C. Obsr.

Not every weatherbeaten Air Forces officer who is entitled to write "C. Obsr." (Combat Observer) after his name is actually a good observer. In fact, few of them are, because most of them are primarily combat pilots. Few men can keep up in both fields, and few want to. Last week the Air Forces was getting a new brand of observer.

At San Antonio's Brooks Field, enrollment in the nonpilot observers' school was at its highest: 122. By December new classes will number 100 each and the Air Forces will breathe more easily. For when the expansion began, the regular flying service had only a handful of nonpilot observers. The National Guard squadrons had more, but not nearly enough.

Bent on turning out 100 pairs of trained eyes for the Army every five weeks until further notice, tall Colonel Stanton T. Smith, boss of the observers' school, has tried hard to impress his students with the importance of their jobs, to inject a little glamor into the skull-dragging drudgery of observers' work.

Crowded in the back seat in a nest of cameras, radio and machine guns, cramped by bulky flying clothes, thumb-fingered by heavy gloves, roosting over his camera as he takes pictures of enemy territory, the observer is jolted by rough air, well knows what it is to be airsick, what it is to be bounced about by peppery pilots (who seldom worry about the guy behind). He has the daylights scared out of him half the time.

Yet he must be imperturbable, intelligent, military-wise. On the job--reconnoitering ahead of advancing ground troops or slipping deep into enemy territory looking for bombing targets--a lieutenant-observer can be more important to success in battle than a general. When he finds hostile troops he must be able to decide how many and how strong they are, must get his information back fast and accurately. He must be deadly precise in the business of looking at a point on the ground, reporting it back in terms of map coordinates for ground commanders. When his plane is jumped by enemy fighters, he must be handy with a machine gun if he and his pilot are to get back with their reports. And airsick or well, he must crook a crisp and unhurried finger on the key of his code radio.

To find such paragons, Air Forces snapped young officers from Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery (thus short-cutting basic military training), took only a few newcomers to military life. One of them: Captain Elliott Roosevelt, Specialist Reserve, who will report for combat training next month after finishing a course as a navigator.

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