Evening star., 1944-08-19
France
Continued From First Page.)

progress" A Wilhelmstrasse spokes.
man was quoted as saying no detail.
could be given until Monday.
The German withdrawal alon,
the Normandy coast, brought Ca
bourg and Houlgate, S miles beyonc
the Orne River mouth, under Allied
Shellfire. Canadians threw thre,
bridgeheads across La Vie River a
points IA miles east and 20 southeaS
Of Caen.
The Allies beating along the coas
are only 13 miles from Deauville a
the southern end of the SEINE
estuary, 8 miles south of LIE Havre
Farther south, Canadian anc
Polish troops slugged forward in tn,
1run and Chambois areas southeast
of Falaise, building up the barrier
OF the northern neck of the trap al
but closed on German remnants
Northeast of Falaise, front dis
patches said, Allied armor was only
6 miles from Lisieux.
British I'd Army troops captured
elements of 18 German divisions
yesterday. Germans still caught in
the Normandy trap were declared
to be struggling chaotically to escape
eastward.
Route to Paris Almost Cut.
Enemy forces that freed them
selves from the pocket struggled
northward toward the Seine after
Gen. Patton's men virtually had
denied them any chance of falling
back toward Paris.
In the first advance along the
Normandy coast since D-day, the
Canadian 1st Army reached the
edge of Cabourg and Dives -Mer
in an area some 13 miles northeast
OF Caen and II miles south of lie
Havre, on the Seine.
The supreme command said there
would be a temporary blackout of
news In some sectors, since the Ger
mans were in such a state of con-
fusion they did not know where the
Allied troops were and any an
'nouncement of Allied positions
which they could hear by radio
would help them.
While the American Sd Army held
the Germans compressed within a
7O-mile wall of armor stretching
from point near Argentan to
DreuX, Americans, British, Cana
dams, Poles, Dutch and Belgians
drove the Germans in confused
mass toward the northeast.
Enemy Power Nearly Spent.
This struggling German force
included not only the broken en-
emy 7th Army, but also mauled ele-
ments believed to comprise half of
Won Kluge's crack 18th Army, re-
vealed yesterday to have been rushed
from Northern France, where 1t
had been assigned to defend the
rocket bomb coast. A British staff
officer said the offensive power of
these troops was spent, and he
added that in winning the battle of
Normandy the Allies will have won
the battle of France.
In France, Gen. Dwight D. Eisen-
hover conferred with his highest
offlcers and was believed to have
reached far-reaching decisions as a
result OF the new turn of the battle.
During an Allied air bombardment
north of Trun yesterday one great
mass of vehicles was turned into a
flaming, bloody mass of tanks,
trunks and men. Raj veterans of
the North African campaign de-
scribed the attacks on the fleeing
Germans as the greatest show since
Ell Alamein," which spelled Marshal
Erwin Rommels doom in Africa.
The original Normandy pocket at
FalaiSe now was about II miles deep
and II miles wide and diminishing
rapidly. Its mouth was not more
than l or miles wide and was an
almost impossible escape avenue, al
though the Germans still were fight
ing strongly around Argentan.
American and Canadian penetra-
tions in the pocket We're so rapid
that the air forces only were con-
Quoting limited operations in that
area in fear of bombing their own
troops.
The Seine was under an aerial
siege and Allied air forces reported
destroying hundreds of barges and
two river steamers trying to cross
the river yesterday. This repre-
sents approximately one-fifth of the
number of craft the Germans were
believed to have gathered in prepa-
rations for their retreat.
The German air force showed a
pronounced reaction to flights by
aircraft toward the German border,
in Central France and east of Paris,
where most of the combats took
place. Allied fighters and bombers
ranged all the way from the Belgian
border to Argentan, hitting every
thing on the roads or rails.
While the Paris situation re-
mained obscure, it was obvious that
the main military aim of Gen.
Patton's 3rd Army had been achiev-
ed by hemming In the Germans be.