The Wilmington morning star., 1945-03-11
Americans Nine Miles
In Rhine Bridgehead
Continued from Page one)

al AAAAAlC III luX c0e0Q
Continued from Page One)
preme headquarters did not con.
firm this, but a field dispatch said
enemy resistance was stiffening and
at least one armored division was
deployed against the American ad-
vance.
It was said at headquarters that
the original bridgehead was being
enlarged steadily.
The Germans had not yet tried
to seize the initiative, more than
three days after the American First
crossed, and had not yet made a
major counterattack, Associated
Press Correspondent Hal Boyle
wrote from east of the Rhine.
This was the Ardennes in re-
verse, with Field Marshal Karl Won
Rundstedt forced to make heavy
commitment of reverses against
this threat to the heart of the Reich
at an hour when four other Allied
armies were lined up on the Rhine
in position to cross.
Still on the defensive, the Ger
mans were building up artillery
in desperate effort to knock out
the Lundendorff bridge at Rema-
gen before the advancing Amer
lean infantry and tanks drive their
guns beyond reach of the crossing.
Air Battle
Alert U. S. Eighth Air Force
fighters broke up an attempt by
six enemy planes to bomb the
bridge this afternoon In spec
tacular air battle, 5000 feet direct
ly above the bridgehead, while
German and American antiaircraft
gunners filled the sky with flax.
Standing outside the bridgehead
of so square miles, enemy medium
artillery and tank guns blasted at
the bridgehead and the bridge,
across which U. S. First Army
guns, men and tanks streamed in
endless procession.
To the south, the U. S. Third
Army hammered within two miles
of the Rhine city Of Coblenz, and
flushed 5000 prisoners from the
Eifil mountain trap which it shut
on six enemy divisions by a juno
ton yesterday with the First Army.
On the north side of the trap,
the First Army seized 20 miles of
the Abr river, mover so swiftly
that it took 20 carloads of military
supplies at Ahrweiler, two flying
bomb sites, an ordnance dump at
Brueck, IA miles west of the Rhine,
and numerous U. S. jeeps and
trucks taken by the Germans in
the Ardennes breakthrough. Some
prisoners wore shirts of U. S. units
mauled in that breakthrough. At
Brueck in the heart of the Eifels, |
the First Army was. eight miles
or less from second junction with
the Third Army in the center of
the trap. The First Army's pris-
oner bag was 5000.
Pocket ColIapses
On the north end of the front,
a field dispatch said the, Mng- held
Vessel pocket on the west bank of
the Rhine collapsed under COM
bined blows Of the Canadian First
and U. S. Ninth armies.
As Allied forces drove within
two miles of Vessel, in the north
west corner of the Ruhr, the Ger
mans blew both bridges there and
rearguards fled across the Rhine
by barges in storm Of bombs and
shells.
This was the final act in the great |
battle west of the Rhine which
supreme headquarters estimated
cost the enemy 100000 men in pris-
oners alone since February %.
Twenty-Five German divisions were
destroyed or so badly mauled
they must be refitted.
Farther south, the Germans said
their soldier wounded, the aged,
women and children were moving
east across the Rhine in long lines
in flight from the Saar industrial
basin and the Palatinate, the only
two provinces still in enemy pos
session west Of the Rhine.
Allied armies now were lined up
on $50 miles of the Rhine's west
bank from the Dutch border to
near Coblenz, and the Ruhr's great
arsenal cities were learning to their
cost what this meant as the Ninth
Army rocked them with giant
240-mm howitzers.
Duisberg and Dusseldorf have
been catching it for week, and
front dispatch said that from now
on, other cities within range, es-
pecially essen with its sprswling
Krupp Munition Works, would
know no peace.
German attempts to slash into
the Remagen bridgehead yester-
day with the aid of tanks were
repulsed, and since then the enemy
has been reluctant to return to the
suicidalu attacks.