Süditaliens Ernährungslage bleibt verzweifelt –
Bonomi fast sämtliche Machtbefugnisse entzogen
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US-Flieger bestätigt Bombenterror –
‚Gemäß erhaltenem Befehl‘
Paris, 15. Juli –
Der Führer der Französischen Volkspartei, Jacques Doriot, der an der Normandiefront weilte, gab der Pariser Presse Erklärungen über die Einstellung der amerikanischen Kriegsgefangenen. Keiner von denen, die er gesprochen habe, seien Freiwillige gewesen. Sie schienen müde zu sein und wünschen, daß der Krieg bald zu Ende gehe. Die meisten wüssten überhaupt nicht, wofür sie kämpften. Ein amerikanischer Flieger, den er gefragt habe, wofür er die Zivilbevölkerung massakriert habe, habe gesagt, daß er seine Bomben „gemäß erhaltenen Befehlen irgendwo abgeworfen“ habe.
Bretton Woods braucht Sowietgold
Lissabon, 15. Juli –
Wegen fehlender Instruktionen aus Moskau kann der Sowjetdelegierte Stepanow den Währungskonferenzlern in Bretton Woods immer noch nicht angeben, welche Goldsumme die Sowjetunion dem projektierten Stabilisierungsfonds beisteuern will. Der Konferenzsprecher bedauerte, daß durch die Moskauer Schweigsamkeit die Verhandlungen einstweilen stoppen mußten.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (July 16, 1944)
Communiqué No. 81
Hard infantry fighting in close country continued yesterday all along the western sectors of the Allied front. Limited advances were made at a number of points notably south of the SAINTENY–PÉRIERS road and on the northern and eastern approaches to SAINT-LÔ.
In a dusk attack in the ÉVRECY area, the village of ESQUAY was captured and at midnight our troops had advanced some little distance beyond it.
Fighter-bombers penetrated 150 miles south of PARIS yesterday evening to attack transportation and supply targets in the NEVERS–BOURGES–ORLÉANS–TOURS area.
Last night, the rail centers at NEVERS and CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE were attacked by a force of heavy bombers.
Nine enemy aircraft were destroyed in the air during yesterday’s operations. Fourteen of ours are missing.
Communiqué No. 82
Allied advances have continued on the western sector of the front.
Troops moving south on the CARENTAN–MARIGNY road have taken the village of LA TIBOTERIE. Gains have been reported south of LE HOMMET-D’ARTHENAY.
Attacking towards SAINT-LÔ from the northeast, our troops have advanced more than a mile, taking the village of EMELIE. They have reached a point within 1,500 yards of SAINT-LÔ itself, where enemy infantry today was also subjected to attack by our medium bombers.
Further east, in the TILLY–ÉVRECY area, our troops have occupied BRETTEVILLETTE. Last night’s attack through ESQUAY was developed to the west some 4,000 yards along high ground north of ÉVRECY. The enemy salient created by this attack was eliminated this morning with the occupation of GAVRUS and BOUGY.
In addition to attacking enemy frontline positions, our medium bombers, escorted by fighters, struck at rail targets at PARIS, DREUX, GRANVILLE and near ARGENTAN. Bridges at BOISSEI-LA-LANDE, AMBRIÈRES and near DREUX were also attacked.
None of our aircraft is missing.
Fighters which had escorted heavy day bombers to GERMANY this morning, attacked rail traffic at LUNÉVILLE and strafed airfield installations in BELGIUM.
Coastal aircraft attacked enemy shipping in the eastern Channel early this morning.
U.S. Navy Department (July 16, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 476
For Immediate Release
July 16, 1944
Guam Island was attacked on July 15 (West Longitude Date) by aircraft of a fast carrier task group. Bombs and rockets destroyed or damaged buildings and caused fires among bivouac areas. A dive bomber was shot down but landed in the water two miles off Guam where the crew was picked up by one of our destroyers.
On July 15, rocket‑firing carrier planes attacked ground installations on Rota Island. Fires were started and a direct hit scored on a concentration of automotive and railroad equipment.
Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands was attacked July 13 by low-flying Liberators of Group One, Fleet Air Wing Two. A Japanese destroyer was hit squarely by a 500‑pound bomb. Explosions and fires resulted after one 6,000‑ton and one 3,000‑ton cargo ship were strafed. A destroyer escort, a coastal ship and 12 smaller craft were heavily strafed. An oil dump was set afire and five other fires were started. Three Japanese airplanes on the ground at the time of the attack on the south field were believed destroyed and 10 damaged by strafing. There was no enemy airborne interception. Intense anti-aircraft fire slightly damaged one of our planes.
Fourth Marine Aircraft Wing Corsair fighters and Dauntless dive bombers bombed Japanese anti-aircraft and coastal gun positions in the Marshall Islands on July 14. Gun emplacements were strafed. Meager anti-aircraft fire damaged one of our planes.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 16, 1944)
YANKS CLOSE ON THREE NAZI BASES
Bradley’s men sweep through 25 more towns
Battle into Lessay and Saint-Lô, near Périers
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
Pushing forward slowly, U.S. forces in Normandy almost had “in the bag” the three Nazi bases of Lessay, Saint-Périers and Saint-Lô. The Americans stormed into the outskirts of Lessay (1), gained four miles north of Périers (2), and were a mile from Saint-Lô. The British front in the Caen area (4) was quiet with a big new offensive in prospect.
SHAEF, London, England – (July 15)
U.S. troops battled today into the outskirts of Lessay, west coast anchor of the German line, and swept through 25 more villages in gains up to four miles across a front stretching east to Saint-Lô, where the Yanks launched a knockout attack on that key road center.
CBS correspondent Larry LeSueur reported that the Germans evacuated Lessay as the Americans entered the outskirts under a protective shell barrage.
A great test of arms, perhaps one of the decisive armored battles of the war, was declared officially to be impending around Caen, on the British wing of the front as the Germans began a drumfire barrage in preparation for a massive counterattack.
Two miles from Périers
A German Army estimated at 100,000 men was lurching slowly backward under the steady American pounding which carried Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s troops to within two miles of a third enemy bastion, Périers, six miles southeast of Lessay.
The doughboys smashed down to the Ay River estuary on an eight-mile front from the sea to east of Lessay and pushed a spearhead within 300 yards of the heart of the small port which German rearguards were defending bitterly.
Getting across the Ay, flooded by the Germans to a width of several miles, presented a serious problem but the companion advance in the Périers direction was threatening to outflank the water barrier.
Ground regained at Saint-Lô
For the fifth straight day, the Yanks launched a dawn attack on Saint-Lô, this time starting suddenly without a preparatory barrage and in the first hour driving back to the area of Martinville, a mile east of the wrecked city, after having given ground in that area Friday under counterattacks.
Saint-Lô was virtually encircled with the Americans holding dominant ground on all but its south and southwest approaches. The new attack was called officially a “strong action” designed to bring about Saint-Lô’s fall.
The heaviest enemy shelling since the Saint-Lô attacks began met the U.S. infantrymen and a few German tanks rumbled into action, precipitating heavy battles which were reported still raging late Saturday.
Massive infantry surge
United Press’ James C. McGlincy reported that Saturday’s advances on Saint-Lô consisted of the reduction of three powerfully fortified hedgerows in close-quarters fighting recalling the massive infantry surges of the last war.
German SS Elite Guard officers were threatening to shoot the city’s defenders if they wavered, another United Press front reporter, Henry T. Gorrell, said, “and even the cocky paratroopers, the cream of the German Army, now are digging furiously to stem the machine-like advance of the U.S. Army.”
These desperate measures were costing the Yanks heavily for every yard gained, but slowly and surely the front reports said, the Germans were giving way and suffering enormous losses which were almost impossible for them to replace.
Yanks bury 6,349 Nazis
It was announced that since D-Day, the Yanks have buried 6,349 German soldiers whose bodies had been left behind by their retreating comrades.
The Americans advanced a mile on a four-mile front in the Lessay sector, maintaining their mile-a-day pace since launching their attack down the west side of the Cherbourg (Cotentin) Peninsula 12 days ago.
The most sweeping gains of the day, up to four miles, came in the center sector above Périers where the Americans plunged ahead at an accelerated pace after joining up
They captured Saint-Patrice-de-Claids, three miles north of Périers and six towns on the northeast approaches of the town, and Crèvecœur and Deauville on the road from Saint-Jores.
The Americans drove within a mile of the important Lessay–Saint-Lô lateral road, putting it within easy field piece range and limiting the Germans’ use of it, captured in this sector were La Grande Hairie and La Creterie.
The Americans were driving on without air support through a heavy ground fog and an intermittent drizzle in advances which placed Saint-Lô, Lessay and Périers within their immediate grasp.
Shortly before noon Friday, Gen. Bradley had ordered his troops to step up the attack on the three resistance centers. Slowly, like a creeping tide, the front was squaring out as the Yankees gained elbow room which will pay heavy dividends when armor is thrown into the battle on a grand scale.
Every sign pointed to the early beginning of the biggest battle of the invasion in the Caen sector, where about 200,000 German troops with the better part of six panzer divisions were aligned against Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C. Dempsey’s British 2nd Army.
Nazi attack expected
The entire British sector was ominously quiet except for patrolling and the swelling German barrage which a commentator said meant that “there is pending a very large-scale German attack.”
The attack was anticipated with some satisfaction for the best formula for sweeping advances is to smash the enemy’s armor in one major battle, as Gen. Sir B. L. Montgomery demonstrated in his desert campaigns.
A front dispatch from Ronald Clark, United Press writer with the British said a flood of Allied men and material was pouring into the Anglo-Canadian line.
The air forces were able to put in only 1,000 sorties Friday, one-eleventh of D-Day’s display, but fighters scored heavily in dogfights with German formations, shooting down 25 enemy planes.
Only about 50 sorties were flown during Saturday’s muggy forenoon.
List of Jap brutalities grows with execution of Superfortress crewmen
Enemy radio says fliers seized in June 15 raid met same fate as Doolittle’s men
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Only replacements now –
Armed Forces fill quotas of 11 million men
Youths, 18, to meet most draft needs
By Paul Harrison, United Press staff writer
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Ploești refineries fired by Yanks
750 heavies attack from Italian bases
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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Boat carrying Gen. Clark fired on by U.S. warship
Fifth Army leader nearly hit; two killed
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Japs on Guam hit 11th straight day
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Bellboy attacks film singing star
Jeanette MacDonald’s face cut and bruised
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Plant making B-24 bombers closed
18,000 sent home after strike ends
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Wallace backers prepare for fight
Guffey puts self in the limelight
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Reporter on Saipan finds –
A Marine doesn’t ‘die,’ for his buddies insist a killed Marine ‘lives’
It’s a strange mysticism that belongs to the corps alone and brings comfort in death
By Keith Wheeler, North American Newspaper Alliance
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Wolfert: Nazis run gantlet of gunfire form own officers to surrender
Escape in dead of night to give up; some killed on way to U.S. lines
By Ira Wolfert, North American Newspaper Alliance
With the U.S. infantry outside Saint-Lô, France – (July 13, delayed)
Finally, about one o’clock this morning an end we all had been hoping for came. There was no moon at the time but there was a kind of pearly quality to the darkness, and when something stood up in the open field you could make out the shape. Anyway, you could tell whether it was a man or tank.
There had been an air raid a mile or so back; then the Germans had laid in some shells to keep us awake, and our boys talked back for quite a while to show them we were awake. But now there is the quiet you get in a field at night when, no matter how soft you try to make your breathing, you can still hear your breath making a tickling little noise as it crawls in and out of your nose.
A Nebraska boy on outpost duty lay in a hole under a hedge chewing cigarette tobacco to give himself the feeling of having a smoke. There was an open field in front of him, boxed in all around by hedges. Suddenly the voice he wanted to hear and has been waiting for through the long, long dangerous day spoke up from the hedge beyond and to the right.
“Kamerad!” it said. “Nicht schießen!”
There was a rapid, excited panting for breath. “Halt!” our boy cried, and the cigarette tobacco sprayed out of his mouth in the excitement and clung like hair to his lips. “Halt! You–!” he cried.
Cry heard again
“Kamerad! Kamerad! Bitte nicht schießen (Friend! Friend! Please don’t shoot)” the voice repeated.
The Cornhusker’s finger was on the trigger of his rifle but he couldn’t see anything to shoot at except the hedges, and he thought a long time about what to say next, listening, as he thought, to the German tale coming in a rapid, begging, panting breathless voice and trying to pick out a word that would make sense to him.
“Hands up!” he said finally. “Get out in the open with your hands up!”
Big, baggy shapes
The German passed the word to his companions. He was the interpreter. “Hands hop,” he said excitedly. “Die hands hoch.”
He came out from the hedge and stood in the open field, a black, baggy shape in the pearl-colored darkness, trembling and crouched over a little, trying to plead with hands clasped behind his head.
Then another shape came out from the hedge behind him, and a third and a fourth, and still more, all baggy and black-looking and all crouched over pleadingly.
“He’s brought the whole damn Hitler army with him,” the Nebraskan shouted, and for a moment in that dim field it really looked that way. It really looked to his excited eyes like the beaten-up pulp of a gutted army, but it turned out to be only seven boys led by a 19-year-old German corporal from Carlsbad serving his Führer as a rifleman.
Psychological warfare
The corporal had sampled some of our psychological warfare put out by a mobile radio broadcasting company, a combined British and American unit which had won medals for itself by talking some 2,200 Germans into coming out of their tunnels and forts in Cherbourg.
The situation here is quite different from Cherbourg and much indicative of the breakdown in morale, at least in that part of the German Army now fighting on the Cherbourg Peninsula.
At Cherbourg, the Germans were surrounded and had no hope of being rescued to fight again for their Führer. Here the rear was open for a retreat if the German command would permit it.
In this case our psychological warfare, aided by our crushing weight of firepower, talked the Germans into defying the orders of their Nazi masters and into running away from the bullets shot at them by their officers and into the American bullets in order to surrender.
Some are Poles
In all, 18 men gave themselves up in the early hours of this morning. Some of them are Poles, but most are Germans. How many more were killed trying to do so is not yet known, but there must have been many, for each of these 18 was shot at by his own officers on his way to us.
How many more Germans want to surrender but are afraid to walk the dangerous path to our lines is also not yet known, but the prisoners I spoke to as they came in all said that whole companies would surrender if they could find a way to do so.
That seems to be the problem to work out a path along with the Germans may surrender. And until this is worked out the fighting here will continue to be the hard, slow work of hopping from hedge to hedge. The Nazi’s best chance for life is to fight off our assault, and these beaten-up, sagging bags of Nazi “supermen” that we are fighting here want to keep on living. Oh, yes, that is very high on their minds – to keep on living.
French Force of the Interior are part of AEF
Executions by Nazis to be punished
SHAEF, London, England (UP) – (July 15)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower announced today that the French Forces of the Interior under Maj. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Kœnig are a combatant force and form an integral part of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
The Allied Supreme Commander issued his statement after receiving conclusive evidence that the Germans were labelling the French resistance forces as francs-tireurs (free shooters) and executing them.
Openly bear arms
He pointed out that the members of the FFI openly bear arms against the enemy and are instructed to conduct their operations in accordance with the rules of war. They are provided with a distinctive emblem, he said, adding that he regards them as an army under his command.
Under these circumstances, he warned, German reprisals against the resistance troops violate the rules of war. Such crimes only strengthen the determination of the United Nations to bring the war to a speedy, victorious conclusion and see that justice is carried out, he said.
Guilty to be punished
Every effort will be made to trace the authors of any atrocities committed against the members of forces under his command, he said, and steps to this end are already being taken. The guilty will be brought to swift justice, he added.
The London radio, heard by the United Press in New York, charged the Germans had executed a group of French patriots in Dax, 32 miles northeast of Bayonne. Quoting reports from San Sebastian, Spain, the broadcast added that a large-scale street battle had taken place in Bordeaux between resistance groups and the Fascist militia.
Army flier guilty of killing driver
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McGlincy: Americans winning Saint-Lô the hard way – with blood
Advance of three hedgerows costly day’s work, but Yanks show they can beat Hitler’s fanatics
By James C. McGlincy, United Press staff writer
Outside Saint-Lô, France – (July 15)
“Advanced three hedgerows.”
That’s the way the message read which reached this command post this afternoon. It summed up the whole bloody battle for Saint-Lô.
In the attack on Saint-Lô, which began Monday, a gain of three hedgerows represents a sizable advance.
This isn’t a spectacular battle. there are no breakthroughs, no end runs, no big bag of prisoners – just a steady fight day after day that is whittling down both sides.
The Germans are being beaten here. But it’s no garden party. It’s a rough show, probably as rough in its way as the initial landings on the toughest beaches on D-Day.
Ceaselessly all week
The outfit attacking Saint-Lô has fought ceaselessly all week. Almost every day it has been the same story – our boys have jumped off in the morning.
They’ve found energy when they thought there was none left. Maybe they’ve had one- or two-hours sleep. Maybe none at all. Maybe they’ve been shelled all night. But in the dawn, they’ve gotten up and started forward gain.
Today was no exception. The boys started forward at 5:15 and by late afternoon they could count a maximum advance of half a mile. I’ve just looked at these boys. They’re tired, their eyes are bloodshot. Their faces are dirty and bearded. And their morale is high.
Having a tough time
But they aren’t kidding themselves. They have been having a tough time and they will be mightily grateful when they can have an end to it.
One of those kids came to Maj. Paul W. Prznarich of Mesa, Arizona, to report this evening. He was Henry H. Noonan of Santa Ana, California. He was just a private but he knew his fighting, this thin kid with the serious eyes and four days growth of whiskers.
He squatted on his heels and told what he’d seen. The Germans had one field covered by a machine-gun set with its muzzle dead level with the ground so that you didn’t have a chance even lying down.
“Do you know how their artillery is spotting us?” he asked.
Periscopes over hedges
“They’ve got periscopes which stick up over the hedges five or ten feet and they can see you every time you stick up your head.”
He told how the boys had been dropping all around him. He shook his head as though he couldn’t quite understand it. In the same tone, he told how he spotted a German in a foxhole.
He said:
I stopped and emptied the whole magazine of a Tommy gun in it. I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. I just ran on.
He wasn’t bragging about killing the German. He told it as matter-of-factly as he told the rest of it. It gives you an idea how tough these boys have gotten up here watching their buddies go down beside them.
Life only a game
They’re fighting some tough babies too. They found a copy of a German paratrooper’s credo on a prisoner. Among platitudes about what a grand and glorious thing it is to die for the Fatherland and Führer, it said: “We parachutists know how to die because life is only a game for us.”
They’re fighting as though they believe that. They’re being pounded by a mighty array of guns which is never silent for a whole minute, but they’ve got the terrain on their side.
One of these days the capture of Saint-Lô is going to be announced and you may be sure that it was won the hard way – with the blood and guts of American kids who have got the stuff to overcome Hitler’s tough young fanatics.
Eisenhower holds edge over Germans
Nazis kept guessing about next move
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
SHAEF, London, England – (July 15)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, after having picked the most advantageous point on the entire French and Low Country coast for the invasion, has maintained since D-Day “complete strategic ascendancy over the enemy,” Supreme Headquarters state officially today.
It is now known that after 40 days of fighting the Germans, who tried to hold the beaches at all costs, are still confused about Allied intentions and unable to make a satisfactory realignment of their forces, the headquarters spokesman added.
Of the 60 divisions which were available to the Germans on D-Day for the entire Western European defense, about 20 to 25 are now engaged in Normandy – 11 to 12 on the American sector.
Attacks five beaches
Gen. Eisenhower snatched the advantage from the enemy at the moment of landing by smashing onto five beaches along a 15-mile front with assault forces so large that they equaled one-eighth of all German armies in the west, the spokesman said.
Sixty German divisions probably amount to 720,000 to 900,000 men which means that the Allied invasion army must have been between 90,000 and 112,000 men.
Used mathematical formula
He added:
The Germans had no clear convictions where our first landing was going to be. As a result, they fell back on a mathematical formula based on the theory that the danger of a landing increased with the proximity to England.
In Normandy, Gen. Eisenhower knew he was going to face eight enemy divisions. His troops were thrown against seven infantry and one panzer divisions.
The density of the German defense forces varied with the locality. Northward the density was reduced sharply toward the northern tip of Holland.
Few on southern coast
Southward it dwindled also but less sharply and from the Seine River on around the coast to Cherbourg, there was about one division for every 20 miles.
All the way from the mouth of the Loire River to the Spanish border, there were only three divisions of inferior quality.
On France’s Mediterranean coast, there was one division to every 30 miles on the western side and thinning out to one division for 60 miles in the easily-defendable Nice–Cannes area.
Russians praise U.S. invaders
With the U.S. Army in Normandy, France (UP) – (July 14, delayed)
A Russian general and two colonels, making the first Soviet visit to the American beachhead, said today that they were “pleased and impressed” and that the Americans were now in position where they can open up and go places.
The Russians were taken to the prisoner cages, where their eyes lighted when they looked upon the throngs of imprisoned Nazis.
They thought most of them a puny lot and one of the officers remarked: “All of the big Germans are already under the soil of Russia.”
The general was impressed by American air superiority. “In Russia,” he said, “we could not have our camps above ground as you Americans do here.”
His only criticism of U.S. methods was that we weren’t secretive enough. He said too many people had access to the situation maps at various headquarters.