HEAVY COST TO ENEMY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1944, Page 5

HEAVY COST TO ENEMY

PRESERVING SOUTHERN ESCAPE ROUTE

■ 'A' Jwl- ♦• i LONDON, August 31. A substantial proportion .of the eifirny personnel fleeing before the Allied forces in southern France has succeeded in reaohing the Lyons district reports the Exchange Telegraph agency's Mediterranean correspondent. Harassed rearguard remnants of the German Nineteenth Army north pf £rpine are fightipg hard to keep open^the escape route to" Lyons. They had to fight hard in the vicinity of Livron-yesterday at a heavy cost in men and materials. The,-losses inflicted by our ground forces in the packet-south of Livron included 2000 motor vehicles 1000 horses, many anti-tank guns and other guns, and also three batteries of field artillery. These are in addition to those captured or claimed by the Air Force. Two hundred enemy dead were counted along this section of road. Americans who entered Nice, without opposition found that" the enemy destruction was mainly cpnfined to the harbour area. • - - . The, total of prisoners counted is now over 50,000. The enemy in the Alps is showing nervousness and has been moving out from the frontier passes, trying to make contact 'with our forward elements. in the Rhone Valley have occupied Valence, says the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain at Allied headquarters in the Mediterranean- Units in the south-west occupied Montpellier, Beziers, and Narbbnne without opposition. French on the western wing of the Seventh Army front have reached Largentiere, 25 miles west of Montlimar.