"Chewed Up"

A word that no Italian likes to hear is "Caporetto," the name of the Alpine village where in 1917 the Italian army broke and ran in the most ignominious rout of the War. Italians heard that word many times last week as fact after fact emerged to show that the defeat of the Italian legions was overwhelming, catastrophic, perhaps un piccolo Caporetto ("a little Caporetto"). Air fighters on both sides are now so good that daylight bombing of important centres is considered too risky. Madrid has not been daylight-bombed for two months. In Salamanca even veteran Hearst Correspondent Karl von Wiegand had to write, and the Rightist censors felt they had to pass, this glorious Leftist news:

"The wiping out of Italy's mechanized divisions at Guadalajara is forcing upon Franco consideration of the question whether insurgent strategy in whole or in part must be revised. Il Duce's legionnaires were chewed up worse than is gen erally known. Their defeat resulted in the failure of the Easter Offensive which aimed at closing the bottleneck exit from Madrid."

Other sources indicated that shattered Italian legions had had to be withdrawn entirely from the Guadalajara front. Their places were taken by long over worked Moors and Spanish Rightists. One hundred and fifty miles to the southwest another Italian force was in the field, operating against the Leftist city of Pozoblanco. Nearby was a prize almost as valuable as Madrid itself, the mercury mines of Almaden, oldest and richest in Europe, vital to munition makers throughout the continent. Anxious to make up for the ignominy of Guadalajara, these Italians with their Spanish allies attacked, were beaten back, attacked again, ended Holy Week just about where they started. Other fronts were at a standstill too. The Red militia were even given week-end leave in Madrid, but there was no rest for Madrid Defender Miaja. He went to the dentist.

Novel-reading admirers of Ernest Hemingway, who boasts that he sharply distinguishes in his own mind between Novelist Hemingway (gruesome, gory, hyper-cynical) and Journalist Hemingway (objective, conscientious and in good taste), were struck by his description of signs of Italian valor on the battlefield of "little Caporetto" or Brihuega last week. "The scrub oak woods," cabled Journalist Hemingway, "are still full of Italian dead that burial squads have not yet reached. Tank tracks lead to where they died, not as cowards but defending skillfully constructed machine-gun and automatic-rifle positions, where the tanks found them and where they still lie. The track of a tropical hurricane leaves a capricious swath of complete destruction, but the two parallel grooves the tank leaves in the red mud lead to scenes of planned death worse than any hurricane leaves.

"The untilled fields and oak forest are rocky and the Italians were forced to build rocky parapets rather than attempt to dig the soil where a spade would not cut, and the horrible effect of shells-- from the guns of the 60 tanks that fought with the [Leftist] infantry in the Brihuega battle--bursting in and against these rock piles made a nightmare of corpses. The small Italian tanks, armed only with machine guns, were as helpless against the medium-sized [Madrid] Government tanks, armed with cannon and machine guns, as Coast Guard cutters would be against armored cruisers.

"Reports that Brihuega was simply an air victory, with [Italian] columns stampeded and panicked without fighting, are corrected when the battlefield is studied. It was a bitterly fought seven-day battle, much of the time rain and snow making auto transport impossible.

"In the final assault, under which the Italians broke and ran, the day was just practical for flying, and 120 planes, 60 tanks and about 10,000 Government infantrymen routed three Italian divisions of 5,000 men each. It was the coordination of those planes, tanks and infantry that brings this war into a new phase.

"You may not like it and wish to believe it is propaganda, but I have seen the battlefield, the booty, the prisoners and the dead."

Thus many of the big new Russian tanks which Soviet newsreels show rushing in terrifying fashion across the Red Square are now giving mighty account of themselves in Spain, and so is the International Column directed by Stalin's ablest practical maker of war outside Russia, famed General Emilio Kleber.

It seemed that Benito Mussolini, who at latest reports had withdrawn to seclusion on his farm, where it is Il Duce's habit to make grave decisions, would now have to admit that Dictator Stalin's agents are getting together the better Spanish war machine. Mussolini had to decide either to pull out his Italian legions in defeat or hurl in large numbers of Italian regulars. At week's end Il Duce's problem was intensified by signs of rebellion in the Rebel ranks. From sources so many and so diverse that neutral observers like the New York Times, crack London Correspondent Frederick T. Birchall believed them came stones c widespread trouble among General Franco's men: In Spanish Morocco 30 officers of the Tetuan aircraft post were shot for conspiracy; at Malaga 20 Italian carabineers were lined up against a wall and at Algeciras a batch of non-commissioned Italians in the Pavia Regiment were mowed down for plotting General Franco's assassination.

Reported Correspondent Birchall: "There is a British tendency to attribute this development, always supposing that it is true, to two causes--disillusionment among Italians serving in Spain, many of whom believed they were going out to service in Ethiopia, and growing uneasiness among the Spaniards over the spread of Italian military, political and commercial influence in their country."

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