Imperial Valley Press

WITH U. S. ARMORED COLUMNS IN FRANCE, Aug. 14. (12 Non)-(UP)-In the past 24 hours I have seen this column ripping to shreds the crack SS Das Reich division and the division named for Adolf Hitler himself, as it carried out an important secret mission.

The nature of that mission is a military secret but I am able to reveal that these fast-rolling Yankee soldiers bowled the enemy over with an impact that shattered his morale and left him broken into disorganized pockets or standing in herds at the roadside, cowering and waiting to be herded into the prisoner pens.

NAZIS SURPRISED

(A later dispatch from Gorrell datelined U. S. First Army Headquarters and filed at 3:10 p.m.- more than three hours after the first dispatch-said he could now reveal that the column penetrated northward from Le Mans through Alencon, taking the Germans by surprise when they thought the Americans were headed eastward for Paris. The object of this change would be to trap the Germans between the advancing U. S. armor and the British-Canadian advance beyond Caen.)

Riding at the forefront of the column, I saw 20 French villages and towns liberated.

We arrived in one village to find the townspeople stoning the windows of a house owned by a "collaborator." The man himself was buried somewhere in the vortex of an angry crowd. From the shouts of the French it was obvious that he was paying for having catered to the Germans.

One woman drew her hand across her throat and screamed: "String him up!"

I stopped my jeep beside her and asked what the man had done.

HAD NEIGHBOR SHOT

"Many Frenchmen in this village have been shot on the basis of this man's denunciation," she explained.

In some of the villages we were greeted with champagne and flowers. The Germans continued to fight from others and we cut through them. leaving the woods and fields full of bewildered. shell-shocked Germans who still milled around hours after our passage carrying unfired machine guns and unexploded grenades - waiting for their surrender to be accepted.

"These are not the Germans we knew 24 hours ago," a jubilant Frenchman told me.

"They are whipped."