Heavy Going

Cold, drizzling rain had turned much of the Normandy front into bogland. But the Allied troops slowly pushed ahead, slopping through mud and water, building up the pressure of guns and armor until they cracked stubborn German defenses at both ends of the line. In the payoff at week's end the British and Canadians finally drove into the battered, rubble-strewn city of Caen; on the western side the Americans sliced through at La Haye-du-Puits and drove south.

Crush-Through. Taken together, the two gains were the greatest invasion success since the fall of Cherbourg. One British officer even called Caen "the Alamein of France," but that seemed premature, to say the least. Caen did stand astride the straight road to Paris, 125 miles east. But the victory at Caen had been not so much a break-through as a crush-through.

The Germans had retired sullenly, in reasonably good order, after a merciless air and artillery pounding had shaken them loose from the town. They pulled back only to the far bank of the Orne River, dug in and waited.

The time for headlong pursuit was not yet at hand. The real Alamein of the Paris road was yet to be fought, although the way had been partially cleared for a major clash of armor on the level ground south and east of Caen.

Timetable Off? It was a logical time for assessing the progress of the western invasion, and in both Britain and the U.S., military observers studied their maps, counted the days, wondered just how far behind schedule operations were. There was no question that they were well behind. Good summer fighting weather had slipped by, and the drive inland had not yet been begun.

Rain and Terrain. There were some good reasons for delay. Freakish weather alone, particularly in the first fortnight of invasion, may have slowed Allied operations by as much as 30%. The weather was a surprise. The fighting, especially at the western end of the line, was over a difficult terrain of hedgerows, deep ditches, woods, marshes and flooded fields. The German defense had been stubborn and skillful. But these were not surprises.

The plain fact seemed to be that Allied tactics thus far, except in the rapid Cherbourg drives by U.S. troops, had been basically cautious tactics. Some Allied military men now thought that a speedier, even a more reckless assault from the north might shorten the battle, and save lives in the end.

One powerful factor supporting this opinion was the unexpectedly strong performance of the French forces of resistance (see above). It was a peculiarity of the invasion that the Allies had some 175,000 active troops behind the enemy lines, their effectiveness limited mainly by lack of weapons and supplies, their fighting power dwindling each day they remained cut off from the main body of Allied troops. On the Normandy front General Montgomery gathered fire power, supplies and men in the overwhelming weight he likes to have before a full-out drive is begun. The drive would come.

Slow March. After Caen and La Have had fallen, the Allies slowly pushed on. The British drove hard to clear the banks of the Orne, the Americans pressed toward Lessay and Periers, the gateways through which they had to move out toward the broad base of the Cotentin Peninsula, widening their front, getting room for maneuver.

British General Dempsey and U.S. General Bradley were making skillful use of their superior artillery and air power; despite bad weather, Allied tactical air support has so thoroughly isolated the battlefield that a Silesian division, rushed from the Russian front to France in five days, took 14 more getting up to Normandy. But for the Allies too, the battle at week's end was still being fought at footsoldier's pace.

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