Those Damn Pillboxes

Out of an obscured campaign came a clear description of Wehrmacht defenses, along the Monte Samucre sector of the Fifth Army front. Wrote the New York Herald Tribune's Homer Bigart:

First Class. "The pillboxes were 70 yards apart and built into rock and were amazingly well camouflaged. They were of two sizes. The four-by-fours contained machine-gun nests, the ten-by-tens hid each a mortar. The roofs were of railroad ties and rails buried under a two-foot layer of broken stone. The approaches were sown with the German anti-personnel mines.

"These pillboxes seemed immune to American artillery. . . . Some must have suffered direct hits but apparently the impact of the bursts did nothing but chip off hunks of stone. Then the Americans tried shells with delayed fuses designed to penetrate before exploding. Infantrymen armed with bazookas fired rockets at the pillboxes. But the rocket missiles bounced off ineffectively."

Second Class. Inside such fortifications small units held up whole regiments for days. Not only could the enemy cut down on manpower but on first-class manpower. German prisoners taken in the Monte Samucre sector were not top material for Panzer Grenadiers. They did not have to be. Cracked a U.S. officer: "All they had to do was sit in those damn pillboxes and pull a trigger."

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