BURNT-OUT VEHICLES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 141, 16 June 1944, Page 5

BURNT-OUT VEHICLES

Stretch Between Beaches Like Gigantic Wrecking Yards ABANDONED GERMAN MINES Rec. 1 p.m. LONDON, June 15. Reuters correspondent with the United States forces in eastern Normandy said that he had just returned from a two-day IDO-mile tour of the roads leading to the front. The stretch between the beaches and advanced United States lines looks like gigantic wrecking yards. Scores of burnt-out German staff cars and armoured reconnaissance vehicles, anti-aircraft batteries mounted on trucks, and bicycles litter roadsides and ditches.

Piles of German equipment, much of which is still usable, lie in the middle of the roads, as though thrown off in great haste. Several burnt-out trucks or tractors were jammed together in some places in rusty masses of steel. The most amazing sight was stacks of mines, which the Germans apparently had no time to bury.

A British United Press correspondent tells of a garrison in a German strongpoint still holding out after eight days, from which snipers. come up at nights. They could have' been dislodged by naval guns blasting through huge slabs of concrete, but that meant blocking important routes, so the garrison was left to starve or surrender.