Attack in the South

For weeks the Germans had noted allied landing boats piling up in Mediteranean harbors, had nervously trumpeted their findings to the world. Then distinguished visitors began arriving in Italy for front-row seats--Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. Navy Secretary James Forrestal, Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson, Supply Chief Lieut. General Brehon Somervell, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, announced he had moved his headquarters to Italy from North Africa.

Four days before the landings, some of the German suspense was lifted. Allied air fleets began an unmistakable preparation of the southern coast for invasion. They bombed Toulouse, railroad nerve center for the southwest, beat up the naval base at Toulon, strafed the once gilded Riviera. Fighter-bombers meticulously blasted out German radio direction-finding stations. The stage was set.

Tuesday morning the blow fell. Parachute and glider troops dropped down before dawn on German strongpoints inland. By sunrise a great Allied fleet of 800 ships was offshore battering coastal positions with its big guns while powerful air assault forces concentrated their bombs and bullets on the beachhead.

West from the Riviera. Apparently the Allies achieved at least tactical surprise. It was several hours before the Germans announced the area where they had been struck--a 70-mile stretch of coast between Toulon and Cannes. Allied correspondents reported that the invasion army, chiefly of Americans but heavily sprinkled with French and British troops, made its first beachheads without great loss, grabbed its first objectives within an hour. In less than two hours, seven waves were ashore--perhaps 14,000 men--with many more still to come. The beachhead grew to 100 miles, from Nice to Marseilles.

As the attack began, "Jumbo" Wilson stated its obvious aim. Said he in an official proclamation: the objective is "to drive out the Germans and join up with the Allied armies advancing from Normandy." Clearly laid out for his forces were two major routes to the north: up the Rhone valley through the eastern third of France, westward through the Garonne valley to Bordeaux, to meet the Americans ready to strike south from the Loire.

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