BROAD WEDGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25565, 19 June 1944, Page 5

BROAD WEDGE

ACROSS PENINSULA SIX MILES FROM COAST PATROLS REACH SEA (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Rec. 1 a.m.) LONDON, June 18. The Americans, driving a broad wedge across the Cherbourg Peninsula, are within six . miles of the west coast and well beyond the town of St. Sauveur le Vicomte, which the Germans fought hard to hold. Advance elements have reached the west coast and are now fighting on the sand dunes bordering the sea. It is pointed out at Allied headquarters that these advanced forces are fast-moving reconnaissance units, and it would be a mistake to assume that their cutting of the peninsula can be completely effective. Eommel’s secondary communications with Cherbourg, however, are seriously threatened, and the minor roads up the west coast to Cherbourg are now under artillery fire. German reaction is likely to be violent and sudden. Reuter’s correspondent with the American forces says that the Germans, according to reconnaissance reports, have begun to evacuate the area south of St. Sauveur, because of the closing of the peninsula’s bottleneck. The Americans have, continued to slash their way down the road from St. Sauveur towards Surville, which is situated at ■ the head of a coastal inlet, nine miles south-east of St. Sauveur on the main road to Carteret. Military circles, according to the Washington correspondent of the New York Times, consider the investment of Cherbourg imminent, adding that the Nazis, apparently reconciled to it, will attempt to resist only long enough to force a real delay of the Allied invasion programme. It is suggested that Cherbourg, where considerable German forces' are hemmed in, might become a minor Stalingrad but not a Dunkirk, because the Nazis do not control the sea for a withdrawal via water. The Germans are still holding grimly to the heap of rubble that was Montebourg. In the Tilly-Carentan sector local clashes have occurred.