Violent fighting around Cherbourg
With U.S. forces in France (AP) –
The Cherbourg Peninsula, the first major American battlefield of the war in France, is full of evidence of the violence with which the Germans were cut in two and part of their defense forces pushed back into the port of Cherbourg.
The towns they attempted to defend have been virtually obliterated. The wrecks of German tanks, guns and vehicles sit on charred spots along the roadside. Reinforce concrete telephone poles had been smashed and broken, roads torn by bomb craters and marked by shell explosions.
The greatest devastation appears in towns such as Montebourg and Valognes, which the enemy wanted to defend. Most of the buildings were pulverized. A canning factory at Carentan was destroyed to an extent difficult to imagine.
The Americans haven’t pulled any punches in the attack on the German defenders, which is one reason for the enemy fallback into Cherbourg.