Morrison Reports

British First Army lurched a few miles ahead. On Christmas Eve regiments of Guards fought a violent hand-to-hand battle for a "vital" hill, were thrown back twice by German counterattacks but finally, on Christmas morning, they charged up the hill again, captured the position and dug in.

Farther to the south, where the footing was firmer, French troops and mechanized U.S. units advanced toward the exotic holy Moslem city of Kairouan. Seizure of Kairouan would threaten Axis communication lines along the whole Tunisian east coast. In the an, the Allies "accounted for two to one in individual combat," Mr. Stimson said. At week's end, able to get in the air again after a stretch of bad weather which had grounded them, Flying Fortresses escorted by P-38s and P-405 bombed Bizerte and Sfax. The P-40s were Warhawks, newest version of the Hawks (others: Tomahawks, Kittyhawks). making their debut on the Tunisian front.

But "the purposes we are aiming at" were the capture of Tunis and Bizerte. The Axis ring of steel was tough and resilient.

The Chicago Sun's solemn little Chester Morrison last week had recovered sufficiently from a minor accident in Libya to broadcast this philosophic item over CBS:

"If a reporter stuck in Cairo wants to get to the front, he has to fly. The British didn't have a plane available when I wanted to go, but the Americans had dozens--so I was told by the handsome American major who runs that part of the show. Mind you, I don't think this was deliberate, but when I missed the plane, through no fault of his, and came trailing back to the hotel in the evening, dirty and disappointed, it was probably only coincidence that the major was sitting in the lobby having a pink tea with my girl.

"So I got away the next morning. And for three days I waited at Gambut ... for another plane to Agedabia, and when that plane took off it was loaded with 30-gallon drums of gasoline lashed to the sides of the cabin with ropes. I was the only passenger.

"And when the dashing, young American pilot came into Agedabia, he landed downwind and bounced across the rough field like a kangaroo and poked the plane's nose into the mud. . . . The lashings on the gasoline drums broke, and strong men groaned as they lifted the drums off me. I groaned, too. And in the week I spent with broken ribs in a hospital tent at Agedabia, I missed the day we moved into El Agheila. . . . But, lying in that tent, surrounded by men who had been blown up by mines, I discovered that no matter how badly a man's body may be hurt his spirit can remain undamaged. You get a new viewpoint of the war when you lie on your back and look at it. And my girl didn't like the major anyway."

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