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Show Invasion of France A Triumphal March For Allied Armies After many anxious months of preparations, the invasion of continental conti-nental Europe from the west became be-came practicable. General Eisenhower Eisen-hower gave the momentous order, and on June 6, 1944, known in military mili-tary terms as "D-day," the great landing craft began moving across the channel from England to a stretch of beach on the coast of northern France, in the department of Normandy. More than 4,000 ships and many thousand smaller craft plied back and forth in the choppy waters, under the protection of 11,000 airplanes and units of the British and American navies. Men and materiel ma-teriel poured ashore in unending streams. This landing, without port facilities, was the greatest in history, his-tory, and was possible only because of the newly developed American landing craft Meanwhile, paratroopers had been dropped over Caen, a strategic town eight miles inland. Fighting broke out at many points along a 100-mile front, as comparatively weak German Ger-man forces tried to halt the onrush-ing onrush-ing horde of American and British troops that kept arriving, hour after hour. Bombing planes pounded many points of Germany in the first hours of the invasion, not only near the beachheads, but far inland. There was consternation reported in Germany among the tired civilians, and the Nazi high command seems to have been successfully deceived as to the time and place of the landings. Tanks Start Smash. The next day, June 7, Allied tanks began to drive into the country. coun-try. Gains of five to seven miles were made, as the beachhead was deepened. Chief areas of conflict were around Caen and Bayeux, where more obstinate German re-istance re-istance developed as reinforcements reinforce-ments came up. Nazi counterattacks, counter-attacks, however, were successfully repelled, and gains continued. On June 9, American armored columns col-umns reached a point 17 miles from Cherbourg, the large port city of the Normandy peninsula, and one of the major objectives of the campaign. cam-paign. On June 26, Cherbourg was entered by victorious Allied troops. The "big push" was accomplished with comparatively light losses. It was officially announced that up to June 21, 3,082 Americans had been killed, 13,121 wounded, and 7,059 reported re-ported missing. The British and Canadian Ca-nadian combined force, numbering about half the American contingent, lost 1,812 killed, 8,599 wounded, and 3,131 missing. German total casualties casu-alties were estimated at 70,000, which included large numbers of prisoners. Fan Out In Wide Sweeps. The first week of August saw American armored columns supported support-ed by airplanes, and closely followed a by infantry, fanning out In wide sweeps sometimes advancing 30 miles a day. All during August sensational sen-sational speed was maintained, as German resistance broke and crumbled. crum-bled. The enormous Allied army in northern France seemed to advance almost at will, limited only by the necessity of maintaining supply lines. Lieutenant General Pa tton's armored spearhead, in particular, thrust across central France at a pace that far exceeded the Nazi blitzkrieg of 1940. By September 1, the fifth anniversary anniver-sary of the war, astonishing victories victo-ries had been achieved. Paris had been liberated; an American thrust had retched the fortress of Verdun, last obstacle before the German border; bor-der; another column was pushing north toward Belgium to isolate the rocket-bomb-launching coast. Still other drives were advancing southeast south-east toward Lyon to make a junction with the second invasion force moving mov-ing up from southern France; smaller small-er segments smashed southwest and northwest in what were gigantic mopping-up activities, clearing such remaining points of resistance as Le Havre, Dieppe, Orleans and Tours. In the three months between D-day, D-day, June 6, and September 6, the American and British armies had invaded a heavily fortified coast, conquered almost all of France except ex-cept for Isolated areas, and stood ranged In force along the western order of Germany, consolidating tor the last act |