The Free Lance-Star (June 14, 1944)
Yanks fighting to hold Montebourg
SHAEF, London, England (AP) –
The Germans have flung four armored divisions into fierce fighting to hold their eastern battle line bastion of Caen, the Allied Command announced tonight, and heavy fighting is raging at Montebourg and Troarn at opposite ends of the 100-mile front with both towns changing hands in the last 24 hours.
The savage German counteraction on the eastern flank in Normandy followed a British drive 23 miles inland outflanking Caen from the west, and the armored struggle is rising in intensity.
The four Nazi armored divisions were hurled into the area between Caen and Caumont, 20 miles southwest, seized in the hard British punch.
Battle for Montebourg
The U.S. 4th Division fought the Germans fiercely for Montebourg, 14 miles southeast of the strategic port of Cherbourg, and the great guns of the British fight to hold Troarn, a town seven miles from Caen taken in an outflanking drive on that bastion to the east.
Both Germans and the Allies have fought into and been thrown out of Montebourg and Troarn in the last 24 hours, headquarters said.
The greatest single striking force of planes in war’s history – 1,500 U.S. Liberators and Flying Fortresses – battered targets in France and Germany today in air support of the invasion.
Meanwhile, in the Carentan area south of the bitter Montebourg battle, other Americans of the largest U.S. force ever thrown into fighting in this war chopped deep gashes in the Nazi defense of Cherbourg Peninsula.
U.S. armored forces there smashed the Germans back, and the Berlin radio acknowledged a withdrawal of several miles west and north of Carentan, with doughboys thus apparently cutting half to two-thirds of the way across the narrowest neck of the peninsula.
Some ground lost
Headquarters said Americans fighting in the Montebourg area had to give some ground along the road to the sea.
The Supreme Command said in describing the whole battlefront:
In some area, we continued our advance and in others the Germans had some local successes.
The four Nazi armored divisions plunged into battle around Caen, Tilly-sur-Seulles, Troarn, and Caumont included the 21st and 13th SS Divisions. It was unknown whether all the armor of these units was committed in battle, but all their infantry was.
The Germans said Caen itself was in flames and was being attacked from all sides. Berlin also reported Allied armored thrusts south of Caumont.
Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery launched a squeeze on Caen with his thrusts reaching 23 miles inland into the area southwest of the big anchor city.
Striking as he often did against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the African desert, Montgomery, Allied ground commander, sent tanks rumbling south of Bayeux along the central sector of the front. They smashed through Caumont and Villers-Bocage, then turned east and north to drive savagely into the German flank protecting Caen on the west.
Heavy bombardment
Caen itself was under heavy naval bombardment from Allied warships. A flier who flew over the city said it seemed “scarcely possible for life to exist there.”
The British tanks struck with “great effect,” the Allied Supreme Command announced.
A fierce German counterattack was made on British forces in newly-captured Troarn in an attempt to blunt or cut off a Montgomery pincer coming to flank Caen on the east.
It was the old Montgomery tactic of attacking on the flanks to cut off a large force of Germans and take them prisoner or destroy them rather than push them back.
On the western end of the Allied beachhead, now enlarged to a 100-mile fighting front, Americans used armored forces to break a deadlock at Carentan. The German radio acknowledged a Nazi withdrawal west and north of Carentan “to spare German lives.”
Berlin conceded that Americans advancing on strips of non-flooded land had infiltrated Nazi lines northwest of Carentan, and taken a number of villages.
Admit town lost
A Transocean broadcast said the Nazis had lost Tilly-sur-Seulles, which several times has changed hands. The German High Command claimed recapture of a number of unidentified localities, and declared Nazi tanks breaking into the beachhead east of the Orne River had inflicted heavy casualties. The Germans said Allied tank thrusts south of Caumont and near Tilly-sur-Seulles were broken up and destroyed.
The Allies, aided today by fair weather, have already seized a foothold in France of 600-700 square miles, and captured more than 10,000 prisoners. Allied officers estimate 250,000 Germans are engaged in Normandy. Berlin, apparently trying to picture Allied successes as due to overwhelming numbers, has placed the figures of Allied soldiers as high as 500,000.
Expanding Allied pressure has in three days enlarged the length of the battlefront from 60 miles to nearly 100, forcing the Nazi defenders to spread their forces over a greater area.
U.S. troops who plunged through the Cerisy Forest pushed southwest several miles toward the important German communications hub of Saint-Lô.
The German radio said Saint-Lô was a mass of flaming rubble from Allied air bombardment.
Nazis lose heavily
Supreme Headquarters said the Germans were expending a large number of soldiers in a furious assault on Troarn, east of Caen.
Troarn is the left arm of a Montgomery pincer movement closing in on Caen. The right arm is the double blow below Tilly-sur-Seulles and the Caumont and Villers-Bocage roads.
In a Berlin broadcast, the German Transocean Agency declared that Nazi forces broke through American lines and into Carentan late Tuesday but:
Montgomery hastily ordered heavy British warships to the support, which, with all their gun, shelled the Carentan area, whereupon the Germans withdrew again to hill positions more advantageous for defense.
Transocean said the “situation changes hourly” in the Carentan area as attacking U.S. forces try to “widen their bridgehead toward the south and west.”
The Allied drive has placed the ground forces out of range of warships in many places on the bridgehead for the first time. U.S. and British battleships are still supporting the flanks of the battle area, but the center is rolling on with the aid of air support only.
Excellent flying weather favored the Allied Air Forces this morning and great fleets of heavy and lighter bombers as well as fighters swept into the attack.
Heavy air attack
The weather first cleared late yesterday and about 2,000 planes, including U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators, attacked before dusk, hitting airfields and a string of railroad bridges across the foot of the Brest Peninsula from Vannes to Saint-Malo – a likely route for German reinforcements up the west side of the Cherbourg Peninsula to the sector where the U.S. 4th Division is battling below Cherbourg. The German Air Force offered little resistance.
Using five new landing strips and open fields, fleets of 9th Air Force transports poured in supplies and technicians by glider.
The whole Normandy invasion has depended to a great extent on the Allied air superiority, it was said at headquarters, and the Allied bombardment and strafing attacks have had “marvelous” delaying action on German reserves despite frequent bad weather.
Report new stab
Only a matter of hours after Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had reported to President Roosevelt that eventually “the Nazis will be forced to fight throughout the perimeter of their stronghold,” the Vichy radio quoted a Berlin military spokesman as saying important Allied shipping had been sighted in the Bay of Biscay off southwestern France near the Spanish coast.
There was no Allied report of any shipping in that area, some 400 miles from the Normandy fighting.
Eisenhower informed his commanders and troops that “the accomplishments in the first seven days of the campaign have exceeded my brightest hopes… I truly congratulate you.”
The evening communiqué yesterday said more than 10,000 prisoners were taken in the first week.
