Fiery renewal of battle for France; Britain recalls grimness of Dunkerque
By Raymond Daniell
London, England –
This was D-Day and it has gone well.
At daybreak, Anglo-American forces dropped from the skies in Normandy, swarmed up on the beaches from thousands of landing craft and renewed the battle for France and for Europe, broken off four years ago at Dunkerque.
And when darkness fell, on the word of no less than Winston Churchill, the King’s First Minister, who is still this country’s best reporter, they had toeholds on a broad front and were fighting as far back from the coast as Caen, which is eight and a half miles behind the Channel beaches and 149 miles from Paris.
At the time he spoke, the Prime Minister said that the battle which was just beginning was progressing in “a thoroughly satisfactory manner.” But even he, like most people in this island, had his fingers crossed.
The Germans’ resistance until now has been surprisingly, perhaps ominously, slight. Several obstacles to any amphibious operation have been surmounted. The concentration of ships has escaped serious bombardment from the air and the huge armada has crossed the Channel without encountering real enemy naval opposition. Submarine obstacles and shore batteries, which had been pounded relentlessly by the Allied air forces, were less lethal than had been expected.
Weather not favorable
The weather was uncertain but possibly a decisive factor. It was not favorable to the attacking forces. It was revealed at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force that the great blow had been postponed one day because the barometer had started to fall – not an unusual occurrence in this land of fickle weather.
On the basis of reports from his meteorologists, Gen. Eisenhower postponed the launching of his attack 24 hours. Then the weathermen assured him that an improvement was coming and he was faced with the problem of gambling on their science or postponing the attack another month. His was a grim decision, for it was learned at Supreme Headquarters that had the meteorologists been wring, the whole expedition might have met with disaster.
As it was, the weather was not good, but it improved. At the start, clouds obscured air targets and winds swept the Channel into one of its hellish moods, so a large part of the invading force must have been seasick when they landed to do battle with the enemy.
The tides of the Channel, which in the days of the Spanish Armada favored England, changed in the crucial hours between dark and daylight. Minesweepers had to switch their gear from one side to the other and never slow down or stop lest the cutting tools they drag behind them sink to the ocean floor.
The first communiqué merely said Allied troops had landed in northern France. Later, this was expanded unofficially to mean Normandy, where the apple trees have just shed their blossoms and begun to bear fruit.
Enemy describes arena
The Germans were more explicit and perhaps more tendentious. They identified the fighting zone as stretching from Cotentin Peninsula to the estuary of the Seine.
The Germans doubtless would like to know what the Allies planned to do next. It would help them a lot in their order of battle if they knew whether this landing was intended to become the main beachhead for a march on Berlin or whether it was the forerunner of new attacks along the coastline that stretches from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
The answer to that question is a military secret, but Prime Minister Churchill, who said when the Anglo-American forces landed in North Africa that it was the end of the beginning, hinted today that the assault in Normandy was only a foretaste of what was to come.
The Prime Minister, who about four years ago described the heroic retreat of the British Army from Dunkerque in terms of a strategic victory, reported twice in the course of the day to the Commons. In his morning address, completely factual and devoid of rhetoric, he said that “the first series of landings in force upon the European continent” had taken place.
Later, he said it was the hope of the Allied commanders to furnish “a succession of surprises” to the enemy. The battle now beginning, he said, would grow in scale and intensity for weeks to come.
Bares total of ships
In his speech, Mr. Churchill dealt specifically with many matters which newspaper correspondents had been told only a few minutes earlier were taboo. For instance, he disclosed that an armada of 4,000 ships, not counting the smaller landing craft, had crossed the Channel carrying the spearhead of the attack – Canadian, British and U.S. troops commanded by Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, who, Supreme Headquarters disclosed, was to lead today’s combined United Nations force.
The Prime Minister told the House of Commons – whose many empty seats bore witness to the success with which military secrets had been kept – that mass airborne landings had been “successfully effected” behind the enemy lines, and he said that the fire of shore batteries having been “largely quelled,” landings on the beaches were taking place.
Obstacles in the sea, he said, had not proved so formidable as had been anticipated. The Anglo-American offensive, he disclosed, was being supported by 11,000 first-line aircraft which would be thrown into the fray as they were needed.
“The commanders say everything is going according to plan – what a plan!” he said.
Between Mr. Churchill’s first statement in the morning and his postscript at the close of the parliamentary session, the people of this island worked a lot and prayed a little. There were services in the cathedrals and village churches, but everywhere work went on as usual, turning out planes and tanks to take the places of those lost in battle.
The people, who have worked and sweated and waited, seemed relieved that at last the die was cast and the Rubicon crossed.
These people, who four years ago accepted the collapse of France and decided to carry on the fight alone somehow, felt that their instincts had been justified and that their old decision was the right one. They know trouble may develop later, but they went to bed remembering these words of Mr. Churchill, who has never looked at wat through rose-colored glasses:
Airborne landings are well established and landings and follow-ups are all proceeding with much less loss than we expected – very much less. We have captured various bridges which are important and which have not been blown up by the enemy, and fighting is even proceeding in the town of Caen.
The attempt at liberation of the continent has begun auspiciously. Later the allies will count upon the help of the resistance movements of Europe but radio broadcasts by Gen. Charles de Gaulle (head of the French Committee of National Liberation), Dr. Pieter S. Gerbrandy (Dutch Premier), Hubert Pierlot (Belgian Premier) and Gen. Eisenhower have made it clear that the time is not yet. All these speakers advised the people of occupied Europe to wait for orders to rise against the Nazi occupation.