Baffle of Louisiana

South of Shreveport, where Spanish moss droops from the live oaks and watercourses slash the marshy Louisiana land like knife-cuts in a pan of fudge, 340,000 soldiers of the Army met last week in the greatest sham battle in U.S. history. It was also the most decisive.

By the time the five-day battle ended, Lieut. General Ben Lear's Second Army had had its ears pinned back. Advancing with a rush across the Red River, it met deceptively easy going against the Third Army of jug-eared, German-born Lieut. General Walter Krueger. But the Red neck was out. When last week's exercise ended, Ben Lear's army had been backed up against the Red River it had so dashingly crossed. Its flanks had been turned, many of its bridges to safety destroyed, its Armored Force's gasoline supplies captured in an old-fashioned cavalry raid. It was, so soldiers said, glad to start another scrap this week (with all last week's mistakes and losses canceled) to get its reputation back.

For a month before they lined up, 50 miles apart, for the Battle of Louisiana, the soldiers of the two armies had been put through smaller-scale field maneuvers. They were in good training. Newsmen noted their endurance, their cheerful disregard of stream and swamp as they marched into position, their scrap and determination when the fight was on. Ben Lear's Red Army was given the northern position. Numerically inferior to the Blues (125,000 to 215,000), it had the advantage of the better position (close to the Red River) and the powerful punch of the First Corps of the Armored Force (about 600 tanks). Walter Krueger's Blue Army, advancing from the south, had few armored troops (60 tanks). It had a division and an added brigade of cavalry. (Ben Lear had only one division.) It was vastly superior in infantry, artillery, the Army's new anti-tank groups (three).

Bluff Ben Lear took a characteristically vigorous course. At the jump-off he bridged the Red River, skillfully moved his 125,000 men across, charged deep into the heart of the Blues. Spearhead of his thrust was the Armored Force. It bit deep into the Blue middle, then dropped out of sight, let the Blues worry about where it would appear next.

They wasted their worry. After two days the Red tanks turned up again, right where they were last seen. They had been in a successfully camouflaged bivouac, waiting to make the final thrust into the Blues' vitals. But by then it was too late. Its avenues of attack canalized by a water-broken country, the Armored Force ran into traps, anti-tank posts. It was theoretically smashed by Major General Herbert A. Dargue's supporting Blue air force, which was used more skillfully than a U.S. air force had ever been used before in maneuver.

Meanwhile canny Walter Krueger was getting in other telling licks. A company of parachute troops, first ever dropped in U.S. maneuvers, fell from the sky behind Ben Lear's headquarters, cut off traffic on a vital highway and snipped communication lines right & left.

Dargue's airmen bombed the daylights out of Ben Lear's rear-area supplies (including gasoline for the tanks) as far back as Shreveport. Support aviation, including dive-bombers from the Navy (under Army command), blasted at tanks, then blew up the bridges across the Red River. Meanwhile the Red tanks had been stopped, and the gaps they had made plugged up by sweating infantrymen.

Final blow came as General Krueger threw his cavalry in. Innis P. Swift, commander of the Blue's First Cavalry Division, swept out of East Texas with 17,500 men, on horse, motorcycle and scout car, slashed east and north around the Reds' right flank in a night ride. By that time Ben Lear knew the worst. Driven back from two headquarters, he had lost most of his rear-area supplies to Horseman Swift.

As the push developed, Dargue's airmen bombed the Reds with leaflets: "Your commanders are withholding from you the terrible fact of your impending defeat. Your gasoline stores have been captured. From now on, if you move, you do it on the soles of your shoes."

Apart from the battle's result, Army men as well as lay observers were mightily pleased with what they saw: two well-trained, hardened armies whose soldiers knew their jobs and were keen to do them well.

Because road discipline and staff work were good, troop movements were carried out swiftly. Supply, in a fluid battle where everything depended on the swift movement of fighting units, went on without a major hitch.

From umpires (unofficially) came kudos for the crack work of the Blue air forces. The Reds were less happy over the work of their air force and their communications. Biggest small surprise was the work of the Blues' 127 parachutists dropped in Red country. By agreement all were to surrender, if not captured, 20 hours after landing. When the 20 hours expired, more than half of them were still on the loose, slashing wire lines and generally playing havoc with Red communications.

Although the over-all results of the maneuvers' first battle were good enough, the showing of enlisted soldiers (particularly noncoms) better than that, the week's hard pounding showed up many a soft spot. One of them was communications, which did not always function at par. Another was the poor tactical showing of many officers.

In spite of a flat warning that their showing in battle would determine whether they would be sent home or kept in uniform, many a ranker, many a subaltern flubbed his battle shots. Through the maneuver area ran the rumor that when next week's battle was over the cleanout of substandard officers would be terrific--perhaps as high as 30%.

Said Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair, GHQ Chief of Staff, with characteristic frankness: "A lot of these Generals who want to fire their Chiefs of Staff ought to fire themselves. We're going to start at the top and work down. We've got some bum Generals, and maybe I'm one of them, but we're going to weed them out. Have we the bright young Majors and Captains to replace them? Yes."

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