Down the Rhine

To the French, the liberation of Strasbourg was next in importance to the freeing of Paris. Last week Paris celebrated; the sniper-infested ancient capital of Alsace could not. The Consultative Assembly sang and cheered. In the Place de la Concorde mounds of flowers banked the massive grey stone statue dedicated to Strasbourg. Through the day Parisians walked through the great square, to doff their hats at the statue. At night, midinettes celebrating the spinsters' feast, St. Catherine's Day, kissed many a G.I. who had never been near Strasbourg.

But Strasbourg represented more than a fitting French triumph and the riddance of the enemy from all but the last bits of France. By this week the southernmost sector of the western front held the promise of the first success in the Allies' surging campaign to break up the enemy's weaker forces and destroy them piecemeal.

Enclosed on three sides in the Vosges mountains by French and Americans under U.S. Lieut. General Jacob L. Devers, an estimated force of 40,000 Germans was in serious danger of complete envelopment. Their backs were to the Rhine. There the Germans adeptly clung to the few bridges over which they hoped to withdraw men and machines.

The beginnings of the next phase were already in evidence. The Americans of Lieut. General Alexander M. Patch's Seventh Army were striking north along the Rhine from Strasbourg, to form the southern claw of another pincers. It would not be complete until Lieut. General George S. Patton's advancing right wing broke into the Saar (see map).

Right Hook. Jake Devers had fashioned his Strasbourg grip on the Rhine--and his opportunity to expand it--out of surprise and dash. Over the weeks of stalemate he had slipped the fresh, enthusiastic army of Major General Jean Delattre de Tassigny into position before Belfort: two French divisions, a colonial Spahi division, a battalion-plus of F.F.I.

Belfort, a stronghold for more than 700 years,* and a formidable assault objective, was thinly held. Histrionic Delattre de Tassigny (his officers call him Le General de Theatre) attempted no frontal siege. He sent his infantrymen over the snow-sogged hills to envelop the city on three sides, finally reduced several of its forts by artillery.

Left Hook. On the eighth day Delattre's Sherman tanks raced past the 78-ft.-long red granite Lion of Belfort (symbolic of its unyielding French defense in 1870-71). They speared into Mulhouse, turned north toward Colmar along the Rhine.

By this time, the enemy was maneuvered out of position. He sent some 3,000 reinforcements south to counterattack near Colmar, thus let down his right guard. Jake Devers let go a stiff punch. On back trails through the Saverne Gap he sent Brigadier General Jacques Leclerc's* French armored division driving toward Strasbourg. The Germans, apparently expecting that any advance would be along the gap's one main road, again found themselves bypassed, surrounded in pockets. Leclerc's tanks brushed through a shell of resistance, reached Alsace's capital (where children cheered them in German), ran into shelling from across the Rhine and a tough fight at the city's two main bridges.

By this week complete tactical success was in sight. Given a day or two of clear skies, Brigadier General Gordon P. Saville's 12th Tactical Air Command could get in its licks at the Rhine bridges, perhaps complete the local pattern of encirclement.

*Modernized, the fortress is still a good example of the defense-in-depth theories of the famed military architect, Marquis Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, who built it in 1686.

*Nom de guerre of Jacques Leclerc de Hauteclocque.

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