FORTS CAPTURED

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 230, 27 June 1944, Page 5

FORTS CAPTURED

How Cherbourg Was Entered LONDON, June 25. The Americans’ entry into Cherbourg was made through a heavy cross barrage after the reduction of the forts at the entrance, says a British United Press correspondent in Normandy. Infantry patrols entered from the south and from the north-east at practically the same minute. Street fighting is in progress at Octeville, just south-west of Cherbourg. The Americans first pressed down a sunken road to the sea and then smashed eastwards into the port in the face of heavy machinegun and long range artillery fire. The first troops entered the city at midday. After the entry the Americans began patrolling the streets and rounding up snipers. The streets were found to be heavily defended, but the Americans did not encounter the resistance they expected from outlying houses. "I saw many hundreds of German prisoners pouring out of the city, and watched one American officer who had been badly wounded, with his arm bleeding profusely ad a revolver held in his left hand, bring a German officer out of a house,” says the correspondent. Defences Slowly Withering.

The German defences of Cherbourg are slowly withering under a terrible pounding from our heavy guns and mortars. Now only two strong-points at Fort du Roule and a few other scattered defence positions are holding out, says the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain with the Americans, in a message rimed 4 p.m. today. The slow job of clearing out the main parts of the city and silencing the remainder of the enemy’s guns is now going on. Cherbourg lies under a pall of dust and smoke from fires kindled bv our guns and the Germans’ • demolitions. The prisoners taken so far have not been counted, but groups of 20, 50, and 100 are being rounded up and sent to the cages. An American broadcast from the peninsula said that an American patrol discovered that the Germans had prepared the’ city for street fighting. The American 'troops used flame-throwers against the toughest points. Germans are surrendering in hundreds. Tonight -United States advance guards are occupying the town stage by stage. The correspondent refers to a German radio report assuming that Cherbourg had fallen, but says that some of the stiffest fighting in the whole of the Normandy campaign is in progress. It is possible, he says, that some of the high German officers decamped, leaving their men to fight on. This may account for the confusion on the battlefield, where large numbers of Germans are surrendering while others are resisting fiercely even though isolated by the advancing American ttoops. A British United Press correspondent says that the Germans placed barrels of gunpowder across the roads and blew great craters in them, but failed to stop the Americans, some of whom immediately fought their way to a hospital where wounded American prisoners, including airmen, were under treatment. French civilians who survived the siege were soon emerging from their underground shelters. Resistance Outside Town.

Another correspondent says that the battle follows no set pattern, but is at the stage now when the bits and pieces of what was once a complete defence system are being systematically destroyed. Between the main line of advance from the south and the advance from the southwest there are still enemy troops to be cleared up among high hedges, fields, and thick woodlands. Nests of mortars, field guns, and machinegun emplacements'have been harassing the flanks of the advance, but ail day American infantry have been moving into enemy territory, with th<? result that the whole of the elaborate defence system has been cut to bits. The enemy is still resisting on the narrow tip of the peninsula north-west ot Cherbourg. Cloud hampered Allied air operations today, but a powerful naval task force joined in the assault on Cherbourg. Minesweepers enabled battleships and cruisers, with their escorting destroyers, to get as close to the shore as possible and engage the enemy coastal batteries, xvitn British and American aircraft spotting for the ships. The task force was directed by Rear-Admiral Morton Lyndholm, flying his flag in the United States heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa. The imminent capture of Cherbourg is in every way a combined operation, and a correspondent at supreme headquarters emphasizes the part played by trig troops, in the British, and. Caaadj<m,

sector in Normandy, a part without which Cherbourg could not be captured. From west of Carentan to beyond toe Caen canal the British and Canadians are presenting a strong shoulder against which four German armoured divisions with a great strength of infantry are barging. The shoulder has not only remained firm, but is barging back and thus denying Rommel the use of his armour elsewhere along the front.

Latest British Attack. 1 Time and again, thanks to the probing nature of General Montgomerys very powerful active and passive defence, tne Germans have had to use tanks in local counter-attacks. The correspondent points out that Rommel’s best chance of reducing the effectiveness of the fall of Lberbourg would be to erumble our left flank by a major attack in the Caen area, but he has not managed it, and the British are lunging out whenever they, get a chance, thus achieving the tactical purpose of keeping the enemy’s eyes to the front and not allowing them to stray westward. . , One of these lunges was made today in the sector east of Tilly.. A correspondent says that before nightfall last night squadrons of fighter-bombers plastered German gun positions and areas where tanks may have been hiding. Then, well before dawn, our artillery opened up. For an hour the fire was concentrated on dug-in German infantry and enemy gun positions. Then came a massed barrage—l2 minutes on the first line, then creeping forward, giving a few minutes pasting to every hundred yards. Fighterbombers had the task of guarding the flanks, and in the early light the infantry went forward. They could .not see an arm’s length ahead of them in the. mist. Some columns met little opposition; others had fierce skirmishes. They won their first objective and pushed on, and the last report said they had advanced from two and a half miles to three miles.