The Second Enemy

BATTLE OF FRANCE

The Allied Expeditionary Force battled two stubborn foes. One of them, the Germans, was reasonably predictable. The other, the weather, defied close analysis and for that reason gave the Allied high command the kind of trouble it had hoped to avoid.

Supplies and reinforcements were moving across the Channel and up the beaches in great volume. Even the Germans admitted that. But the Allied high command made no bones of a sobering fact: unloading had been thrown behind schedule.

So had the work of supporting air power, the one decisive advantage the Allies hold over the Germans. Up to the end of the first week, the invasion of Western Europe had not had the smile of a single clear day comparable with those which beamed on Hitler's legions in the Battle of France in 1940.

The difficulties of landing food, fuel and equipment from ships lying in the rough-water anchorages of the Bay of the Seine gave the first clue that the invasion was running behind schedule. The second was in the slow deepening of the bridgehead: an average of barely three miles a day. So it was that soldiers, who had ap proved General Eisenhower's gamble on the weather, retreated from their first optimistic judgments of the invasion,, which were based on the relative ease with which all but one of the scheduled landings were accomplished, the low casualties, the slow ness of German reaction, the virtual absence of the Luftwaffe. Now, as the fight ing progressed, there was still no indica tion that casualties were becoming prohibitive. But there was every indication that the rate must be increasing.

The Simple Plan. The immediate strategy of the invasion was clear, simple, masterly: 1) to seize beachheads on a sector of coast well within efficient fighter- plane range and economical shipping range of southern England; 2) to join and deep en them, thereby making a solid bridge head; 3) to drive southwest across the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, severing it from the rest of Nazi-held France; 4) to swing north and take (from the rear) the great port of Cherbourg. In the first week, everything depended on the Allies' ability to land enough sup plies on the obstacle-strewn beaches to sustain their forces until Cherbourg could be taken. Thereafter, Cherbourg would be the port of entry. It was a foregone conclusion that the Nazis' demolitions would wreck the tide gates of Cherbourg's commercial basin; they might have some temporary success in blocking the entrances to the harbor by sinking ships. But there was little they could do to lessen the usefulness of the magnificent roadstead.

Port of Necessity. There was no doubt that, once Cherbourg was taken, U.S. and British engineers could have the port usable again in a few days. Within the shelter of the five-mile-long roadstead, even lightering in supplies would be far easier and faster than in the wide-open Bay of the Seine, or in the tiny fishing-village ports opened by Royal Marines.

The nub of the problem was to take Cherbourg, and to take it fast. To this task a U.S. army under Lieut. General Omar N. Bradley was assigned. It was known in advance that the Americans' job would be tough: the Nazis had flooded 500,000 acres around Carentan to depths up to seven feet. Four days after landing, the Americans captured some of the sluice gates at Trevieres, started to drain the drowned land. But there was no assurance that the land would dry out enough to permit maneuver by heavy armor.

To protect the Americans' Cotentin operation, the Allies had to guard against interference by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's mobile reserves. To this task Ike Eisenhower assigned a British-Canadian army which drove swiftly inland to Bayeux and Caen, and cut the Germans' main supply road and railway from the east.

One Beachhead. But neither Americans nor British attained their full preliminary objectives as early as had been hoped. It was week's end before the Yanks drove through Trevieres to Sully, effected a firm juncture with the British and thus united the beachheads; meantime the British were still battling to close a vise around Caen and there set up an immovable roadblock against Nazi counterattack.

The urgent need for this block was clear: Rommel lost no time in making tactical counterattacks with his 21st Panzers. Around Caen the first tank battles of the invasion were fought. But they were preliminary, minor skirmishes compared with what was to be expected when Rommel finally struck.

Why did he delay? Said a Nazi military spokesman: "If we could be sure that the beachhead would remain only one, we could liquidate it when it pleased us. However, we are counting upon the [Allied] establishment of more beachheads where also we are holding reserves in readiness."

The Priceless Chance. The Nazis had missed their first chance, to cripple the invading forces by vigorous Luftwaffe blows at sea and on the beaches; they had missed their second, to counterattack strongly while the Allies were still disorganized on and near the beaches. Would they miss their third chance, to strike a decisive, strategic counterblow while the Allied bridgehead remained "only one"?

Where was the Luftwaffe? One explanation of its infrequent sorties was that Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, bull-necked veteran of Spain's ill-famed Condor Legion, was saving his strength, to use it in close support of Rommel's army when his counterattack finally got under way.

Meanwhile, Nazi air squadrons made pinprick night attacks. They harassed beachheads occasionally, kept convoy gunners alert to repel assaults for which Berlin claimed good results.

Atlantic Wall. Was there or had there been an Atlantic Wall? Countering boisterous dispatches that the highly advertised defenses were "the biggest bluff of the whole war," the London Times military correspondent rumbled: "This is to do less than justice to the Allied troops." Said Reuter's Stanley Burch: "You could not make a single pinpoint on the map of the invasion beachhead not covered by crossfire from machine guns, mortars or light artillery."

On D-plus-six, despite the intervening hell of fire, high winds and high water, the Allies sped up their advance. U.S. troops took Carentan, drove farther south-west toward sealing off the peninsula. Said Montgomery: "American troops did absolutely magnificently," recovering from a situation in which they had been "hanging on by their eyelids. ... I am very pleased with the progress so far. Our soldiers . . . are in tremendous form . . . full of beans. And they have already got the measure of the enemy."

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