in the European
Theater of Operations
WEDNESDAY Nov.
IS, 1944
Third Army
Is Drawing
Noose
Tight
Third Infantry”forces continued
yesterday to close in on" the Lorraine bastion of Metz, capturing a second
group of fortifications in the Year area and moving to within two miles of the
city on the south.
As Lt. Gen. George S. Patton's
troops steadily compressed the Germans in the Metz area, Seventh Army forces in
the Vosges Mountains to the south went over to the offensive, gaining up to two
miles at both ends of a ten-mile front and capturing two towns.
In Holland, quiet since the
Allies drove the 15 th German Army north of the Maas, the British Second Army
struck under a 400-gun barrage against a pocket
Of German forces in the
Nederweert area, on the east flank of the Allied salient. North of Nederweert,
which' is east of the Meuse, the Germans were said to have abandoned Meijel,
which they had seized in a recent short-lived offensive.
North of Metz, meanwhile, troops
of the 90th Division spread their Moselle bridgehead and were within a mile and
a half from Germany near the Luxemburg
border. They were said to have bored
through the Maginot Line at one point.
Nine Nazi
Counter-Attacks
Although the guns of the great
Metz forts still were virtually silent again yesterday—an unexplained mystery—the
Germans threw in nine counter-attacks against the American encircling forces, four
of them southwest of Metz. All the Nazi thrusts were beaten back, although one
gained about a mile in the Chateau Salins sector before the doughboys restored
the situation.
Fort Driant, where the Americans
had previously withdrawn after a ten-day underground battle, was reported to be
all but cut
off. Although the Americans were pressing hard along the east bank at Corny,
across the Moselle from Driant, the fort's guns had not opened up.
Churchill
Sees Poilus
Near Front
By Dan Regan
Stars and Stripes
Staff Writer
WITH THE FIRST FRENCH
ARMY IN THE VOSGES, Nov. 14
—Prime Minister Churchill and
Gen.deGaulle yesterday visited the First French Army front near Belfort, 12 miles
from the front lines. Through mountain valleys shrouded in mists and over roads
blanketed and almost obscured by the season's first heavy snowfall, Churchill
and deGaulle drove to the command post of Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and
from there to a French divisional command post, only a few miles from the
German lines. After being briefed on the military situation along that portion
of the Sixth Army Group front, the two leaders lunched at the division.
- On the tour were Field Marshal
Sir Alan Brooke, British chief of staff; Gen. Alfonse Juin, French chief of
staff; Andre DSethelm, French war minister and Mary Churchill, of the ATS, daughter
of the Prime Minister.
Didn't Hit Front
Lines
In an interview,
Miss Churchill said,
"We saw many American soldiers in Paris while there the other day,
but haven't been to their front-line troops yet."
Asked if she would accompany her
father on such a trip, she remarked that, she "would like to very much,
but I must soon return to my work in England."
Japs Retake
One Palau Isle
Allied planes and warships
yesterday hammered Japanese positions on Ngergong Island, in the' Palau group
east of The Philippines, which the enemy invaded in a desperate attempt to cut
U.S. supply lines to the Philippines,
About 200 enemy troops were
believed to have taken part in the landing—the first offensive move made by the
Japs since U.S. troops took the Palaus two
months ago. A small force of U.S.
Marines was forced to evacuate, Pearl Harbor dispatches said. '
Japanese radio reported that 400
Allied planes hit Manila and Cavite again yesterday and admitted that damage
was done to "some Japanese warships."
The Japs also claimed to have
sunk an Allied battleship in a "suicide assault."
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