The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-24
Montgomery Calls
 Move Final Drive
(Continued from Page D

first rush-the Allies were expected to meet only the thinnest enemy resistance.
 Pontoon bridges already were go- ing up over the Rhine in the wake of the advancing infantrymen and thousands of grinning, eager Dough- boys and Tomnies were moving ill to "get it over with"
 Wesel, one of the first British objectives on the east bank of the Rhine, was cleared of all but a handful of Nazi paratroopers early this morning.
 Scottish riflemen of the 5th Royal Tank regiment, veterans of Libya and Normandy, burst into WeSel at 900 last night and rooted the she'll stunned Germans from their cellar hideouts at bayonet point.
 The first returning pilots from a force of \ iberators that dropped supplies to the airborne forces re- ported that colossal battle was raging on the Westphalian plain near Wesel.
 Farther to the south, however, the American Ninth Army appeared to be meeting lighter initial opposi- tioal, and the airborne troops to the east also were believed to have taken their first objective.
 Navy Vets Borrowing from the invasion tac- tics already proved on the beaches of the Pacific and the Mediterran- can, the Ninth Army's Doughboys made their crossing in snub- nosed landing craft hauled overland to the Rhine and manned by U. s. Navy veterans.
 A terse announcement at Gen. Dwight D. EisenhoWer's headquart- CTS said Allied warships were sup porting the ofefnsive. That appar- ently indicated that the battleWag- ons of the British home fleet, SUD- ported by American and Allied naval units, had swept through the mined waters of the North Sea to lombard German shore positions along the coasts of Holland and northwestern Germany
 There were no immediate details on the progress of the offensive. but heavily-censored front dispatches and German broadcasts made 1t clear that the Allies had secured their foothold east of the Rhine and won the first round of the battle.
 Montgomerys men kicked off late last night behind terrible artillery barrage that beat the German river defenseS into smoking ruins. They swept across the river in assault boats, bayoneted the Nazi survivors from their pillboxeS and advanced inland on what was described offi- cially as broad front.
 "A CBS broadcast said Prime Minister Churchill was at Montgom- ery's front headquarters when the offensive began.)
 German military Spokesmen said the Allies struck on both sides ot Wesel. There they were aStride the main roads to Muenster, 48 miles tc the northeast, and the broad north German plain which sweeps east ward 285 miles to Berlin.
 The offensive, which Allied lead CTS predicted confidently would end in Berlin with the complete destruc- ton of German military power kicked of in brilliant sunshine that promised day of frightful ah bombardment for the hard-pressec Nazi armies.
 Waves of British heavy bombers blanketed the Ruhr and it's sup porting communications lines witf explosives throughout the night guided to their targets by towering fires raging over a 10,000-squars mile patch of western Germany. At daybreak. thousands of othel Allied warplanes rocketed acros! , the battle lines to spread death anc ruin through NaZi troop concentra. tions, gun positions and supply dumps in the path of Montgomery! troops.
 AS Montgomery's armies and tht Allied sky troops struck in thu north the entire southern half O.