INFANTRYMEN SENSE VICTORY IN RUNAWAY ADVANCE
Page 9

"First we cut behind them, then reversed our field and swung around them, Now we're liable to break out in any direction."

As Purdue talked I sew one of the most thought-provoking sights in my tour toward the front - a column of 200 prisoners trudging morosely, toward their beloved Rhine, which already is considered as rear area.

l have seen many a group of Nazi prisoners, but this was undoubtedly the most ragged and shabby collection of them all. They were dust covered from marching and some appeared to be less than 40 years old, "They shuffled along without looking up at their captors. Despair and defeat were written all over them.

It was the end of perfect day -  for the Americans.

Most soldiers hate "K" rations after eating them month on end.

But Pvt. Joseph Goebel of Cincinnati, O., will never complain again.

Last October, fighting in the Siegfried Line, he was hit in the chest by a shell fragment. A surgeon probing for the fragment found pieces of  cardboard, cheese and tin. A box of "K" rations in Goebel's pocket had broken its force and saved his life. Now Goebel's is back with his unit in the 30th Division.

The men that furnished the communications, supplies, kept the weapons in prime condition, and cared for the wounded when they fell came in for their share of recognition when 37 of the 30th Division's headquarters and special units were awarded the Meritorious Service Plaque recently.

Although all these mere didn't have to crawl out of their foxholes and go forward in the assault during the rough days of Normandy, Northern France, the Ardennes, the Rhineland, and Central Germany, they were more often than not exposed to artillery, mortars, air attacks and infiltrating enemy in the function of their duties that kept the infantry-men men fighting.

It was not unusual for the men of the headquarters companies of the regiments and battalions to un-sling their rifles and get out in the hedgerows and fight in the close-in combat in Normandy.  Medics and communications men had especially rough going in the frozen Ardennes theater. To  maintenance men the keeping of the equipment running in such weather was a nightmare.

Combat MPs of the 30th had the admiration of the frontline doughboys for their staunchness in withstanding countless artillery barrages to direct military traffic during the many river crossings and other campaigns of the 30th.

Units receiving the plaque Were:

The war in Europe is coming apart before our eyes because the thing has become so immense that the men who created it have lost control of it.

It will be years before the world knows the whole story of what is happening. The Allied flood of arms and men have turned all of western Germany into a place of utter chaos.

At headquarters like this one, generals can tell you that their units are supposed used to be doing, but their knowledge of the actual situation often is 12 hours or more delayed.  In the field unit commanders have become islands of authority.  But everywhere orders are the same, "Keep going east-ward".

Mass of Spearheads Shown

Headquarters "situation maps" show Allied spearheads fingering across Germany as though fistfuls of loose rope ends had been tossed across them.  If you ask the officer in charge about any specific column, his reply inn every case is, "Well that's where they were the last time we heard from them, and God only knows where they have gone since then."

French Observer Amazed

Yet each of these fingers represents a line of tanks and trucks loaded with infantry rolling irresistibly into the heartland of the enemy.  Every new mark on the map means more hundreds of German homes overrun, more hundreds of German troops scooped up or cut off and more square miles lopped from the shrinking Third Reich.

A French correspondent standing in the doorway of a house in the village of Gasthaus in the forward area a few days ago had this to say,  "l was in Sedan in 1940 when the German army overwhelmed us and we were rolled underfoot by the greatest army the world had ever known, But this, this thing here today is greater than anyone in Europe ever conceived was possible. Your strength must be beyond measure."

But even in disaster the Germans have not quit.

Delaying Tactics Futile

Wherever the Germans are able to delay are a day or two there are two more places where we are advancing unchecked. Trying to contain the Allied advance is like trying to recover test tube quicksilver spilled on a cake of ice.

It is logical for the Nazis to try to hold us on the Wesel, and again on the Elbe River. But for every battle they are able to scrape together, we are now able to hurl entire fresh divisions of infantry against them.

Exactly that as happening at Teutoburger Forest where than 30th Division is overrunning the enemy's road blocks while the 2d Armored tankers are catching a few hours of badly needed rest. At the same time, supply trucks are streaming forward with gasoline, ammunition, and food for the next sprint.

Vast Oil Stores Found

There is evidence that the Germans' bankruptcy is mounting hourly The 9th Army counted 5,180 prisoners Monday, bringing its total since the Rhine crossing to 17,000.

Reports are jamming the headquarters files of of complete trains captured, hospitals overrun and vast oil stores found abandoned and intact.

Allied air forces already are flying from fields east of the Rhine and several Luftwaffe bases in good condition have been captured in forward areas.

Word reached here today that German soldiers have been ordered to carry special passes on their persons at all times naming the unit and locality where they are supposed to be on duty.

Death Penalty Decreed

The order specifies that anyone caught away from his unit without authority must join the nearest fighting outfit immediately or face the firing squad.

It is hard to believe the stories from forward units. They are a dime a dozen.

There was the American motorcycle messenger, for instance who was ambushed and taken prisoner far behind our lines. The German officer, commanding a company of 200 men who took him, asked him on the spot if it were true that an American armored division was in the area.

The messenger said it certainly was.  The officer said if the messenger could prove it he and his whole company would surrender.

200 Await Capture

The messenger was released and returned a half hour later with two tanks and 200 more Germans trudged into the prisoner cage,

Maj. Robert W. Crust of Brainard, staff officer of the 2 Armored Division's Combat Command "A" said the prisoners his outfit had taken included several men in Wehrmacht uniforms who had only one leg and were on crutches.

Others, he said, were one-eyed and one-armed and there were twelve 14-year-old boys from the Hitler Youth organization most of whom broke down in blubbering tears when they were captured.

He said he had heard reports that German women were taking up arms against us.

"It looks like they're going to keep fighting until they run out of people," he said.

The Ninth assault across the Rhine Sunday was fast proving to be a tremendous success. The hard-hitting Thirtieth infantry smashed through well ahead of schedule to points at least nine miles east the Rhine. High ranking officers call it "breakthrough" without qualification.

What the Germans had to stop the Ninth army from going on this rampage seemed meager after my trip across the Rhine Sunday.

DRIVE FOR BERLIN

There were all the old familiar breakthrough signs.  Everything and everyone was on the move - toward Berlin.  Command posts were making two and three moves in one day.  One division officer said "we're moving this afternoon but the funny thing is that the last we heard our troops hadn't entered the town we're supposed to move to,'

There was a natural amount of confusion among our own forces.

Regimental command posts were moving up so fast that no one seemed to be able to direct any one to them. Roads were filled with rubble and tree branches. Jeeps bounced and bumped all over the place.  Artillery units were pulling out of their positions too get far enough forward to shoot at enemy targets. There was the old spooky feeling along the roads with the uncertainty about everything that accompanies rapid thrusts.

NAZIS 0FF GUARD

At division headquarters there were indications that the powerful thrusts of the Thirtieth and Seventy-ninth divisions caught Germany  off guard.  Prisoners were being herded together in large numbers.  The Thirtieth reported at least 2,000 prisoners since the crossing - and they seemed to be out of it.

The scene on the Rhine was a testimony to American genius. Traffic moving smoothly with great amounts of equipment and men going across.  The fact that bridges go up so fast is one of the war's miracles.  Our mastery of air is so great that doughboys dozed on banks, goats grazed.

GI's actually were fishing from bridge pontoons and commanders usually wary about such things permitted Churchill to indulge in the thrill of crossing the Rhine.  Thought I'd see the prime minister at the river but somehow missed him. Just about a stone's throw from the east bank a GI sat by his artillery gun strumming  on a guitar.

Successes of the infantry are so great the stupendous job of the engineers who put in the bridges as likely to forgotten in everyone's enthusiasm, but it shouldn't.  One bridge was constructed and in operation nine hours after work starting.  Before the operation a Ninth army engineer estimated at least 36 hours would be required arid many estimates were even greater. But listen to what engineer Lt. William N. Doyle, Kansas City, N. J., had to say at the bridge Sunday.

BOYS WORKED HARD

"Boys worked harder putting in that bridge then they ever did before. I guess we were all so scared and wanted to get the job done and get out of there. The bridge is over 1,100 feet long. We had  assembled it beforehand but we put it in faster than we ever put one in in practice. We figured we could construct it in eighteen hours."

I thought it was supposed to take you at least 36 hours, I said.

"Yes, but that's what the higher ups said", he said.  "We knew we could do it faster."

During Saturday night a raft carrying a tank got loose and smashed the bridge in one section and engineers had to work feverishly to repair it.

ON ROAD TO BERLIN

A sign by the bridge said "Berlin via treadway bridge number forty," and another said "you are now crossing the Rhine river through courtesy of two hundred second engineers."

Men who'd worked on the bridge were dead tired as they squatted by the river eating hamburger steak and beans.

One man knelt on one knee with head bowed in his  hands.

"Pretty tired are you ?" I asked.

"Yes, but what I was doing then was just thanking God for getting me through it.  It's Sunday and I thought it would be a good idea."

"We worked for two days on the stuff to get ready," he said.  "What with the sheets and mattress covers and some long, white underwear, we are just about able to outfit this battalion

This was the Second Battalion of the 120th Regiment.  The captain was Capt. Philip Chandler, of Milledgeville, Ga., and there was a medic standing there, and he was talking about the cold, and said his biggest trouble was keeping the men's feet warm.

FAYETTEVILLE COLONEL

The medic was Lt. Forest Newman, of Leaksville, N. C.  He said that the slippers had been designed by his regimental commander, Col. Branner Purdue, of Fayetteville, Ark., and he told a GI to get a pair.

The slippers were made of three thicknesses of khaki blankets material from an Army salvage dump.  They were thick and warm but they wee the kind of thing that a guy might design while using a couple of sheets of newspaper for a pattern, and the lieutenant said that the regiment had had some of the civilians do the sewing.

"In this weather," the medic said, "we get a lot of walking wounded. When a guy is hit, the tendency is for him to lie there arid wait for us to come and get him, but not in this weather.  He walks if he can."

AMBULANCE SLEDS

Somebody said that walking 100 yards in this snow was the same as walking 250 years over bare ground. The lieutenant started talking about the sleds they are using to evacuate the wounded because they could not carry litters through the snow, and he said that some of the guys in the battalion had made these, too.

There are three of the sleds outside the farmhouse by the red on the snow. They were crude things of raw wood, like short ladders with toboggan bottoms of sheet metal and with a way of hooking the litters on, and the lieutenant said that Capt. Thomas Hooper, of Boston, had designed them because he had some winter training in Michigan the winter before.

"It's tough as hell, even with these sleds," the lieutenant said, "but it's better than trying to carry men out by litter.