Second Battle of the Carolinas

At the close of the last and most successful of the new U.S. Army's 1941 field maneuvers (295,000 troops battling in the Carolinas), Lieut. General Hugh Drum made a professional observation as sobering as a policeman's club.

"The men have to shoot real ammunition to know that they can score hits. It is my own opinion that if they had ammunition and had the guns they are supposed to have they could go to war in three or four months."

The Commanding General of the First Army had said a mouthful. The Army in the continental U.S. (but happily not troops in outlying posts) has not yet enough ammunition for target practice. Until the Army has the ammunition --and the target practice--no general can rightly say that the Army's 1,588,500 are ready to fight.

But even though they have not yet had the chance to show their marksmanship, the men of the new Army showed again last week that they have learned a lot of lessons that come harder, take longer to master. They have learned how to live in the field, to march miles aNd go into action without sleep, to work as units in a fighting machine with the intelligence and cheerfulness that mean power and high morale.

For the Second Battle of the Carolinas, Hugh Drum and his 196,000 Blue troops--eight infantry divisions plus spare parts --headed south from above the Carolinas' border. Below them, defending Camden, S.C., lay the Red Army of Major General Oscar Griswold, in numbers half as strong as the Blues, equal in fire power, superior in mobility, because it had two Armored divisions and the new half-armored Fourth Division.

Hugh Drum showed himself as foxy as ever. On the first day of the battle, he sent a young lieutenant and a motorized cavalry patrol on a 200-mile run around his left end to see what they could find. One of his motorcycle men turned up next day with just what the boss wanted--the Reds' combat plans. The patrol had raided a motor park far in the rear, swiped a batch of marked maps and combat orders and made off with them.

Consequently, when Oscar Griswold went after his slippery adversary, there was little up his sleeve but determination. The Rolling Fourth plowed into Drum's center, inflicting heavy "casualties" and slowing up the Blue advance. The First Armored swung to the west and plowed into Drum's flank. The Second went around the other end. In the center and on the flanks a Donnybrook Fair began.

In the four-day battle the mechanized Reds bit out wide scallops. But when it came to holding the ground they had won, the Armored Force fell short for lack of supporting infantry. They fell back, charged and fell back again. Tankers growled over the unfairness of umpires' rules that made a tank a casualty if it came into the sights of a 37 or a 75.

"Why, goddamit," griped a tanker, "we go so fast that in real war we'd squash those gunners before they could fire."

Wryly echoed Major General Jacob L. Devers, boss of the Armored Force: "We were licked by a set of umpires' rules."

The rules were the rules of sham war, but they were as close to reality as Lieut. General Lesley McNair, director of the maneuvers, could make them. And under those rules the Blues once more demonstrated the outstanding lesson of the Carolina maneuvers: an adroitly managed defense, with the accent on fire power and mobility, can stop tanks. During the second week of the Battle of the Carolinas, the Armored Corps "lost" 350 tanks. But they had learned a lesson, too. In the first week they had lost 980.

At maneuvers' end, General McNair had the press in, stuck to an old and sound principle: never to be satisfied with anything.

"These units have made splendid progress," said he. "But you can't perfect units in one year's training and send them up against the Germans. We can do it--but we haven't done it yet. Let's face it honestly."

Back to their camps rolled the First Army, for four months' brushing up on fundamentals and--they hoped--plenty of target practice.

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