The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-29
Twin Drive Heads
 Fast For Leipzig
Continued from Page D

British would be only 245 miles due west of Berlin.
 Heavily-censored field dispatches made it clear that the German front had broken wide open along a winding 20-mile battle line ex- tending perhaps 100 road miles be- yond the Rhine on the American First and Third Army sectors.
 Hundreds of Allied tanks were out in front of the advancing infantry men and plunging eastward through gaping breaches in the enemy lines on the main invasion roads to Ber- lin. The German retreat had broken into rout everywhere except in the heavily -built-up Ruhr Basin, and it was becoming questionable Whe- ther they could reform for another stand short of their capital.
 Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges U. s. First Army advanced as much as p miles along 15-mile front north and east of Capgured Giessen, B miles north of Frank furt.
 The Americans drove 16 miles north of Giessen along the Lahn river to capture the highway center of Marburg, and wheeled 6 1-2 miles eastward to take Amoenburg. There they were 204 miles southwest of Berlin and advancing almost without opposition to the northeast.
 The fall of Giessen gave the Americans one of the main German supply depots on the central front, but there was no immediate indica- tion as to how much enemy equip ment was captured.
 Front reports quoted American flyers as saying the Germans were fleeing the area at top speed, aban- doning everything that might slow their flight.
 At least 13,OOO prisoners were rounded up by the First Armys armored spearheadS and infantry units mopping up In their wake yes- terday. It was one of the biggest one-day bags reported by the ram- paging First Army since its break through from the Remagen bridge head week ago.
 Units of the First Army linked up with It. Gen. George s. Patton's Third Army in the Lich area seven miles south of Giessen yesterday, and at several other points along the Limburg- Frank furt military highway to the south west.
 6,000 Pocketed
 An estimated 5000 Germans, mostly veteran Panzer units, were pocketed by the juncture below Giessen and they were being chopped up swiftly by the support ing infantry forces of both Amer ican Armies.
 At Amoenburg, the First Army was 85 road miles east of the Rhine and still meeting only disorganized resistance from stragglers left be- hind in the mass flight of the Ger man Army.
 PattonS rip-roaring Fourth Armored division joined the race for Kassel and Leipzig yesterday with a sudden spurt 27 miles north of Frankfurt to Lich. The tankers advanced another eight miles this morning to reach the Frankfurt Leipzig superhighway just east of Geissen.
 Another Fourth Ar1nored column advanced 19 miles northward on it's right flank to take Gruenberg, 12 miles east of Giessen and about 21O miles southwest of Berlin.
 Patton and Hodges were throw ing probably the greatest armored concentration of the war into the twin drive across Central Germany. overwhelming the feeble German opposition left in their path
 United Press War Corrpesondent Ohm McDermott spent half the day yesterday in Piper Cub and all Army jeep trying to catch up with the racing First Army spearheads The best he could do by nightfall was to reach Hodges rear units.
 Patton's advance was going ahead with equal speed. Veteran tank fighters of the rolling Fourth Di- vision were riding unchecked through town after town northeast and east of Frankfurt without paus- ing to pick up the hundreds of Ger mans trying to surrender to them.
 Their sudden Swerve northward, after fetinting southeast toward Nuremberg, apparently had thrown the Germans completely off balance In many sectors the Tanks raced clear through enemy-held towns with their guns blazing and were out and away before the Germans realized they had been overrun.
 There was no confirmation of German reports that the Third Army had reached Hammelburg, 52 miles east of Frankfurt and 2O4 miles southwest of Berlin.
 But Patton's Fifth and Sixth In- fantry Divisions wiped out the last German resistance in the suburbs of Frankfurt, 1-2 miles to the east, and cleared half the city itself. A few hundred die-hard Nazis were entrenched in the northern half of giving the Americans their toughest fight east of the Rhine.
 The 26th Infantry Division, mop ping up in the wake of the Fourth | cleared all of Hanau and | ASchaffenburg. 1-2 miles east and | 25 miles southeast of Frankfurt.
 Other Third Army clements proKe 1 into Wiesbaden, IS miles southwest of Frankfurt, where they were