German units fleeing Cherbourg area
Yanks slash five miles from Nazis’ last escape highway
By Edward W. Beattie
SHAEF, London, England (UP) –
U.S. battle patrols slashed westward to within five miles or less of the last Nazi escape road from the top of the Cherbourg Peninsula today and front dispatches said the bulk of the German forces were retreating down the highway under a hellfire of bombs and shells, leaving a band of expendables to defend the prize port of Cherbourg to the death.
Spearheads of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division that captured Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte raced on through the hills northwest and southwest of the town to within sight of the sea, almost closing the Allied lines across the peninsula, and threatening the coastal fishing villages of Barneville and Saint-Lô-d’Ourville.
United Press war correspondent Henry Gorrell reported that German trucks and staff cars loaded with troops were careening southward along the coastal highway, running a murderous gantlet of shellfire laid down by U.S. field guns in the hills above them.
To make stand elsewhere
The German position on the upper half of the peninsula was deteriorating rapidly, and it appeared the enemy high command had decided to evacuate as many troops as possible through the coastal bottleneck and make a stand on the high ground north of La Haye-du-Puits, a four-way highway junction and the key to the Nazis’ peninsular defenses.
There was no indication, however, that they intended to quit the port and town of Cherbourg itself without a fight. Front dispatches suggested that the Nazis were leaving suicide battalions behind to wreck its harbor facilities when its fall becomes imminent.
The latest Allied communiqué reported additional though slight progress in the American thrust across the center of the peninsula and in the fighting farther to the southeast, below Isigny and around Tilly.
Several villages captured
A number of unidentified villages east and west of Tilly were captured and U.S. units striking southward from Isigny advanced two miles to reach the Vire River and the Taute Canal.
United Press correspondent Richard McMillan reported that British Commandos, with heavy tank and artillery support, stormed and captured a number of German strongpoints that had been holding out for 10 days behind the Allied lines around Tilly.
U.S. forces also attacked west and south of Carentan with unannounced results in an apparent effort to straighten out their battle line in that sector.
U.S. casualties 15,883
As the battle for the prize Cherbourg port reached a climax, it was announced that U.S. troops have paid a price of 15,883 casualties in the 12-day-old French invasion, including 3,283 killed.
The Yanks drove four miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte and captured Saint-Jacques-de-Néhou, from where they could see the peninsula’s west coast highway and the German traffic withdrawing along it.
“A partial German withdrawal from the Cherbourg area appears underway,” wrote United Press correspondent Henry T. Gorrell in a dispatch from the Saint-Sauveur area. “Our artillery is pounding the careening German vehicles, many of which are staff cars carrying officers.”
Yanks continue advance
The Yanks were reported steadily continuing their advance on the road tonight, supported by the heaviest artillery concentration they had yet used on the French beachhead. Gorrell said they were within sight of the shimmering Atlantic on the west side of the peninsula.
Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s Yanks had clamped a stranglehold on the express highway down the west side of the Cotentin Peninsula, occupying high ground west of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte dominating the road as well as Saint-Jacques, which is four miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur.
Heavy reinforcements were piling through Saint-Sauveur, and that key railroad point is now “firmly held,” official advices said. The westward American surge across the peninsula covered a 10-mile front, with the right flank approaching Bricquebec, seven miles northwest of Saint-Sauveur, and the left only four miles from La Haye-du-Puits, which controls the entire west coast communication system.
Gen. Bradley, in his first field press conference, said, “Our position is now absolutely secure and I can’t see how the enemy can kick us out.” He said that operations had succeeded largely because of “guts and valor” and “I can’t say too much for the paratroopers, who did a marvelous job and kept Germans from building up as we were struggling for a firm foothold ln the initial stages.”
Bradley added:
The enemy has had a devil of a time coming up and a hard time getting his supplies up.
