March on the Robots

The robomb-launching coast lay ahead. As the British swung north from the Seine to the Somme, a general said to his men:

"For the first time in this war we are fighting to free our homes, our wives and our children from German attacks. Every yard we advance reduces the area from which he can launch his secret weapons. . . . Let us drive forward ruthlessly and relentlessly, taking as our motto, 'One more kilometer and one less bomb.' "

In the first 100 miles of the British-Canadian advance, 120 launching sites were overrun, and many more were isolated as the British crossed into Belgium. Robot attacks on the 'London area fell off sharply. The Germans seemed to have abandoned the heart of the launching area around Calais, for the few missiles that came over early last week were from the Belgian coast beyond Dunkirk.

Germany's D.N.B. said: "V1 is not tied to fixed bases. . . . Bunkers and earthworks captured by Anglo-Americans are only empty shells. Vital parts of equipment and the secret V-1 itself have nowhere been captured."

One ramp seized near Rouen was simply a pair of rails 200 feet long and mounted 12 feet apart on ties. The mayor of Rouen said that a high proportion of the robombs launched in that area had been wasted, that three out of four flopped in France without even reaching the Channel. No less than 26, he said, had exploded on one 40-acre French farm. Many firing crews were said to have been injured or killed at the launching installations. At Arras, Frenchmen said they had been offered 1,000 francs a day to help with the dangerous firing job.

For three whole days no buzz-bombs fell on the London area. For the first time, the German communique made no mention of "V1 fire on London." Liberated Paris, however, got a nasty start when it was announced that robombs had fallen "in the Seine basin" (i.e., somewhere within 40 miles of Paris). The Allied censorship in Paris showed itself as tough as London's; nothing was disclosed except that there had been "casualties and damage."

The Allied advance toward Calais goaded the Germans to fire last stinging salvos from their big cross-Channel guns. Some 100 big shells crashed down on the Dover strip ("Hell's Corner") in the space of four hours.* One deaf old lady of 82 slept on, unhurt, while her home was wrecked. When fire wardens awoke her amid the ruins, she looked around, said: "What a mess!"

*A few nights earlier, residents of the southeast coast heard and felt a mighty explosion which shook the ground like an earthquake. One guess: the Germans had blown up a large store of flying bombs rather than let them fall into Allied hands.

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