Test in the Field

In the hills and valleys of Tennessee the U.S. Army ''played" at war. But it was not play. It was good hard work, and those engaged in it knew that the difference between national victory and defeat, between individual life and death was likely to depend on how much of the know-how of war U.S. soldiers learned in the foothills of the Cumberlands. The following are a few scenes from that deadly-earnest schoolroom:

By 9 a.m. the sun was blistering hot. Northeast of Beechgrove, the Second Armored Division (of the "Red" army), with its medium and light tanks and its men, bronzed, cocky and confident, was meeting its first battle trial.

For one of the Second's units, the sweating 67th Regiment, the going was tough. The crossroad ahead was alive with machine-gun nests and anti-tank posts. Every time a Red tank or scout car headed down the road, a well-hidden 75 whanged at it and umpires knocked it out.

The next time it got in such a fix, the 67th would know enough to have infantry up ahead to stalk such ambuscades. But this time it was stalled for fair. Farther west, four columns of the Second Division pronged down on the flank and rear of the ("Blue") 27th and 30th Divisions. To the south, the Red's own Fifth Division infantry stood fast. It was time the 67th did something to get out of its fix.

Major John P. Kidwell, spring-legged 37-year-old commander of the 67th's Second Battalion, climbed up into the turret of his medium. He swung his arm as the tank's 350-horsepower engine began to roar, and the white dust showered off the arm of his coveralls.

Alarums & Excursions. The medium clanked around and headed away from Beechgrove. Private Francis Cutrupi snorted past on his motorcycle, slowed down to 20 miles an hour up ahead. Behind him followed 30 tanks, like dutiful elephants, in their armored howdahs goggled tankers with ungainly helmets, respirators hung from their elbows.

Cutrupi pulled off into a lane, stopped before a farmer's house. West Pointer Kidwell climbed down and went in to interview a seam-faced farmer. "Over that hill?" said the farmer, "Why, mister, that's most a mountain." Kidwell squinted up the trail that disappeared into the trees. "Let's go," he said crisply, and climbed aboard. Up the trail crawled the tanks behind Private Cutrupi, skittering along on his motorbike. At the top of the hogback the motorcyclist stopped at a fence. The first tank banged through, the rest followed. The clattering train dipped into a saddle, mounted another rise, headed steeply downward over jagged rocks, knocking down trees. Finally it was in the valley, having negotiated a trail that would vex a mule.

Down the valley, Cutrupi held up his hand, jumped off his wheel, slipped forward through the weeds with his Thompson submachine gun. He was back in a few minutes. Friendly troops ahead. The tanks came out of the trees, lumbered on across the friendly lines and into the enemy land.

Up ahead Kidwell had spotted trouble. Cutrupi was off his motorcycle again with his "chopper." Soon the men in the halted tanks heard rifle fire, saw Cutrupi surrounded by riflemen. An umpire's flag waved and an officer walked down the road. Kidwell's tank was out, he ruled, but Kidwell was no casualty. Down the road ran the tank commander to the rest of his command, still back of the trees. "Where are you going?" asked a newsman. "I'm going to get some more tanks and knock hell out of 'em," he grinned.

Two hundred yards up the road a Blue gun crew bunched about a 37-mm. antitank gun (which, for want of a better piece, counted as effective in these maneuvers). As Kidwell disappeared around the bend they resighted their gun to point at the woods across the road. The trouble would probably come from there. It did, within two minutes, heralded by the splintering crash of fences, the shrieking whine of green trees torn apart.

Like infuriated hippos Kidwell's tanks plowed ahead. Forty feet from the antitank gun they burst out of the woods, a medium and two lights--rearing on their hind treads as they cracked through the fence and crossed the road. The gun crew swung their piece, first on one, then on another. In battle they would not have had a chance. They were ruled out of action.

The battle was over for that day. Had the battle been real, and had it been allowed to go to its conclusion, the Second would probably have annihilated the numerically superior force it had faced. And it had done its job in a hurry, operating under a well-conceived plan. During the night some of its units had traveled better than 100 miles, blacked out. It had followed the precept of its able, profane commander, Major General George S. Patton Jr.: "Hold the enemy by the nose and kick him in the rump until he falls down" (an expurgated version).

But by trying to bull its way through trouble, the Second had violated another Pattonism. Meeting abler anti-tank tactics from the 27th and 30th than it had expected, it had lost many tanks. D.S.C.Man Patton had warned them of the danger of 75s along the roadside. Said he (amended version): "Never engage in a scenting match with a skunk." The Second, relying on its own strength, had failed to use its infantry, and the failure had been expensive. It had also failed to coordinate its work with its allied Fifth Division, and been cited by the umpires for the failure.

Two days later, another exercise called the Second in again, to finish off the once-friendly Fifth, after the 27th and 30th had driven the Fifth across the Duck River. As in the first exercise, George Patton, wearing his newfangled globular tank helmet,* was in the thick of action, ran his show with snap and speed. (Said he: "You can't move a string of spaghetti by pushing it from the hind end.")

A tanker from World War I days, he rode his tank across fields and through woods, stood waist-deep in a river to guide others across, sat with his men in the grass at halts, cursed roundly at delay and slow-footed action.

This time the Second used infantry to better advantage, brought quick decision to the exercise, which had the Fifth fighting a delaying action against overwhelming odds. Starting at daylight, the tankers plunged down on the Fifth from all points of the compass, before noon had shattered resistance and captured the Fifth's C.O., Brigadier General Cortlandt Parker.

Lessons & Lacks. Pitted against the commanding fire power of the Armored Division, the infantry outfits had shown determination, resourcefulness and coolness in fighting off the tanks. But their anti-tank equipment was scant and what they had lacked mobility. They needed what the Allied Army had lacked in France last spring, what Germany's Panzer outfits have never yet met: self-propelled artillery that can get in the way of tanks, knock them out. Fully aware of the need, the Army is already deep in the design of such a piece, probably to be mounted on the chassis of a light tank, shorn of most of its armor to give it greater speed.

Another need, already obvious when the maneuvers began, was the lack of aircraft to support tanks. Last week nine speedy A-20s of the Eighth Bombardment Squadron worked with the Second, but not impressively, for U.S. Army ground commanders still do not understand all they should know about aircraft's use. The A-20s made sporadic attacks (once bombed neutral ground occupied by non-combatants), but did little to change the course of battle.

* But not the brass-buttoned, forest-green tanker's uniform, which he designed, and which made the Second Division nicknamed him Flash Gordon.

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