Snail's Progress

In Italy the hill-by-hill drive inched ahead. General Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eighth Army grappled with stoutly resisting Germans for ridge tops and villages barring the way to Pescara, Adriatic terminus of the shortest transpeninsular road to Rome. On the Tyrrhenian side of the Apennines, General Mark Clark's Fifth Army climbed and clawed the mountain slopes where Wehrmacht pillboxes blocked the old Via Casilina route to the Tiber. By week's end, after three bloody days of artillery and infantry fighting, the Fifth took San Pietro village, moved toward the key Liri Valley town of Cassino.

The communiques told a now familiar tale: it was snail's progress by U.S., British, New Zealand, Canadian and Indian troops. They recorded the storming of a hill by cobelligerent Italians, who had been severely mauled in a first venture against their ex-allies (TIME, Dec. 20); for that success, General Clark sent congratulations. But most notable was the announcement that French soldiers were also in the line.

Not since the fall of la patrie in 1940 had the sons of France faced the Boche on the Western Europe mainland. Now, they mixed with the enemy in fierce night skirmishes, took startled, scared German prisoners. They used American weapons, wore American uniforms with French helmets.* But in their duffel bags some of them carried the worn army tunics of the Third Republic: they would put them on the day they returned to France.

Soul's Patience. Rome was still 78 miles away, not much nearer than it was a month ago. Once Americans and British had hoped to be in the capital by Christmas ; now they saw only many bitter days ahead. The Nazi press twitted the Allies on faulty generalship, on lost "opportunity" that will "never return."

Bad weather, worse terrain, water-bound flanks and skillful enemy delaying tactics had decelerated what first promised to be a climactic thrust up the Italian boot. It was also evident that the Allies intended to push no costly drive up to the Brenner gateway to Germany. The forces to battle through were needed in other theaters.

*In Russia, the Normandie Air Squadron has fought as a French Army unit using Russian equipment.

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