The Brooklyn Eagle (June 6, 1944)
Battle rages at Caen; our casualties ‘light’
By Virgil Pinkley
SHAEF, England (UP) –
U.S., British and Canadian invasion forces landed in northwestern France today, established beachheads in Normandy, and by evening had “gotten over the first five or six hurdles” in the greatest amphibious assault of all time.
The Allies are fighting in the town of Caen, nine and a half miles inside the French coast, Prime Minister Churchill said today.
Gen. Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters revealed the Allied armies, carried and supported by 4,000 ships and 11,000 planes, encountered considerably less resistance than had been expected in the storming of Adolf Hitler’s vaunted West Wall.
Nazi broadcasts reported Allied troops pouring ashore most of the day along a broad reach of the Norman coast and to the east, and admitted invasion landing barges had penetrated two estuaries behind the Atlantic Wall.
The apparent key to the lightness of the Nazi opposition to invasion forces opening the battle of Europe was contained in a disclosure that thousands of Allied planes dropped more than 11,200 tons of bombs on German coastal fortifications in eight and a half hours last night and early today.
As the massive Allied air fleets took complete command of the skies over the invasion zone, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring issued an order of the day to his air force declaring the invasion “must be fought off, even if it means the death of the Luftwaffe.”
Late in the day, Prime Minister Churchill, making his second statement of the day to Commons, said the invasion was proceeding “in a thoroughly satisfactory manner.” Earlier he told Commons it was going “according to plan and what a plan!”
Simultaneously the German DNB News Agency reported the invasion front “has been further widened.” Nazi broadcasts throughout the day told of the amphibious assault developing on a grand scale, with fighting as deep as 10 miles inland – a figure apparently extended by the last enemy report.
Supreme Headquarters revealed late in the day that bad weather had forced a 24-hour postponement of the invasion. The Allied command gave the go-ahead order last night despite strong northwest winds and rain squalls when weather experts forecast improving conditions today. The weather was still somewhat unfavorable, however, impeding the support given the land armies by the air force.
Although detailed official reports were lacking as the tense first day wore towards a close, it was summed up by one source at headquarters in the words: “We have gotten over the first five or six hurdles.” The surmounted hurdles were described as:
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The German Air Force did little or no bombing of ports from which the invasion was mounted in the last critical days.
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Attacks on invasion convoys failed to reach the expected scale.
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Minesweepers succeeded in sweeping channels to the beaches without much opposition from shore batteries or from the air.
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The troops got ashore with less opposition from shore guns than was believed probable.
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Opposition was generally well below expectations; for instance, up to a certain time this morning, the German Air Force had flown only 30 battle area sorties.
Allied overall casualties appeared to have been relatively light. Headquarters announced they were light among airborne troops and “surprisingly small – very small” at sea.
The disembarkation went according to plan. Warships succeeded in silencing shore batteries and laying smokescreens on schedule. A U.S. battleship moved in much closer to shore than scheduled in order to silence a troublesome group of fortifications.
The minesweeping was described as the biggest and probably the most difficult operation of its kind ever attempted. Hundreds of sweepers headed the invasion fleets, clearing the water and marking channels.
The German DNB News Agency said this afternoon Allied landing barges had pushed into the estuaries of the Orne and Vire Rivers in the coastal stretch between Cherbourg and Le Havre “in the rear of the Atlantic Wall” – the vaunted defense line Hitler hoped would keep invaders off the soil of Germany.
Nazi broadcasters also acknowledged Allied tanks had cut several kilometers inland between the towns of Caen and Isigny, and admitted Allied penetrations ranging up to ten miles.
The British radio said at least two beachheads had been secured and that “Allied formations are advancing inland.” The German DNB News Agency acknowledged the Allies had put tanks ashore in at least one sector.
Some six hours after the first wave of U.S., British and Canadian assault forces landed by sea and air on the Normandy Peninsula, Prime Minister Churchill told Commons the invasion was proceeding “according to plan.”
One German broadcast reported fighting as much as 10 miles inland.
The commander of the army group now storming France was revealed to be Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, “Monty of El Alamein,” who led the famed British 8th Army all the way from the approaches to Alexandria, Egypt, to southern Italy. His command included U.S., British and Canadian troops.
German news agencies said Allied shock forces and paratroops landed along the north coast of the Normandy Peninsula – which juts out from France some 90-110 miles below the English south coast – all the way from the Cherbourg area at the northern tip to Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine, 110 miles northwest of Paris.
Airborne troops were landing deep inland on the peninsula, the official Nazi DNB Agency said, in an effort to seize a number of strategic airfields, cut off the Normandy Peninsula and capture Cherbourg, one of the two main ports for Paris.
Although the initial phase of the invasion was apparently confined to the Normandy coast of France, an Allied headquarters spokesman hinted operations may soon be extended to Holland and possibly to other countries in Western Europe.
The spokesman broadcast urgent instructions to the inhabitants of Holland to evacuate their coast to a depth of 21 miles immediately and to keep off highways, railways and bridges.
Bars speculation
Churchill said the battle which has now been joined “will grow constantly in scale and intensity for many weeks to come.” He said there were hopes that “tactical surprise has already been achieved.”
He said:
This vast plan is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that ever has occurred. It involves tides, wind, waves, visibility from both the air and the sea standpoints, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy.
We hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises… I shall not speculate on the battle’s course, but this I may say – this complete unity prevails throughout the Allies’ armies.
The first official word that D-Day had finally arrived came at 9:32 a.m. (3:22 a.m. ET) when Gen. Eisenhower announced the opening of a long-awaited western front in a communiqué of only 26 words. It said:
Under the command of Gen. Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.
Issues order of the day
To his land, sea and air forces, Eisenhower issued an order of the day pledging them to “bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of occupied Europe and security for ourselves in a free world.”
Fliers report progress
The first waves of Allied assault troops pushed ashore at several points along the Normandy coast, between 6:00 and 8:15 a.m. (midnight and 2:15 a.m. ET) under a protective naval barrage of rockets and shells ranging up to 16 inches in diameter.
Allied fighter pilots returning from flights over the beachhead reported Allied infantrymen were scrambling up the shores at 7:00 a.m., apparently without heavy opposition in the early stages.
The principal German opposition at sea came from torpedo boats and destroyers, which, however, were hampered by a smokescreen thrown around the invasion armada by Allied vessels. Allied planes – Churchill said Eisenhower had 11,000 first-lines ones upon which to draw – ruled the skies virtually unchallenged.
The German DNB Agency acknowledged one of their vessels had been sunk in “violent fighting” in the Seine Estuary, but also claimed that an Allied cruiser and a large landing vessel loaded with troops had been sent to the bottom off the Normandy Peninsula.
Four air divisions reported
At least four Anglo-American airborne divisions have been observed between Le Havre and Cherbourg, another DNB broadcast said. The greater part of the landed paraunits, especially the British, can be considered annihilated, DNB said.
Allied headquarters announced some 200 Allied minesweepers manned by 10,000 officers and men were clearing the approaches to the invasion beaches. Churchill placed the total number of ships involved at 4,000, at least 1,000 greater than participated in the invasion of Sicily. In addition, Churchill said, thousands of smaller craft were taking part in the European landings.
The invasion came only one day after the fall of Rome to Allied armies in Italy and marked the second phase of the master plane to smash Nazi Germany into unconditional surrender, possibly this year. The third and final phase will be a Red Army offensive from the east.
Mrs. Eisenhower sleeps as invasion is flashed
West Point, New York (UP) –
Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower was asleep this morning when the communiqué announcing the invasion was issued from her husband’s headquarters, friends said today.
The general’s wife declined to comment. She was at West Point to see her 22-year-old son John graduate today.
Young Eisenhower, who is said to be “in the middle of his class” scholastically, is in the infantry, and will be commissioned a second lieutenant. A graduate of Stadium High School at Tacoma, Washington, and a Washington, DC, preparatory school, he is a member of the cadet choir, the Glee Club, and was formerly manager of the tennis team. Gen. Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915.
