BY BOYD LEWIS

WITH CANADIAN FIRST ARMY (delayed) (UP) – The fangs of the American Timber Wolf Division, Commanded by Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, helped to turn the Germans into their headlong withdrawal above the Maas Waal estuary, it may be now revealed.

Men of the 104 th Division wearing the Timber Wolf patch on their shoulder, shouted as I passed their convoy. “Tell'em the Yanks are here!” Reports by U.S. Military security up to now had prevented disclosure that a full division of Americans had joined the Canadians' international lineup. Their grizzled commanding general said that dogged, persistent teamwork had made the Timber Wolves a fighting team. It had not been easy going. It was tough for untried men to go into battle over the same difficult terrain that had taken all the battle wile of the Canadians to enable an advance over sodden fields and bullet swept dikes.

Their battle lore was gained at a stiff price.

One company, bursting through a mine field to the Mark River , south of the Maas gained a bridgehead by crossing over a footbridge from which Lt. Robert Neill of Garfield, N. J., had extracted the mines.

The men were surrounded 800 yards inside the enemy lines and stood off a pasting from self-propelled guns, mortars, machine-guns and grenades for three days and nights of hell in water-clogged shallow foxholes.

It was easy to see by the way the Timber Wolves carried themselves after that action had been consolidated into a firm bridgehead and the “lost” company believed that they had gained a spirit from that battle which will be a divisional legend long after the war.

NOTE: This article was in The Record Newspaper probably in late December 1944 or early January 1945.