THE BELLS OF TOBRUK

TIME'S Correspondent Walter Graebner, en route to the U.S. from Moscow, last week cabled from Cairo:

I have witnessed one of the war's greatest spectacles--the dash of the victorious Eighth Army and R.A.F. over the Western Desert.

At sundown (5 p.m.) on the first day out we reached the former no man's land at El Alamein. The entire western half of the area was littered with German and Italian guns and shells, helmets, clothing, food, maps and other things, smashed and torn by the Aussies as they crashed through. All about were black, well-made "Jerry cans" (for fuel), a dozen of which we collected and filled with water when we learned that the Nazis had oiled many of the wells farther west. Old tins of British-made "Kiwi" shoe polish lay side by side with empty bottles of Chianti. Pressed into the sand was a letter to a German soldier from his father in Duesseldorf.

The Price of Victory. Though the Nazi losses in the Alamein battle were colossal, the British also paid heavily. Batteries of German 88-mm. guns mowed hundreds of Aussies down before the Germans were driven back for good. But the Aussies proved themselves superior.

We viewed freshly made graves of two Aussies and dozens of Germans across the road from where we slept. The bodies were simply laid out and covered with sand. Fresh graves dug by the Germans rarely bear the usual inscription "He died for Hitler," but are now marked "He died for Germany." To an Aussie we met up the road I said: "I suppose many of your pals were lost." He just looked at me sadly and then smiled and said: "Yes, of course, but we've got to beat the Hun and the Jap."

The Rewards. West of El Alamein we came to an airfield full of dozens of dispersed Me-109Fs in almost perfect condition. The Luftwaffe had fled in near panic, but its leavings were evidence that Germany is still a long way from exhaustion.

Strewn around one Italian tank were papers that belonged to Captain Aldo Corbelli. One was a month's pay slip for 3,630 lire. A handbill advertised the Italian edition of Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People. A letter from the captain's girl, Mardella, ended "I never stop longing for you." Aldo Corlelli's body lay in the tank.

The second night we spent in the garden of a ruined dressing station along the shore in Matruh. The Italians had left jars of salve, sulfanilamide, antiseptics, bandages and a big supply of drugs for treating gonorrhea. Though special toilets were built in the garden the Italians found the rooms of the villa more convenient.

West of Matruh we passed through the greatest dump of motorized equipment in the world, with the possible exception of Stalingrad. The edges of the road and the desert as far as we could see were strewn with wrecked German and Italian tanks, armored cars, motorcycles, lorries and staff cars. In between were tires of Jerry cars and munitions of all kinds from bullets to bombs, tools and helmets, and carcasses of beef.

The Power & Glory. Wherever there isn't German wreckage in the Western Desert there are British camps. From an airplane the whole of the desert looks like one great tourist camp amid thousands of square miles of wreckage. Cutting through it all is a single band of macadam, alive with vehicles moving westward.

We were staggered by the Eighth Army's size, power, organization and mobility. Roaring and rumbling bumper-to-bumper for miles on end were convoy after convoy of tanks, armored cars, Bren-gun carriers, lorries full of troops, petrol, food and ammunition, motorcycles, staff cars and ambulances, red-faced tankmen in black berets, Indians, Scots, Tommies, New Zealanders, Australians and Americans. all directed with incredible precision.

Thousands of gallons of fuel, tons of goods and ammunition, and hundreds of men are going west by air. Sometimes the sky above and beyond the supply line is black with craft roaring in both directions.

"There's a Man." At the R.A.F. advance headquarters, which had previously been Luftwaffe headquarters, U.S. Army Air Forces General "Lighter-than-Air" Strickland took us over to the tiny blue-doored trailer in which Air Vice Marshal Coningham was directing all R.A.F. operations in the Western Desert. Although Rommel's retreat was orderly, neither Coningham nor General Montgomery had anticipated such a quick Axis collapse in Egypt. At the very least they expected the Germans to make a stand on the frontier. Coningham believed that the Axis would probably be able to make a stand in the triangle near El Agheila. General Strickland says of Coningham: "There's a man for you."

On our last day we saw the ruins of Tobruk. The main church is badly damaged but three bells in the tower still ring. Every Tommy who enters yanks the ropes.

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