At Both Ends

"Guts at both ends of the bayonet" is their school motto. A pregraduation demonstration last week at Camp Forrest, Tenn. showed how they lived up to it.

The mud-splashed, helmeted students were picked officers and men from Lieut. General Ben ("Yoo-Hoo") Lear's Second Army. For two weeks they had puffed, sweated and bled through a nerve-racking training course as much like real battle as live bullets and dynamite could make it. They had absorbed a good half of the shocks that unsettle even well-trained soldiers in their first few days of actual battle: racket and din of their own weapons, the heart-stopping confusion of a stream-crossing under fire, the never-ending struggle with barbed wire and booby traps.

No theorist but a practical fighter, Ben Lear picked Lieut. Colonel William Crowell Saffarrans, chunky onetime Georgetown University football star, longtime Army football coach, to operate the school. His instructions: make it practical, up-to-date as Guadalcanal.

Under Fire. Together Saffarrans and Lear worked out a curriculum that broke with tradition. Its text was the first-hand experience of men who had met the Japs. And the curriculum was crammed with such subjects as how to finish a tough, bayoneting, backbreaking, eye-gouging fight; how to make the maximum use of natural cover in the battlefield; how to advance using cover in the face of gunfire. In Ben Lear's school the gunfire is real. The soldier who forgets his lesson can well be hurt or killed.

The trainees last week showed their battle learning while newsmen crouched in a watery trench as machine-gun bullets cracked two feet above their heads. Two platoons crawled out of another trench 100 yards away, started slithering across the muddy ground under that gunfire. They had to keep arms and legs low--or else.

Small dynamite land mines, exploded by instructors, showered the crawling soldiers with geysers of mud. Two-thirds of the way across they ran into a barbed-wire obstruction, had to roll over the first strand, inch along on their backsides under the rest. With red-hot bullets above them, they wasted no time.

As the second platoon moved forward a land mine accidentally exploded in the face of a young lieutenant. He stopped a second, then crawled on with blood dripping from his chin. (Wounds: painful but minor.) Said he to another file: "Please look out for my rifle, will you?"

River Crossing. Two other trainees had been knocked about that morning as the same company made a river-crossing on a toggle-rope bridge while bombs exploded near by in the water. One bomb blew an officer into the water, knocked him senseless for a few moments. It also caught another in the water, sent him to a hospital.

The crossing was made after two trainees had swum the icy, 100-ft. stream carrying a pioneer towline. After landing they pulled across the rope bridge, tied it to trees. Then others of their company crept across while machine guns, bombs and mines simulated battle conditions.

Six other trainees demonstrated how to avoid and neutralize booby traps left by the enemy. Carefully they carried out a mop-up raid on "Fuehrerville," which the engineers had contrived from old lumber. Two of them imitated weary soldiers trying to find a place to rest, did all of the incorrect things. One picked up a pair of gloves. An explosion followed. The same happened when they set foot on the doorstep, opened a door, shut a window.

Grinned a soldier-actor when he picked up a whiskey bottle: "Hmmm--there musta been officers here." Other soldiers went through the village demonstrating correct procedure, leaving suspicious buildings to specially trained troops.

Blitz Course. Toughest exercise of all was the 500-yd. blitz course which each trainee must travel alone. First he must vault a fence, then scale an 8-ft. wall, climb another fence, swing across a creek on a hanging rope. As he lands, a dummy Jap pops from behind a tree and must be bayoneted. As the trainee crosses a log another Jap drops near him and must be shot from the hip. Beyond various other obstacles the trainee reaches a climax at a 13-ft. wall atop a plateau, which he must scale with rifle ready. As he descends the other side a Jap dummy swings out at his right and must be bayoneted. A shrieking jungle fighter closes in from the rear and must be grappled with. A machine gun opens fire. The trainee must fall, heave a hand grenade at the gun, seize the gun and turn it on two other fleeing men. Most trainees finish the course beat out, but on their feet.

Peacock-proud of another break from the textbooks, bluff Ben Lear hopes to give Ranger training to every young officer and noncom, send him to his new division with plenty to teach. Like every other ranker charged with training, he has watched combat reports, talked to returning soldiers. Chief lesson from these sources is that even crack outfits are jittery, indecisive and prone to suffer high casualties in their first meetings with the enemy. By making home-training courses tougher, noisier and more dangerous, the Army is confident lives can be saved, battles won more quickly.

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