The Pittsburgh Press (July 31, 1944)
First Army enters Avranches, seizes port of Granville
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
Allies capture more towns in France in the surge through the Nazi lines. In the western sector, U.S. troops (1) captured Granville, drove into Avranches and occupied Torigni-sur-Vire, while the British (2), who advanced some five miles below Caumont, seized Saint-Martin-des-Besaces.
Bulletin
SHAEF, London, England –
A Normandy broadcast for the British radio said today that 1st Army headquarters announced that U.S. troops had captured Avranches.
SHAEF, London, England –
The U.S. 1st Army stormed across the See River into the western Normandy anchor base of Avranches after a 12-mile advance today and engaged the German garrison in a violent street fight, and 14 miles to the northwest captured the big port of Granville.
Supreme Headquarters announced that the foremost spearhead of the 1st Army, striking down the west coast, had established itself firmly in Avranches at the base of the Normandy Peninsula, and a field dispatch revealed the capture of Granville, which was already under German artillery fire.
The collapse of the German left wing became a debacle under the triphammer blows of the 1st Army breakthrough drive which headquarters said had decimated six Nazi divisions and laid open the way to interior France.
United Press staff writer Henry T. Gorrell reported the capture of Granville, and with it Torigni-sur-Vire, transport junction seven miles southwest of Saint-Lô. At the same time, the British 2nd Army’s new offensive on the Caumont front overran Saint-Martin-des-Besaces, four and a half miles southwest of Caumont.
A headquarters spokesman said the German 77th, 91st, 352nd, 243rd and 353rd Infantry Divisions and the 5th Parachute Division had been torn to shreds in less than a week of the showdown battle in western Normandy, and most of them were now probably no more than a number on the German Army list.
Allied air fleets, taking advantage of improving but still hazy weather, swarmed to the attack on the retreating Germans. They concentrated their fire on bridges and railyards behind the enemy lines, and hammered heavily at the scattered sectors where the Nazis attempted to mount rearguard counterthrusts.
Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s 1st Army and Lt. Gen. Miles C. Dempsey’s 2nd Army were pumping heavy blows into the entire western half of the Normandy front, breaking the German grip on strongpoints and battering the enemy back to new sectors.
Almost as significant as the American landslide was the British advance in the Caumont sector, where a new attack had overrun Hill 309, its 1,000 feet the greatest elevation thus far achieved by the Allies in Normandy, and drove some miles farther into Galet, six miles below Caumont.
The easternmost U.S. troops and westernmost British forces swung toward each other from Torigni-sur-Vire and Saint-Martin-des-Besaces and were nearing a junction which would carve out a pocket of Germans to be mopped up at will.
The Avranches bridgehead across the See River was regarded at headquarters as extremely important. Its establishment in force was believed to have shattered any chance the groggy German left wing had of seizing a foothold anywhere near the present coastal positions at the base of the Norman Peninsula.
Gen. Bradley, whose ready initiative has sparkled throughout the breakthrough drive which wrecked the German positions in western Normandy, could be expected to exploit his new advantage quickly, moving up infantry and artillery to strengthen the spearhead while tanks fanned out south and southeast.
To the east, other U.S. forces bypassed Torigny–Caumont highway down the railroad to the southeast. They took two hamlets within a couple of miles of the British right flank. While the Anglo-American junction was reported prospective, some sources believed it had already been effected.
The effect of the moves was first to eliminate one German salient and second to create another, in which the Nazis between Torigny and Tessy-sur-Vire faced a growing threat of envelopment.
Tessy had been one of the most stubborn points in the German defenses, with the 2nd Panzer Division, which moved across from Caumont, counterattacking savagely in an attempt to block the American drive aimed at the key road hub of Vire.
The German were also fighting back hard around Villedieu today in an effort to block the advance down the main road to the See River. It appeared that the armored column which drove into Avranches was the only American force so far to reach the river.
Substantial pockets of resistance remained considerably north of Villedieu, and two miles above the town the Germans were doggedly defending a roadblock.
Front dispatches said the U.S. 1st Army’s multipronged offensive – involving at least six divisions and 600 tanks – had cracked the western half of the Normandy front wide open and the Germans were in headlong flight, abandoning tanks and guns in their frantic efforts to shake off their pursuers.
Germany’s toughest troops – the 2nd SS Division Das Reich, the special favorite of Adolf Hitler – “threw the sponge” yesterday and began surrendering by the hundreds as U.S. tanks slashed across their roads of escape, dispatches revealed.
More than 10,000 prisoners have already been taken in the first six days of the offensive, which has carried 44 miles through the enemy lines, and the total was mounting hourly.
Gen. Bradley’s tanks and mobile infantry were advancing so rapidly their only communication with headquarters was by radio. The Germans were not even pausing to plant mines to cover their retreat, and town after town was captured intact.
Swarms of U.S. bombers, fighter-bombers and fighters further harassed the enemy retreat, blasting, strafing and shelling rear roads clogged with fleeing German columns. More than 500 vehicles, including upwards of 70 tanks and scores of self-propelled guns were reduced to blistered, twisted, smoldering steel in the Roncey–Gavray area alone.
The Americans broken into Avranches, at the hinge of the Norman and Brittany Peninsulas, after a wide swing advance from the Bréhal–Gavray–Percy area to the north that had earlier bypassed the port of Granville, 14 miles to the northwest, and dozens of other towns and villages, dooming heir garrisons to death or capture.
Avranches lies on the south bank of the See River estuary – previously considered a possible enemy defense line – and the Americans presumably swept across the river to engage the defenders in a street battle.
In their smash into Avranches, the Americans drove down the main inland highway some eight miles east of Granville and passed through the junction town of La Haye-Pesnel. Another column moving along the coast from Bréhal was only three miles northeast of Granville.
From Avranches, the Americans could punch south or southwest into Brittany, splitting the German forces in western France in two; southeast into the heart of France; east toward Paris, 155 miles away, or northeast in an attempt to encircle German armies still clustered on an arc around Caen.
Elements of the British 2nd Army, which moved into positions on the American left flank around Caumont, were also gaining momentum on the second day of their coordinated offensive.
A front dispatch from United Press staff writer Richard D. McMillan, dated “with an advanced British infantry patrol” at 11:00 a.m. (5:00 a.m. ET), said British tanks had made “further fresh important gains” during the morning and had reached one high point above five miles from their starting line.
Advancing along a seven-mile front in the wake of a heavy aerial bombardment, the British captured or bypassed scores of towns and villages on an arc stretching from Saint-Jean-des-Essartiers, three and a half miles southwest of Caumont, to Saint-Germain-d’Ectot, four and a half miles northeast of Caumont.
The Tommies seized high ground east of Saint-Martin-des-Besaces, five and a half miles south of Caumont, but extensive minefields and difficult terrain were slowing their advance east and northeast of Caumont.
A dispatch from an advanced command post disclosed that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had expressed extreme gratification over the results of the fighting in Normandy in the last week and was viewing the immediate future of the campaign with high optimism.
He conferred briefly Saturday with both Gen. Bradley and Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of all Allied troops in France, and found them “obviously pleased” with the Allied progress, the dispatch said.
U.S. divisions participating in the offensive down the western half of the Norman Peninsula were disclosed to be the battle-tested 1st, 4th, 9th and 30th Infantry Divisions and the 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions, comprising the U.S. XIX Corps.
The divisions put to rout elements of at least 10 German divisions and “practically destroyed” two of them, the veteran 2nd SS Das Reich and the Panzer Lehr Divisions. The 2nd SS Division Das Reich was estimated to have lost at least 70 of its 100 tanks in the last 48 hours, while the Panzer Lehr Division were also deprived of most of its vehicles. Personnel of both divisions was said to have been “decimated.”
Several enemy pockets were still holding out behind the front, and Gen. Eisenhower’s communiqué at 11:00 a.m. (5:00 a.m. ET) reported “heavy fighting” in the Gavray, Percy and Tessy-sur-Vire areas, 15 to 23 miles above Avranches. Their plight was hopeless, however, and it was only a matter of time before all were captured or killed.
In most cases, the Germans surrendering in batches as soon as surrounded, or cut off from the rest of the front. More than 1,500 were captured yesterday alone in the triangle formed by Saint-Denis-le-Gast, Roncey and Notre-Dame-le-Cenilly, including 500 from the touted 2nd SS Division Das Reich.
Many appeared voluntarily at prison cages. Seventeen surrendered to Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writer, and several other correspondents near Roncey.