Monty's Turn

For most of last week the days were fine and there was springlike warmth west of the Cologne plain, where the Germans expect the heaviest blows of U.S. and British power to fall.

The war seemed far away, except when the Germans sent over another swarm of V-bombs. G.I.s of the U.S. Ninth and First Armies brought out baseballs, played catch. Along some sectors not an enemy prisoner was taken. Patrols could not operate. There was nothing to do but to let nature and the Roer River take their course, according to German plan.

Smart Blast. By last week it was clear that the Germans had made perhaps their smartest move in their play for time by blasting the floodgates of the Schwammenauel dam. The Roer, usually only 75 feet wide and knee-deep, at some points was more than 1,000 feet of brown water spilled over forested flatlands. At others it was a raging, narrow torrent.

The Germans used the flood shrewdly, shifting their forces northward to meet the heavily mounted drive of General Henry D. G. Crerar's First Canadian Army as it swung southward from captured Cleve to chop out a protective flank for a Ruhr-aimed offensive by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's big British Second Army.

Slow Going. In the Rhine lowlands, Crerar's troops were veterans of inundations. They hopped from island to island, from dike to dike, in their water-churning, mud-biting "Buffalo" and "Weasel" vehicles. On dry land the going was nearly as bad. The Germans had been able to concentrate. But by this week, behind fine air interference, Crerar's men had hacked out a dozen miles of grip on the Rhine. More importantly, his kilted Scots had broken into Goch, a hub of roads running into the industrial district west of the Rhine.

"Monty's" flank protection was almost set up. Apparently the last bit of everything Monty demanded was in place, the last bit of the strategic jigsaw ready to fall into place. Monty could sound the call. In an order of the day he steamed up his Twenty-first Army Group: "We stand ready for the last round. . . . We will go for the knockout blow."

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