Casey: Yanks’ barrage a war ‘for keeps’
By Robert J. Casey
On the U.S. front in Normandy. France –
The American southward push in Normandy took a new turn this morning with a successful attack across the Vire River.
This widens the previous front considerably and gives the Germans new worries in the Saint-Jean-de-Daye area which is six or seven miles from Saint-Lô.
If any observer had thought that the American drive was a mere token performance, the operations since yesterday afternoon certainly should show their error.
There have been few artillery barrages in anybody’s war thicker, more continuous, or noisier than that which has blasted this ever-widening front for the last 18 hours. It started yesterday and is still going on with a din such as the world has probably not heard since the last war’s Battle of Verdun.
You wonder, as you hear these guns firing in such masses and so close together that their echoes blend in one continuous roar that shakes your diaphragm, how do much ammunition could have been hauled across the Channel in such a short time.
If you never realized before that this is a war for keeps, you realize it now and so undoubtedly do the Germans.
It surely sounds like one.