The Free Lance-Star (July 1, 1944)
BRITISH BARRAGE SMASHES GERMAN ATTACK
Nazis throwing tank divisions in Caen area
Enemy loses 326 tanks in battle
SHAEF, England (AP) –
A thundering night-long British barrage smashed back an armored spearhead attempting to crash into the Odon River bridgehead menacing Caen, frontline dispatches from Normandy reported today as the Nazi Command threw elements of seven tank divisions into the furious battle.
Massed artillery fire broke up the assault on the west flank of the Odon River corridor just as it started.
The Germans renewed their stabs this morning, the dispatches said, with an attack on the British left flank at Marcelet, west of Caen. Four Nazi Mark IV tanks were wrecked, raising the toll taken by British forces alone to 146 since D-Day.
On all sectors in Normandy, 326 enemy tanks have been destroyed or disabled.
If the German armored units which Field Marshal Erwin Rommel has thrown into the fight were up to strength, they would represent about 2,000 tanks and self-propelled guns.
U.S. forces, in local attacks in the central sector of the bridgehead, drove to within two and a half miles of Saint-Lô, reaching the villages of La Forge, on the main highway to Isigny and Le Carillon, due north of the city.
Indications were seen here that Rommel himself had taken personal command of the bridgehead front, particularly after the death of Col. Gen. Friedrich Dollmann, commander of the German 7th Army, which Berlin announced yesterday.
It was apparent, too, that Rommel was trying to use his panzers as he did in the Libyan desert to force quick, violent decisions.
But thus far, British pressure in the Odon River salient was so great that Rommel had been unable to mount one large-scale counterattack, but had been committing his divisions in local attacks quickly as they reach the scene of action.
Allies gain strength
Allied Communiqué No. 51 said today:
Allied troops are strengthening their positions on both banks of the Odon River. All enemy attempts to break through were frustrated in the Caen–Évrecy sector. There is nothing to report on the rest of the front.
The RAF yesterday swept big Lancasters and Halifaxes, usually used for night bombing, on one of their few daylight tactical missions, the bombing of Rommel’s reserves of armor. More than 250 of these heavy bombers dropped 1,000 tons of bombs yesterday on a concentration of German tanks at Villers-Bocage.
A check of the battlefield revealed that the Germans suffered heavy casualties in their violent counterattack to the river Odon two nights ago. This attack was repelled in four hours of bitter fighting by a British division which had never been in action before.
Yesterday Rommel attacked “viciously” three times at the salient across the Odon, Supreme Headquarters said, but was unable to disrupt reorganization of his striking forces by Lt. Gen. Miles Christopher Dempsey, commander of the British 2nd Army.
Transfer troops
The grim determination of the German High command to block the Allied advances was seen in the fact that despite their serious defeats on the Russian front, they have been withdrawing divisions from the Eastern Front and sending them to France.
Dempsey announced at the front last night that his men had captured German prisoners who only recently had arrived from the fighting in Russia. He asserted he was “completely confident as the situation stands now. The enemy has had a crack. As usual the Hun has reacted very quickly and violently. He is now rushing reinforcements into the battle. we are fully ready.”
Today there was a temporary lull in the fighting as both asides regrouped their forces for a big effort.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Lawton Collins, commander of the U.S. VII Corps, continued his steady mopping up of the Cap de la Hague sector on the northwest tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula, the last center of German resistance.
As yet there was no full report on the condition of Cherbourg Harbor. Minesweepers were the first ships into the port, which had been heavily mined.
As heavy air support of the land operations was continued, it was estimated by the air forces that their attacks had cut nine-tenths of all rail transport into the battle area – and now almost everything the Germans bring up is forced to move at night by road.