Word: cherbourg
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...back, showed most spectacularly on the transatlantic shore. British merchantmen and U.S. landing craft performed it in cross-Channel transportation. British ingenuity performed it by entirely new (and still secret) means of making open beaches almost as useful as ports. U.S. Navy specialists performed it in building up Cherbourg's shattered port to a capacity far greater than in peacetime. Army engineers performed it on the beaches and close behind the battle line. Loaders, repair men, railroad men, truck drivers, oil men, flyers stretched that far-flung performance farther & farther as the front advanced...
...Cherbourg, where the Germans, in their thorough way, had wrecked the breakwater, the 25,000 engineering troops had sunk a string of concrete barges. One of the worst storms the French coast has seen in years washed them ashore. With swift improvisation dozens of emptied Liberty ships were anchored bow to stern, and their sea cocks opened; the scuttled ships formed a new sea wall. A few days after the first ship docked at Cherbourg, the first train pulled out with supplies. By last week, 20 trains were leaving daily. Quays, warehouses and cranes had been installed, oil storage tanks...
...rolling stock from ferries. Giant cranes lifted locomotives from other ships. Ducks loaded with supplies slid through the water and rolled up to the concrete storage squares. At night powerful searchlights lit the harbor for all-night shifts. (Capture of Le Havre ought soon to ease the strain on Cherbourg and the beaches; now ships will be able to proceed up the Seine itself to Rouen, 75 miles from Paris...
...even with Cherbourg and the beaches, pipelines and planes, Lieut. General Omar N. Bradley 's armies would never have reached the Reich as swiftly had it not been for the Red Ball Express Highway. The R.B.E. is a one-way road which begins at Cherbourg and swings in a great loop, roughly south and east, to a point several hundred miles east of Paris...
...glory. They and the British had the pick of Rommel's armor, guns and troops in front of them. Even after the capture of Caen, they were held down and unmercifully pounded by German 88s. Grimly they hung on, giving U.S. Lieut. General Omar Bradley time to take Cherbourg. Grimly, after the surprise U.S. breakthrough at Saint-Lô, they pushed down and held the north arm of the Falaise-Argentan pincer. Only when that was done could the Canadians themselves wheel and cross the Seine...