OVER NORTH-WEST GERMANY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 8 July 1944, Page 5

OVER NORTH-WEST GERMANY

| AMERICAN PLANE FORMATIONS London, July 7. 1 Berlin radio issued a warning this j morning ti\at strong American bomber formations with very strong fighter escort were over north-west Gerl many, and the raiders were meeting massed anti-aircraft fire. Violent j air battles were being fought. TENSE SITUATION London, July 6. Reuter's Normandy correspondent says: "It is a cat-and-mouse game on the British front to-day. There are no large-scale operations and no attacks or counter-attacks. Just massed infantry and armour sitting opposite each other waiting and wondering what the other will do. It is an electric sort of atmosphere. The British have a preponderance of guns, tanks and troops, and the Germans have prepared defensive positions, a knowledge of the country, and are also specialists in street and close country fighting. The tense situation at present amounts almost to a stalemate. Something must happen soon. The enemy's transport problem is becoming more acute. He has to move his forces in driblets along narrow lanes at night to avoid their destruction from air attacks. IMPROVED WEATHER Summer has come to Normandy says the British United Press correspondent in Normandy. Gunners naked to the waist sweat at their guns under a blazing sun. A correspondent quoting a man who left Caen recently says the city is without light, water or heat, with gutted and looted shops, and piles of wreckage under which hundreds of corpses are rotting. There are 3000 civilian dead accounted for of a population of 80.000. Fifteen thousand are still living amid the ruins. He added that the population was still proAllied. though there are the usual exceptions.

The German news agency commentator, Captain Sertorius, says the British are making an all-out effort to capture Caen, but this town is no longer of strategic importance.