War and Weather

All along the grey, rainswept Norman front it was bitter, close, bloody fighting for one small position after another; battle so like the grinding attrition of the troop-saturated positional fronts of World War I that it gave some veteran officers a nightmarish feeling of "this is where I came in." It took no topflight strategist to conclude that the invasion of Western Europe was falling farther & farther behind schedule.

The foot soldiers fought across the tiny, cut-up fields, over and down the tough, earth-mound Norman hedges, along the ditches and sunken roads. They fought with hand grenades, shot each other point-blank with rifles, cut each other's throats with bayonets. The Americans, British and Canadians attacked with auto-rifles, Tommy guns. The Nazis fought back with their quick-firing Schmeisser "burp-guns" and sowed mean little "Bouncing Betty" mines that spring up waist high and burst in a shower of steel scrap when a soldier steps on one.

400 Yards. British and Canadian troops who had driven into Caen were stalled by Nazi forces pulled back into the suburbs of the town, across the Orne River. The main offensive push was staged by U.S. troops at the west side of the front. They drove steadily along the roads to the south, where they must break out into the base of the Normandy peninsula. At week's end patrols entered one key town, Lessay, near the west coast. But inland strong points were still held by the Germans. One day's U.S. advance toward Saint-Lo covered only 400 painful yards.

Then the attack pendulum swung back to the Caen sector, where the British Second Army jumped off in a new offensive on a nine-mile front southwest of Caen. The drive punched ahead for two and a half miles, then slowed as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel moved five divisions to stave off a breakthrough. German headquarters said the fighting might soon reach a new high of intensity and decide the fate of the Norman front.

Rain & Shine. The Allies were still fighting weather as well as the enemy. When Saint Swithin's day turned up rainy (traditionally indicating 40 more days of rain), the soaked, muddy Allied troops were unimpressed; it could not forecast any worse than what they had already gone through. Actually, the weather cleared early this week.

That was bad news indeed for the Nazis. A war correspondent for the Berlin Lokal lanzeiger reported that on the Caen front the German soldier's happiest hours were when drenching rain falls, "the clay clings to our boots, greatcoats become soaked and heavy, and foxhole trenches fill with water. But when the storm passes and the sun emerges, the soldier's greeting to the sunlight, hissed through clenched teeth, is unprintable. For with the sun also return the swarms of enemy fighters and fighter-bombers. . . ."

New Landing? A solid spell of just such anti-Nazi weather, allowing full use of Allied air power, would be the greatest boon the invasion could receive. But good weather or bad, it was clear that something had to be done, and soon. An undertaking like the invasion of France cannot stop; it must go forward, keep moving.

Military observers judged that the Germans now have 20 to 25 divisions grouped against the Normandy front. If the terrain and stout opposition make an Allied breakthrough impossible at this front, then the Allies almost certainly must launch another major invasion landing.

Just how far the Allied timetable had been delayed was uncertain. One expert (though highly biased) opinion came last week from Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge, new German supreme commander in the west. He said information from prisoners indicated that Allied plans had called for an entry into Paris on D-plus-40 (July 16), although a margin of 20 more days had been allowed in case of heavy resistance. Added Kluge:

"We are not fighting a markedly enthusiastic infantry. The Americans, British and Canadians get into a real fighting mood only when they believe themselves certain of victory by virtue of their superior bombs and armament. That, of course, imposes strenuous demands on our troops and leaders."

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