Even under these conditions, the Allied troops, the experts pointed out, not only withstood the shock of repeated attacks, but even carried out numerous counter-attacks. The Germans yesterday concentrated all the fury of their war machine on the defenders of Dunkirk and launched attacks from all quarters on tne Allied positions, which are flanked by flooded areas.
Enemy assaults were pursued throughout the day and at one time the Germans pierced French lines at a single point and penetrated some distance into Allied territory. By the end of the day, French counterattacks had forced the enemy back to their original positions, however.
The fighting that was going on around Dunkirk this evening, the military observers concluded, will be continued tomorrow even as the Allies are completing final evacuation operations.—Havas.
Germans Three Miles from _Dunkirx At a South-East English Port, June 4.
British soldiers arriving here from Flanders late yesterday said that German forces were only three miles from Dunkirk at noon yesterday.
French and British troops along the sandy beach were making a gallant last stand against the Germans as Allied naval forces continued their efforts to rescue every man possible, it was said. "The French are attacking the Germans magnificently," one British arrival from Dunkirk said.
Reports brought by returning Allied troops indicated that the Germans had succeeded in breaking through the ring of 39 French forts twelve miles outside Dunkirk and had also penetrated areas flooded by the Allies by opening canal locks.
German artillery yesterday laid down a virtual blanket of shrapnel over the Dunkirk beach where Allied troops sought shelter by digging themselves holes and trenches in the sand. Hundreds of German planes bombed and machine-gunned the Allies from the air, Allied arrivals from Dunkirk indicated there would be no surrender and that the battle at Dunkirk would continue until the last Allied soldier on the beach had been killed or rescued.
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