WRECKAGE OF ARMY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 57, 5 September 1944, Page 5

WRECKAGE OF ARMY

GREAT CARNAGE IN ROUEN Rec 11 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 4. The French tricolour flies from the Tower of Rouen Cathedral which js still standing- above a scene of indescribable ruin, says Reuters correspondent in northern France. "Nearly all the buildings which are seriously damaged in the town are within 100 yards of the quayside," he says. "Three miles from the Rouen quayside, the south bank of the Seine is an almost unimaginable scene of death anil destruction caused by Allied air attacks. "Tanks, lorries, self-propelled guns, and all the paraphernalia of a- mobile army make the biggest pile of wreckage I have ever seen. Lying nose to tail, crossways and piled on top of each other are the battered, burnedout wrecks of yon Kluge's mechanised army. "German bodies lie everywhere.

With the Seine bridges wrecked by the R.A.F. a week ago the Germans were caught like rats and bombed and rocketed to destruction. The German remnants in the Argentan-Falaise pocket paid a high price, but it was nothing compared with the carnage .of the Seine." FLIGHT CONTINUED. After the capture of Lyons yesterday, the Germans continued to flee northward, says the Exchange Telegraph correspondent at Mediterranean headquarters. Large numbers of these retreating Germans were attacked from the air north of Villefranche. . Sharp fighting occurred in and around Montrevel. According to Algiers radio the Allies have dropped paratroops in the Belfort gap, the historic gateway into the industrial south-west of Germany, to cut off the retreat of the Germans moving up the Rhone Valley. Reuters correspondent says that the Americans fought a number of battles with the German rearguard screens as they sought to cut off the German movements towards the Belfort gap and pocket the German remnants. The Americans, pushing on after the capture of Bourg, on the main road to Belfort, are now engaged in brisk fighting 12 miles north of Bourg. They have 150 miles to go to Belfort, 30 miles beyond which lie the Rhine and Germany's industrial south-west.