Editorial: Americans in Cherbourg
Cherbourg has been entered, and the first great prize of the invasion is virtually in Allied hands after a great final assault that began with the war’s mightiest combined barrage from land, from the sea and from the air, and is ending in bitter hand-to-hand fighting from house to house and from street to street. Some mopping-up of individual sections of the town still remains to be done; for the Germans converted many of its houses into forts, and German officers forced their weary troops to continue a hopeless struggle at the point of a gun in conformity with an order issued by their commander to fight or be shot. But these last desperate tactics were of no avail. Berlin was the first to announce the fall of the city, which means the loss of between 25,000 and 50,000 men, with the explanation that they had fought to the “last bullet.”
This is a splendid, heartwarming victory, won less than three weeks after D-Day and only five days after the actual attack on Cherbourg was launched. It completes the Allied break through the German “Atlantic Wall” and clinches our hold upon French soil. There is glory enough here for both the American and British armies: the Americans, who gained the city by assault; the British, who made the assault possible by holding against strong German counterattack the pivotal eastern end of the line.
Cherbourg will now become for the European war what Naples became for the Italian campaign and what Brest was in the last war – the great disembarkation port and supply base for the Allied armies which must break the deadlock in Europe. It is the third greatest port of France, amply able to take care of all Allied requirements until other ports are opened up by further Allied advances or invasions. And though German demolition squads have been reported active for some time, and the Germans have undoubtedly done their best to blow up the port’s facilities, Allied ability for restoration thus far has always exceeded the German power of destruction.
Cherbourg will permit the Allies to land troops and heavy equipment in protected waters. It will permit America in particular to ship men and supplies directly to the European continent and close to the battlefront without first unloading and transferring them at British ports. Finally, it will give the Allies a naval base from which whatever remains of the German submarine menace can be met far more effectively than at present. A safe base, safe communication lines and speed in the handling of equipment and supplies are of the essence of victory, and all these elements are now provided by the capture of Cherbourg.
Beyond that, the capture of Cherbourg means first the capture of the Cherbourg Peninsula. And this peninsula, together with the Allied bridgeheads captured in the first onslaught, provides the first really adequate marshaling ground and springboard for large-scale Allied attacks on the German armies in the West.
It may be assumed that one of the first Allied moves will be in a southwesterly direction toward the Loire to cut off the Brittany Peninsula as well and thereby secure the Allied rear., but the Germans have been forced ti tie down so much of their strength in the west to guard king coastlines still exposed to new invasions that they may have little left for mobile armies with which to counter Allied thrusts. And this opens up the chance for an even mire daring strategy than might have appeared possible at the start of the invasion when the Allies still counted on a mighty German counteroffensive – a strategy which would reduce the capture of the Brittany Peninsula to a secondary operation and wheel the Allied armies toward the southeast for a drive toward the Seine and Paris. The resumption of the American offensive southeast of Carentan, the new British-Canadian drive which led to the capture of Tilly-sur-Seulles, the continued German attacks at Caen, all point in that direction. Cherbourg is still 200 miles from Paris, but its capture has put the Allies definitely on the road to the capital of France. And beyond Paris lies Berlin.