SOLID BRITISH FRONT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 11, 13 July 1944, Page 5

SOLID BRITISH FRONT

ENEMY'S UNHAPPY POSITION SOUTH OF CAEN

(By Tclcgmiili—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 11.50 a.m. LONDON, July 12.

Reuters correspondent on the Odon front says: "Elements of four panzer divisions were brought t up and sent in piecemeal against the British, but failed to stop the Allied push towards the Orne. The Germans holding the lower half of the loop before the confluence of the Odon and the Orne Rivers are not in a happy position. General Montgomery now has a front across the Odon instead of a bridgehead. The front is solid, and backed up with a tremendous weight of fire power. General Montgomery holds the initiative and can make the enemy react wherever he chooses. The Germans, if they stay T are subject to a long, nerve-racking barrage from the Allied guns. On the contrary, if they get restless and step outside their line from Louvigny through Maltot and Esquay to Hottot, then a deadly avalanche of mortar bombs and shells rains down on them. The Germans also export a lot of explosive, but it is feeble and lacks sustained concentration compared with Allied bursts of devastation."

The British United Press correspondent says: "The road to St. Lo is a lane of death, with German dead and burnt-out vehicles every few yards. Our losses have been reasonably light considering the ferocity of the fighting."

The correspondent adds that the Germans are showing signs of an orderly withdrawal southwards in the Cherbourg Peninsula.

TRENCH WARFARE INDICATIONS

The British United Press" correspondent adds that the advance towards Lessay is timely because the enemy has been digging in in the style of the last war. He had elaborate communication trenches and dugouts, suggesting that the Germans will tend to revert to trench warfare whenever a temporary stalemate sets in.

The forest of Mont Castre was cleaned up this morning, and the Americans are now south of it.

The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain says the Germans are making a savage yard-by-yard defence of St. Lo's fields and hedgerows. On the ridge before the city, which is littered with enemy dead, the Germans took a terrible beating under a mighty artillery barrage which thundered from dawn to dusk yesterday.

"From the ridge overlooking St. Lo gruesome evidence could be seen of the price the Germans paid in trying to stem the American drive," says the correspondent. "Bodies in grotesque positions lay in ditches and alongside thick green hedges torn by shrapnel and clipped by machine-gun bullets. The Americans covered most of the bodies with the enemy's own blankets. They will be taken away later and buried, with neat white crosses to mark the last resting-place of the Fuhrer's defenders."

A HEAVY KNOCK,

After a day and a night of the most bitter fighting, in which they lost another 20 tanks, the German panzer units thought better this morning of throwing in a counter-attack- between the Odon and the Orne Rivers, says Reuters correspondent. A staff officer said: "We gave the enemy a very heavy knock yesterday. He has had more than enough for the time being. We certainly destroyed one whole panzer grenadier regiment. We have taken several hundred prisoners, all