Channel Duel

Before dawn the big guns around Dover suddenly thundered. Their loads of steel and high explosive arched toward the German-held coast of France, some 20 miles away. German heavy guns growled back in a monstrous duel. It was like a rumbling overture to invasion.

But that was not the day. The firing had started when British watchers discovered a convoy of German ships trying to ghost northward through the English Channel, hugging the coast at Cape Gris-Nez. Two hundred shells were fired. One large enemy merchant vessel was sunk, another was hard hit. From this German willingness to risk ships in the Channel shooting gallery, Allied commanders judged that the steady air pounding of French railroads and communications must be snarling normal overland supply lines behind the Invasion Coast.

Twenty heavy German shells fell around Dover. A veteran of World War I bore witness to their power:

"It was exactly the way it was in France a quarter of a century ago. You lay there clutching the earth, hoping to God they would continue to miss. It was more terrifying than any bombing, for you knew each shell was aimed."

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