La Pucelle

The French used to call Metz La Pucelle ("the Virgin"). Up to last week this historic Lorraine stronghold had never been taken by storm. Attila's Huns destroyed it in 451 A.D., but there were no Roman legions there to defend it. It was still in possession of the French when they surrendered in 1870, of the Germans in the autumn of 1918. The French claim that quislings gave it up in 1940. Last week, for the first time, Metz gave way under attack--by Americans.

The cutting of Metz's communications unhinged the German position in Lorraine, and they began a general withdrawal to the east. Because of its web of roads and railways the city will be an immensely valuable supply base for the Allies.

Persian Rugs. As Lieut. General George S. Patton's infantry closed on Metz from the north, west and south, the outer string of forts put up only feeble resistance, sometimes none at all. Some had no weapons bigger than machine guns, and some seemed to be used chiefly for living quarters. The German commandant of Fort Verny had installed Persian rugs, Louis XV chairs, Oriental lacquered tables. He was captured behind the fort, wandering dazedly about in search of his men.

It seemed likely that the Germans were pulling troops out of the city under cover of the long nights and thick weather. Some were left behind, to fight for time. They depressed the muzzles of antiaircraft guns against the attackers, and fired on them with guns from crippled U.S. tanks. On the airfield there was a bitter battle from hangar to hangar, from room to room of the barracks.

Patton's pincers east of Metz, which had been drawing steadily together, finally closed and the city was cut off. Then the Germans began demolitions which sent debris whirling high into the smoky air. At week's end the Yanks had occupied three-fourths of Metz and captured the SS garrison commander. La Pucelle was as good as theirs.

North of Metz, the XX Corps welded several bridgeheads across the Moselle into one, engulfing Thionville, then launched a push which carried across the German border. The 3rd Cavalry Division seized the German villages of Besch and Wochern, while the 10th Armored rumbled through a place called Launstroff--three miles inside Germany. Major General Manton S. Eddy's XII Corps, halted only briefly by counterattacks, was swinging around to the south and east of Metz toward Saarbruecken.

The Passes and the River. On Patton's right, Lieut. General Alexander M. Patch's Seventh Army jumped off in an offensive which carried four miles the first day,15 at week's end. They captured Raon l'Etape and Gerardmer, controlling two of the Vosges passes, and Blamont, a communications center 40 miles from Strasbourg.

General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's French First Army (Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese, F.F.I.s) pushed into the Belfort Gap. When German resistance crumbled, one French force captured Belfort while another bypassed it to the south and reached the Rhine.

Three months ago an Allied arrival in force on this stretch of the Rhine would have produced the maximum of Nazi consternation. Now, the heavy Allied concentrations at the fulcrum of the whole attack in the west--the Cologne-Duisburg sector --reduced the French arrival on the upper Rhine almost to the status of a diversion.

The French might succeed in throwing a precarious bridgehead across the river, which is very narrow at this point, but it would probably be more useful to sweep northward along the left bank, outflanking the German forces in the Vosges unless they clear out fast.

On the grand strategic scale, the whole Allied effort between Luxembourg and Switzerland seemed also a diversion. It forced the Germans to protect the Saar, the Moselle approach to Trier and Coblenz, and the Lorraine gate to Karlsruhe, while the heaviest blows of the new winter drive are delivered in the north.

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