PROGRESS SINCE D DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1944, Page 4

PROGRESS SINCE D DAY

It is very easy to believe General Eisenhower's statement that the French campaign is weft ahead of the D Day plan; The public and even the professional soldier himself must find their expectations exceeded by what has happened since the Americans on the Allied right flank in Normandy made their sudden break-through. That event banished the dispiriting sense of a Normandy stalemate; but, even then, the public hardly dared to hope for too much. Bradley's Americans, after the break-through, seemed to be divided between two objectives. They had isolated the Brittany ports by their rapid advance. Would they, then, pause ■in order to reduce Brest, St. JVlalo, Larient, etc.-^-a time-consuming task— and thus spend the force of their stroke against the German garrisons besieged on the coast? Or would the Americans bypass and ignore those German coastal garrisons in order' to essay the tempting major objectiveWa drive inland, towards Paris, to turn the flank of the German northern armies? Such a hinterland drive would be by far the more audacious-^and, if successful, fruitful—of the" two objectives. Which course would Eisenhower and Bradley pursue? The' watching public might have been .willing to be grateful if the Allies attended to either task—the investment of coastal bases or the hinterland > drive. That they should pursue energetically both purposes was hardly to be they did. And, assuming 5 that Eisenhower struck both to the coast and inland, the public hardly expected that the end of August would find the Allies across the historic Siomme—yet this has actually happened. Wonder of wonders! It all reads something like a fairy tale to readers who, prior to D Day, had been hushed by sombre speculations concerning a beach-head bloodrbath that would lead to, endless carnage and no progress. Those harrowing prognostications were half banished between D Day—when, as Churchill said, many of our worst fears were pushed behind us in . the first twenty-four hours—and the date of the American bre.ak-thrpugh; the evil shadow was again reduced when the Allies repelled the German counter-blow eft Avranches, which, it is now said, was specially ordered by Hitler; and the gloom has been further dissipated' now that the German armies have been pushed back in north France and in south France to an extent that the most hopeful layman—and perhaps the most sanguine soldier—never anticipated. The situation recall* the old proverb-^Qur worst fears are of those things that dp not happen. Those. who prayed now know that prayers have been bountifully answered. The prayers of mothers have been assisted by a just cause. On the German aggressors and not on the •Allies the toll of war has fallen in vastly greater proportion. Those of the Allies who awaited so anxiously the perils of the landing in France would hardly have believed that they would be reading at the end of August that the enemy casualties in. northern France alone, from D Day to August" 25, total 400,000; and, of these, it has not been a blood-bath for more than half of them, because more than half are prisoners. These figures are given by 4 General Eisenhower, who also supplies 'astonishing details of the destruction of German panzer divisions, infantry divisions, aircraft, and land vehicles. When the British, and Canadians were pushing the Germans slowly off the desperately defended Caen hinge or pivot, there was no need, says Eisenhower, for anyone to apologise for the pace of the BritishCanadian advance. Everyone could be proud of that pace, for "every foot of ground, the Germans lost there was equal to losing .ten miles somewhere else." Now that this desperately defended part of the front has been liquidated, British armoured columns have made : their own contribution to the policy of "speed, weight, and surprise," having liberated Amiens, crossed the Somme, and initiated a threat to German-held country which is the home of the flying bomb. The powers of evil have been forced into inglorious retreat. Their Mephistophelian genius, still busy on inventions, is now under challenge to prevent retreat from being translated into defeat. .But no one any longer expects the Allied challenge to be met—not even the Germans.