MISSION TO SOUSSE

The strategy behind the Allies' coordinated air assaults on Tunisia is explained on p. 25. TIME'S Correspondent Jack Belden, reporting this strategy from Cairo last week, also described one of the raids--"not exciting, not heroic, but the kind of dull, monotonous, hard, nerve-straining work American bomber pilots have been doing for five months now in the Mid-East." His dispatch follows:

The squadron had been encamped for several days in the cold, inhospitable desert, irritable and impatient as only bomber pilots can be when bad weather holds them from their target. Then the message came from headquarters: "Bomb the quays and shipping at Sousse."

"If the moon is clear that harbor ought to be framed like a picture," our flight leader, Major S. R. Patterson, said to me as we took off in his Pink Lady.

"We'll be framed too," I said, remembering Jap bombers I'd seen the A.V.G.s shoot down in the moonlight over China.

"Yeah, that's right," said Patterson, "but I hope we get in and away before those night fighters can rise and meet us."

Singing Guns. I settled down for the long, monotonous run to the target. Ten hours of boredom; five minutes of excitement--that's the life of bomber crews.

I looked at them to see what they were doing. Lieut. F. A. Miller, the bombardier, was reading a paperbound book called Singing Guns.

Technical Sergeant Anton Budgen leaned down from the gun turret above me, and then he nicked a switch, turning on the interphone system. "Andy, there's two pursuits on our left and above us," said Lyle Winchell, our rear gunner. "Okay, Okay," said Pilot V. M. Anders. "Keep your eye on 'em."

The mission no longer seemed stale. Pursuits were in sight early--too early. But nothing happened. Bombardier Miller never raised his head from Singing Guns.

"We are going to climb now," said Anders. Turbo-superchargers went on, the motors hammered, and the needle on the altimeter dial went around like a second hand on a watch. The crew put on life vests and then fleece-lined flying suits over them, and I watched, knowing I would be cold without one. We went above the clouds, but they were scattered, and we could see the sea, grey and steely blue and smooth below us.

"That Goddam Target." It was dusk. The sea barely rippled, faded from sight and we were alone in the battleship greyness. It was censorable degrees below zero and we had reached censorable heights.

"Johnny, you see that orange light? I think it's a night fighter," an unknown voice said over the interphone. "Yes, I see it," said a voice in reply. "Okay, Okay, everyone keep your eye on it."

Soon the orange light rushed down on us out of the blackness, and, racing between us and a pale yellow star, disappeared. The night was moonless, and nowhere was there land.

Carried along swiftly at that cold height, through that un friendly bleakness, listening to the pilot asking the navigator where we were, circling, looking for something and seeing nothing, the vaporous exhaust of a night fighter flashing by and we losing altitude, losing altitude, everything black everywhere--it seemed as if we never would find the target.

Suddenly the bombardier yelled: "Hey, Andy, I think I see it. Look over there to the left." The plane swung in toward a vague, grey mass that I supposed was land. Again came the bombardier's voice: "No, that's not it, Andy, that's not it." Once more we started looking.

The interphone chattered: "Where are we? Let's find that goddam target and get the hell home."

"There's a night fighter on our tail," said a gunner.

"We ought to be 15 miles from the target," said the navigator.

"Let's head in again toward land," said the bombardier.

"I can't see a goddam thing," said the pilot.

Suddenly below us a vague outline appeared. Two dim arms that were the quays of Sousse stuck out into the black water and there was a black compact mass--the houses of the town. Then there was a brown, square spot of earth that must have been the airfield.

Sousse was dark. The enemy was giving nothing away. "All right, Andy," said the bombardier, "I want to get a good run on this ... ten degrees right . . . five degrees left. . . . Okay, she's looking good."

The bombardier guided us toward a target which only he and the navigator in the nose could see. "Okay, level off," he said.

Into the Blue Blackness. The plane was shuddering and shaking. The bomb-bay doors were opening. The wind blew out of the purple night and flew at our hands eagerly. It pounced on the windows, frosting them up, and turned the plane into an icehouse. I looked down through the bomb-bay doors into nothingness. The bombs glinted icy grey as they fell into the blue, bleak blackness.

Suddenly a voice was saying: "There's a night fighter." The bomb-bay doors went shut with a clatter. The plane picked up speed, swerving sharply. Out of the black another orange ball was coming toward us. As in a dream I watched the orange ball skidding off to our left and then falling behind as we swerved away from land. Once more the night was all around us.

"There's a fighter underneath us," said the lower gunner.

Then the navigator spoke: "Hey, Andy, go around this island, they're shooting at us," and again we swerved. We went on, scrutinizing the sky for the vaporous plumes of night fighters.

We came down to the warmer substratosphere and got on our homeward course. I took off my oxygen mask and curled up to sleep, and the bombardier came out of the nose of the plane and said: "That was a son of a bitch of a monotonous mission."

"Yeah," I answered.

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