The Otago Daily Times Friday, June 16, 1944. THE CRUCIAL STAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25563, 16 June 1944, Page 2

The Otago Daily Times Friday, June 16, 1944. THE CRUCIAL STAGE

Reports of the fighting along the whole length of the Normandy invasion front continue to be distinctly encouraging, although it is apparent that the struggle for position is now entering the critical stage in which engagement of the enemy’s strategic reserves, in the greatest strength that he is able to deploy, must be anticipated. If it is true that Marshal von Rundstedt has been unwilling to risk weakening his coastal defence lines in other potential invasion areas in order to reinforce his second-line divisions behind the Normandy positions, the conclusion is justified that the Allies have already secured an enormous advantage. The consolidation and extension of the beach-head positions will have facilitated the Allies’ own task of reinforcement, and favourable weather in the past few days has, we are told, greatly contributed to the expeditious landing of men and supplies. The German Command, on the other hand, has had to bring up reserves to meet the many-pronged Allied thrusts over a badly-disorganised system of communications, and his transport columns and troop concentrations have been subject not only to constant and devastating air attack, but also to heavy shelling by the battleships lying off the coast. “If we can resist the counter-attack,” said a spokesman at General Eisenhower’s headquarters at the beginning of the week, “ it may really be the turning-point of the war.” There is every indication that the enemy’s counter is now being met. He is fighting with savage vigour to regain the initiative in the vital CaenTilly area, where Allied penetratiofi at the outset reached its maximum depth, but all his efforts to loosen the British and Canadian hold of the canal and rail systems which give Caen its strategic importance in this phase of the assault have so far been unavailing. The Allied front line, irregular as it is, seems at the moment to run westwards from a point east of Caen through Tilly and Caumont to to Saint Lo, thence across the Vire to Carentan, in the neck of the Cherbourg peninsula, thence on a northerly slant to Montebourg, a key town in the battle for Cherbourg itself. Possession of Montebourg has been bitterly contested, with the enemy making the extreme effort for its retention which its strategic value demands. Generally, however, the news is of Allied solidarity along the entire front, and General Montgomery has so far been able not merely to anticipate the heaviest blows of his opposite number, but also to meet Rommel’s utmost pressure wherever he has striven to force his armour through the Allied line. It is significant that the German commentators are not attempting to obscure the crisis with which their armies in the west are confronted. The German people are being told, with a candour born of dire necessity, what is at stake as the Allies thrust resolutely from the Normandy coast into France—a France seething with unrest and hourly threatening such an upsurge of revolt as might bring about the rapid disintegration of German authority.