PROGRESS IN FRANCE.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 62, 10 August 1944, Page 3

PROGRESS IN FRANCE.

VANNES CAPTURED. ARMOURED FORCES REACH BREST LONDON, August 6. By an amazingly swift advance from end to end of Brittany, American armouied forces reached the great naval bast of Brest. This has been confirmed at Supremp Allied Headquarters. Still other American forces, driving south across the base of the Brittany Peninsula, have reached the sea in the mouth of the Loire, in the area of the eity of Nantes and the port of St. Nazaire. The town of Vannes, 35 miles northwest of St. Nazaire, near the southern coast of Brittany, has been captured. On the northern side of Brittany the Germans are still fighting stubbornly eight miles from St. Malo. Another American armoured column j is now approaching the town of Laval, ? 40 miles east of Rennes, which was the starting point of the advance which has reached the Loire Estuary. The British 2nd Arnwr has cleared the Germans from a 15-mile stretch of the Orne River below’ Caen, and one correspondent says that British forces have crossed the river. Below Caen and 1 further south the British are moving I steadily towards the river, squeezing ] out the Germans remaining on its west l side. GERMAN COUNTER-ATTACK REPULSED. LONDON, August 8. j American and German tanks are I locked in battle round Mortan, where • the Germans have launched, their big-' gest counter-attack since D* Day. The • Germans are attacking in the didec- I tion of Avranches, near the base of the Cherbourg PeninsulWj about 18 miles west of Mortain, apparently in an effort to cut the Americans off from their supply route down the peninsula. After a battle with American tanks the counter-attack launched by the Germans in the Avranches sector of Normandy is reported to hove been repulsed.