A Thing of Beauty

From somewhere in Germany TIME Correspondent Sidney Olson, who last week watched Lieut. General William Simpson's fresh and powerful Ninth Army roll up to the Rhine, cabled:

This afternoon two doughs of the 83rd Division went across the Rhine at Duesseldorf. They didn't come back. But that was only the more proof that all traffic over the Rhine is one way.

We have won a most important campaign, crashing 20-plus miles straight through the vaunted German defenses to reach the Rhine in seven swift days. What has been the outstanding characteristic of that resistance? Every day experts have been forced to admit that the resistance was "light" or at most "light to moderate." We have captured and will capture some of the Germans' most historic and strategically important towns, yet we cannot honestly claim to have crushed any important German army in the field.

Beyond the Roer. From the air in a Piper Cub the tank drive was a thing of the sheerest military beauty: First came a long row of throbbing tanks moving like heavy dark beetles over the green cabbage fields of Germany in a wide swath--many, many tanks in a single row abreast. Then, a suitable distance behind, came another great echelon of tanks even broader, out of which groups would wheel from their brown mud tracks in green fields to encircle and smash fire at some stubborn strong point. Behind this came miles of trucks full of troops, maneuvering perfectly to mop up bypassed tough spots. Then came the field artillery to pound hard knots into submission. From the flanks sped clouds of tank destroyers cutting across the landscape in wild swoops that hit the enemy and cut off communications with bewildering speed.

And always overhead swung and looped the Thunderbolts in perfect air cover, keeping the tanks under absolute safety umbrellas and from time to time diving to knock out trouble points beyond the front.

Above them rode farther-roving P47 missions to dive-bomb and strafe every moving truck, self-propelled gun or railroad train fof many miles beyond, while higher still was the steady rumble of the great silver Fortresses in the topmost sky, purring distantly on to knock out the rearmost reinforcement areas, supply points and marshaling yards.

This was one of the war's grandest single pictures of united and perfectly functioning military machines in a supreme moment of pure fighting motion.

The Lonely Street. I went in with the 29th Division to take Muenchen-Gladbach yesterday in one of the weirdest actions of the war. The resistance consisted mainly of isolated detachments of nondescript troops who fought briefly at street corners. Those who were left surrendered quickly and with relief. This is the way it would go. A tank passed us and went down the absolutely lonely and deserted street through the ranks of neat and excellent two-story stone buildings, the kind of street that gives you that terribly lonely, naked feeling of snipers and trouble around you, the kind of street out of which you back your jeep at top speed without taking time to turn around.

The tank went on up the street clanking and rumbling in the quiet. Not a head stuck out of a window to watch. The tank went around a corner out of sight. Almost Instantly there came a single shell crash. Pretty soon the tank crew came around the corner, all safe but disgusted. An 88-SP (self-propelled gun) had drilled the tank cleanly with one shot, stopping it cold. Then the SP ran off.

The shell had drilled a hole through the armor, cutting an oil line. But that was all the resistance on that street, and pretty soon the G.I.s were making their way casually from house to house while the stolid German families sat quietly in their bunk-furnished, candlelit air-raid basements, their children and old folks about them.

The Cultured Citizens. When G.I.s kicked in the door of a big bank at one place we were greeted by a bank officer who spoke excellent English and had visited America twice. I asked him what he thought of Hitler now. He was an obviously sensitive, well-read, cultured citizen, now deathly afraid of the laconic, steel-eyed doughfoots who would have loved the chance to shoot him or any other German who seemed a "wrong gee." But this obviously intelligent man said sadly "Hitler is a much misunderstood man." I said "Yes, for one, I misunderstand him." He said "Ah, yes, you are ironic, but you will see, history will bear me out, he is one of the world's greatest leaders. It is merely that he has been badly advised, very badly advised, by swaggering louts with pistols on their hips, brutes and beasts, the Gestapo. That is how he went wrong. Now he is kaputt."

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