INFANTRYMEN CLIMB UPON AN M 5 LIGHT TANK in preparation for an advance. In November 1944 the Seventh Army was to make the main effort of the 6th Army Group in an advance toward Sarrebourg and Strasbourg. In the south the French First Army was to drive through the Belfort Gap.] [Illustration: FRANCE ARTILLERY LIAISON PLANES grounded in the Seventh Army area. In the Vosges mountains snow drifted over the roads, the temperature dropped below freezing, and streams overflowed their banks.] [Illustration: FRANCE INFANTRYMEN OF THE SEVENTH ARMY advance through snow and sleet. The attack of 6th Army Group was to breach the Vosges mountains whereupon the two armies would join in the Rhine plain to isolate the enemy’s Vosges positions. Short of artillery ammunition, the troops slugged it out with the enemy over difficult terrain and in increasingly bad weather, with the infantry carrying most of the burden.] [Illustration: FRANCE SEVENTH ARMY ARTILLERYMEN loading a 105-mm. howitzer M 2A 1. The attack was launched, after an all-night artillery preparation, in a snow storm on the morning of 13 November 1944. At noon on 14 November the French First Army jumped off in its attack. On 16 November the French broke through the Belfort defenses and on 20 November reached the Rhine. Mulhouse fell on 22 November despite a quickly established enemy defensive line.] [Illustration: FRANCE A 105-MM. HOWITZER MOTOR CARRIAGE M 7 being fired on German positions in the Rhine Valley (top). Infantrymen wait in a shallow zig-zag trench before advancing (bottom). On 20 November Sarrebourg was captured and on 22 November Saverne fell. By 27 November Strasbourg and its ring of defending forts had been taken. After the collapse of the enemy positions in the Vosges, the Seventh Army attacked northward and by the middle of December had crossed the German frontier on a 22-mile front and penetrated the West Wall defenses northeast of Wissembourg. In the meantime the German forces which had been driven from the Vosges maintained their bridgehead in the Colmar area, which became known as the Colmar pocket before it was finally liquidated.] [Illustration] [Illustration: GERMANY AND BELGIUM REWARDS FOR STANDING IN LINE: men receiving typhus booster shots (top); men exchanging their French and Belgium francs for German marks (bottom).] [Illustration] [Illustration: BELGIUM AND GERMANY WOUNDED SOLDIERS BEING EVACUATED in tracked vehicles during the winter months. Cargo carrier M 29 (top); half-track personnel carrier M 3 (bottom).] [Illustration] [Illustration: FRANCE