost without a fight in the capture of Worms yes- terday and front reports said white flags were waving from German houses on the east bank of the Rhine.
 Other Third and Seventh Army forces were chopping swiftly through a number of isolated Nazi pockets in the Saar-Palatinate tri- angle west of the Rhine.
 Kaiserslautern, former kingpin of the enemy defenses, 28 miles wes+ of Ludwigshafen, was cleared by Patton's 8Oth Infantry, while his 10th Armored Division drove 1T miles south of Kaiserslautern to take Neustadt. Approaching Landau
 The armored column swung past Neustadt to within six miles of Lan.' dau, 10 miles to the south, where a big concentration of German troops and armor was reported to have been pocketed.
 In their drive on Landau, the 1Oth's tank spearheads were barely 15 miles from juncture with It. Gen. Alexander M. Patch's north bound Seventh Army troops who broke through the Stegfried line to the western end of the gap at Dorrenbach, 10 miles southwest Of Landau.
 Another 10th arinored column rolled 12 miles southwest of Kais- erslautern to the Burgalben area, five miles north of the Siegfried anchor town of Pirmasens. Seventh Army troops were closing rapidly on PirmasenS from the south and southwest, and another link-up of the two armies in that area ap- peared imminent.
 Neunkirchen, another German key point 27 miles southwest of Kaisers- lautern, was cleared by doughboys of the Third Army's 65th Division and the Seventh's 63rd. Homburg, 6 1-2 miles southeast of Neunkirchen, also was captured by the Seventh Army's 45th Division in a Emile breakthrough that fin- ished off the entire western half of the 50-mile Siegfried line best between Saarbruecken and the Rhine.
 So complete was the German de- morali0ation on that half of the Seventh Army front that an entire Nazi column was battered to a hall by American dive bomberS in the area east of Honburg and rounded up without fight by pursuing Yank Infantry.
 Stiff fighting was reported con- tinuing, however, along a winding 20-mile front extending west from the Karlsruhe corner. German troops were battling furiously from their Siegfried line defenses in that corner to hold open a narrow escape corridor across the Rhine.
 Seventh Army headquarters esti- mated that more than 16,0O0 Ger man prisoners already had been taken on that front since the start of the offensive a week ago. I