To answer some of the questions subscribers all over the world have been asking about how TIME gathers, verifies, writes and distributes its news.

Perhaps you would like to know how it has been going since D day with some of the TIME & LIFE men who are covering the fighting in Normandy for you.

Take Chief Military Correspondent Charles Wertenbaker and Photographer Bob Capo, for example.

Maybe you read Ernie Pyle's story in your newspaper about how he and Wert and Capa went along with an infantry company assigned to clean up a Nazi pocket: "A young lieutenant came up and said; 'Want to go along?" I certainly didn't but when you are invited, what can you do? So I said, 'Sure.' And so did Wertenbaker and Capa. Wert never seems nervous and Capa is notorious for his daring. Fine company for me to be keeping.

"We were just ready to start when all of a sudden bullets came whipping savagely right above our heads. Vicious little shells winged into a grassy hillside just beyond us. Finally the order to start was given. Soon we could hear rifle shots not far ahead, the rat-tat-tat of our machine guns, and the quick blirp-blirp of German machine pistols. . .

Or take Photographer Bob Landry. Bob set out to get a box seat for the big show at Cherbourg and got caught behind the German lines. He pushed ahead so fast he far outdistanced our own infantry--didn't discover he had crossed No Man's Land until bullets from the German snipers and machine-gunners began kicking up dust all around him. Meanwhile our own dive bombers were plastering the whole area, and one of Landry's comrades reported later that "only a few hundred yards from where we were crouching the Germans in their fortifications were being blown to bits as the ground heaved with concussions." Landry was mighty glad to see our troops when they finally caught up with him.

Or take Bill White, who is with the British and Canadian forces at the east end of the line.

"Apparently the Nazis still have it in for TIME," he cabled last week, "for I tried twice to get into Caen before the city fell and ran into a curtain of artillery fire both times--first in the British sector, later in the Canadian. ... Then along came two Frenchmen as unconcerned as if they were on a walking tour. 'Oh, no, mes amis, the Boche are not shelling.' So into the jeep we got and headed again for Caen.

Just 100 yards from the outskirts of Sainte Germaine the Germans saw us and walloped a mighty big shell over at us. From the cover of a friendly but too shallow ditch we sat the next half-hour out. . . ."

Or take Walter Graebner. As top man for TIME & LIFE in London, Graebner had to stay behind on D-day to supervise our overall news coverage for you--but when he finally crossed the Channel on D-plus-22, he had a unique chance to see just what was happening all along the front.

"I flew to France in General Brereton's transport," Graebner reported. "Then Generals Brereton and Royce, Air Marshals Coningham and Bottomley and I piled into a jeep and command car and headed up the peninsula along the long straight road to Cherbourg. Later we flew along the American and British lines. Allied fighter bombers and rocket-carrying Typhoons screeched and screamed across the sky just south of our plane. . . ."

Cordially,

P. S. We have just heard by cable that Mary Welsh is safe back in Britain after three days at the front in Normandy.

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