Dutch Squeeze

In 1629 Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, required four months to reduce the fortress of 's Hertogenbosch. Last week Lieut. General Sir Miles C. Dempsey's Second British Army did it in three days.

The town's name, which means "the Duke's wood." perpetuates the memory of the Duke of Brabant, who gave it a municipal charter in 1185. (The odd-looking prefix is the Dutch sign of the possessive case.) The land around 's Hertogenbosch is low-lying and swampy. The Maas is three miles away to the north.

Last week the Germans blew up bridges over the Zuid Willemsvaart Canal. The British put down a Bailey bridge, sent infantry, tanks, flamethrowers into the town.

When they cut the roads to the north and south, the Germans pulled out to the west, leaving snipers and machine-gunners to be mopped up. Most of the people seemed too dazed by Allied fire to greet the liberators with more than a wave and a wan smile. On a street still under German shellfire, a man carved himself a steak from a dead horse.

Rundstedt Retreat. Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch, Breda, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom were the bolt positions in the German line from the Maas to the Scheldt estuary. All five had fallen this week without much of a fight. Allied airmen reported columns of German transports scuttling north to the rivers.

The Germans evidently feared being pinned against the Maas as they had been nailed against the Seine in France. They had an estimated 60,000 troops below the Maas, including the doomed and dwindling pockets on the Scheldt estuary. They were definitely in retreat. In contrast to the bitter stalemate fighting elsewhere on the western front, the British-Canadian forces made good time. Nevertheless the Germans retreated in good order. They needed time to get set between the Maas. the Waal and the Led. They had to hold the Arnhem hinge.

Perhaps this retreat, a sound strategic move, reflected the return to command on the western front of Germany's No. 1 soldier, chill Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who was apparently back in Hitler's favor. Field Marshal Walter von Model, the previous commander, was now in charge of the northern sector under Rundstedt. Field Marshal Johannes Blaskowitz commanded the southern.

Sudden Speed. Not even Rundstedt could do anything for the wretched remains of German garrisons in the Scheldt estuary. Their job was to hold out to the last, block the approaches to the vital port of Antwerp as long as they could.

The British fought mightily to shorten the time; until Antwerp was opened, there could probably be no major assault on the western front.

British units in Lieut. General Henry Crerar's First Canadian Army crossed the estuary in assault boats and amphibious vehicles, made a pre-dawn landing on South Beveland, joined up with Canadians who had fought their way out along the isthmus. This week the attackers overran Goes, the peninsula's communications center. It only remained to press on to flooded Walcheren, blast the Nazis out of Flushing.

On the south shore, where dead Germans lay in heaps along the dikes, and apples from flooded orchards bobbed in the water, all enemy guns were out of action. Breskens and Fort Frederick Henry were in Canadian hands, and the last Germans had holed up in a narrow strip of the North Sea coast. It seemed certain that in a few more days the Allies could start clearing the estuary of mines and dredging the channel. But there was fighting still to be done. On Antwerp's approaches a few determined Germans in good positions were prolonging the life of the Reich.

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