Denny: Pockets of Nazis kept on sniping as Americans overran Cherbourg
By Harold Denny
With U.S. forces at Cherbourg, France – (June 26)
The Germans fought a last-ditch defense in Cherbourg this evening, though the outcome was inescapable. Substantial elements of the U.S. forces got into the city from the south only after a piece-by-piece conquest of succeeding strongpoints and the Germans were still firing on them in the city and from two pillboxes remaining on Fort du Roule with 88mm field pieces and machine guns. The city has been considerably damaged but less than one would have thought. As a whole, it is intact, though many individual buildings have been smashed.
Dominating all was the arsenal, where the last important holdout group was still firing rifles while large portions of the structure were burning with a red glow and towering black smoke.
Holding out about equally with the arsenal was one last desperate little group of cannoneers at Fort du Roule.
It stands like Gibraltar and should have been impregnable. Its fortifications of reinforced concrete, several stories deep and tunneled into solid rock, behind one of the Maginot Line fortresses, which I visited the first winter of this war. They include an electric light plant, underground barracks, an underground hospital and abundant stores of everything conceivable, including the best wine and brandy. It has been conquered repeatedly in this battle, yet parts of it still continued to fight tonight.
Sunday one of our units overran it and apparently had it all under control. But these fortifications are connected by rock tunnels and in the night, the soldiers crawled back up and manned one formidable system of big guns protected by two lesser pillboxes armed with .30-caliber machine guns and 20mm cannon at the end of the mountain nearest the town. They opened fire both on our soldiers feeling their way through the city below and against our men farther back.
The American commander sent a strong force against it at 6 o’clock this morning and at the same time had heavy artillery and mortar fire laid down. While this barrage kept the enemy’s heads down our infantry crept up and exploded pole charges, threw in grenades and finally leaped into the positions and captured the survivors. They got about 150 there. The same troops then went over the side of “Gibraltar” and fought straight through the city, gathering up machine-gunners and snipers hiding on building tops and drove block by block straight to the waterfront.
They gathered up some hundreds of prisoners on the way and herded them clear to the water’s edge.
General leaves, guns fire
So, Fort du Roule seemed conquered once more. Yet it was believed still more Germans lurked in a gallery still deeper underground and protected by thick steel doors.
They were there when a general visited the fort and inspected the fortifications a few feet above them late this afternoon. Fifteen minutes after the general left, that hidden garrison opened fire again on the city and there ensued a remarkable artillery duel.
Our forces in the town below had brought in tank destroyers and howitzers. They fired back at the fort. Retreating to a safe distance at one side and crouching at the edge of a trench full of dead Germans, I could see the flash of our guns in the town and then a burst of fire and smoke as the shells hit around the fort’s embrasures. The fort would reply with its hard bark and an almost instant burst of a shell down below. Our guns were firing with remarkable accuracy and from my vantage point it seemed certain that some of our missiles must be getting through. After an hour, Fort du Roule was silent again and that was the end for it.
Tanks back up infantry
By Don Whitehead, Associated Press correspondent
With U.S. troops in Cherbourg, France – (June 26, 9:12 p.m.)
Fanatic defenders of Cherbourg made a last desperate effort today to hold out against doughboys closing in to wipe out the last pockets of resistance.
As we walked through the streets of Cherbourg, doughboys moved up to close in on the pillboxes that were still firing from the beach.
The Amiot aircraft plant, or what was once a plant, was a burning, charred ruins, sabotaged by the Germans in their last hours in Cherbourg.
Down the road less than 100 yards, our tanks were sitting on the beach near knocked-out enemy strongpoints, blasting at machine-gun nests still holding out. The rattle of machine-gun fire broke out intermittently.
The tanks helped the doughboys fight their way through tough, scattered knots of resistance to enter the city late yesterday. When the Germans began firing from houses along the route of advance, the tanks rolled up and blasted the positions.
In one house, a German officer and three enlisted men lay dead with bullet holes through their foreheads, neat round holes put there by an expert doughboy rifleman. The officer lay with a champagne bottle in one hand and his rifle in the other. He had decided to fight to the last.
Resistance was disorganized. Defenders, still manning guns, were German fanatics trapped like rats. There was no escape for them.
A United Press report from Cherbourg said some Germans broke most of their rifles and machine guns and had blown off the muzzles of their artillery before surrendering.
The first unit into this section of the city was led by Lt. George Myers of Cincinnati, Ohio. This was the spearhead that sliced off the eastern part of the city.
Few booby traps found
There were surprisingly few mines and booby traps left by the Germans to hamper the U.S. entrance into the city. Most opposition was from machine-gun nests and guns in the forts.
The unit here has found only two booby traps so far and the only mines were those in front of the smashed beach defenses.
Coming into the city, the doughboys hit one tough knot of resistance with a German colonel and 300 troops holed up in a building and armed with machine guns and rifles.
Lt. Benjamin Westervelt of 418 Stockholm Street, Brooklyn, New York:
We just brought up tanks and boys with automatic Browning rifles and poured fire through the windows and doors. That got ‘em. The colonel came out to surrender his men. They poured out of there through the windows and doors in streams.
The unit kept one of the prisoners and when a pillbox strongpoint was encountered, he was sent forward to tell the defenders that unless they surrendered tanks would be brought up and all of them wiped out.
Lt. Westervelt said:
We got 56 out of that bag. We did the same thing at other places, too, and this man convinced more than 100 Germans to surrender.
There were few civilians in the section of the city we visited. But those on the streets were giving a warm welcome to the Americans.
German luxury noted
In a wine shop, Sgt. Harold Shortsleeve of Rutland, Vermont, had his heavy machine-gun squad cleaning their weapons before moving up to take part in the action against the pillboxes still blasting away at our troops.
Sgt. Shortsleeve said with a grin:
We’re waiting for artillery and mortars to get to work and then we’ll go in to clear up the pillboxes.
In the Hôtel Atlantique were cases of wine, cognac and champagne left behind by the Germans when they fled the city.
There the shelves were filled with fine sauternes, burgundies and liqueurs. The Germans has requisitioned the hotel for labor troops of the Todt Organization. They had lived in comfort in the 500-room hostelry.