September 5, 1944; YANKS IN GERMANY:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1944:

. Wisconsin State Journal | Madison, Wisconsin | Tuesday, September 05, 1944

British Push Deeper Into Netherlands

Strengthening Trap on 100,000 Nazis

By VERGIL PINKLEY

(United Press War Correspondent

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, AEF—

Lieut. Gen George S. Patton's Third army has reached the Moselle in force between Metz and Nancy, a front dispatch revealed today, and an unconfirmed report was published here that U.. S. tanks had reached Strasbourg on the German border and fighting was in progress on. German soil around Saarbrucken.

British armored forces plunged deeper into the Netherlands more than 30 miles beyond Antwerp, strengthening a trap closed on some 100,000 Germans pinned against the channel coast.

The lower side of the channel pocket was collapsing. Canadian troops speared within 3 miles of Boulogne on the Straits of Dover. The Evening News said the German garrisons o£ Boulogne, Calais, Gravelines, and Dunkerque were trying to escape by sea in a reversal of the Allied Dunkerque evacuation in 1940.

Robert C. Richards, United Press correspondent with Patten's army, said the American vanguard came to grips with the Germans in the village of Pont-a-Mousson, astride the Moselle roughly midway between Metz and Nancy.

Report Unconfirmed.

The London Evening News, however, published a dispatch credited to French frontier sources which said American armor had plunged to the Rhine and the German border at the outskirts of Strasbourg, 75 miles east of Nancy.

To the northwest, the dispatch, which lacked confirmation in any other quarter, said, American and German troops were locked in

battle on Nazi homeland soil around the border city of Saarbrucken.

Russ Charge

Continuing Aid

to Germans

Development Follows

Bulgars Cutting

of Ties with Nazis

(By United Press)

Russia today declared war on Bulgaria, charging that country with continuing aid to Germany; fighting between the Russians and Finland came to an end after four years of war. and a Brussels radio broadcast that Germany had capitulated to' the Allies—apparently based on a garbled report of the surrender of 10,000 Germans near Mons—was retracted less than two hours after transmission.

Radio Moscow announced . the Soviet declaration of war as a climax to a series of bitter Russian denunciations of the Bulgars. It came a few hours after Bulgaria, struggling to avert disaster, had declared her last ties with the Axis broke.

French Narrow Escape Route

for Germans West of Saone

By ELEANOR PACKARD

(United Press War Correspondent

WITH U. S. THIRD ARMY on

Moselle River, Sept. 4—(Delayed)

Lieut Gen. George S. Patton's battle-grimed fighters came to grips tonight with the Germans in the tiny village of Pont-a-Mousson, astride the Moselle 13 miles south of Metz.

(This d i s p a t c h was the first word direct from the Third army front in several days.)

Germans Withdrawn

After scattered fighting between patrols early this morning, the Germans withdrew to the east bank of the river, blowing up the bridges across the 80 foot Moselle behind them.