Before dawn the big guns around Dover suddenly thundered. Their loads of steel and high explosive arched toward the German-held coast of France, some 20 miles away. German heavy guns growled back in a monstrous duel. It was like a rumbling overture to invasion.
But that was not the day. The firing had started when British watchers discovered a convoy of German ships trying to ghost northward through the English Channel, hugging the coast at Cape Gris-Nez. Two hundred shells were fired. One large enemy merchant vessel was sunk, another was hard hit. From this German willingness to risk ships in...