YOUNG MAN'S GAME

From a Command Post on the Nettuno beachhead, TIME Correspondent Will Lang watched one of the innumerable small-unit actions by which U.S. troops have struck at German defenses. He cabled this report:

By midnight it was bitterly cold. Men arriving in the drainage ditch unreeled their wire, installed telephones. Other outfits marched up. In the dim moonlight officers assembled their little rear units, started them digging in the soft black earth. The first group already had its orders; long strings of shadowy figures were moving toward Highway 7.

The plan called for an attack from the beach. Our outfit, led by the first unit, was to shove north three miles and cut the highway west of Cisterna. On the extreme right flank another outfit was to cut No. 7 east of town. Still another was to barrelhouse straight up the middle and take the town itself.

Shells from the Hills. With dawn, the enemy found his eyes and his shells rocketed down from the hills beyond Cisterna. Enlisted men in the Command Post picked up trench shovels and bit deeper into their foxholes. Ahead we heard the screaming of the Nebelwerfer, followed by a rapid series of crunchings as shells landed close together.

A lieutenant colonel peered over the edge of the ditch and watched the explosions along the nearby road. "The krauts really got that road bracketed. Pretty. Damn pretty," he said with professional satisfaction.

The outfit's commanding colonel got the first bad news a few minutes later. His first unit had been stopped cold south of the highway; its commander had been wounded.

The Colonel laid down the telephone and chewed on his pipe. Lieut. Colonel Roy Moore was working another telephone. "Why aren't you firing your artillery?" he snapped. He was told that the forward observer had not been heard from; the unit had lost its own artillery eyes.

A Child Is Born. The sky had clouded over. It grew colder. Major Bill Rosson, of Eugene, Ore., whose men were not yet committed, came over the edge of the ditch. He sat down and bubbled: "We just pulled into that haystack ahead at 3 a.m. when an old woman in the farmhouse started having a baby. Doc Rhodes delivered the brat. He weighed about seven pounds--a nice kid. The Italians wanted Doc to name the kid and Doc decided to name him after me. We got in an interpreter and named him 'Guglielmo.' That's for me, Guglielmo Rosson."

The first unit called. It was the wounded commander on the phone. "Hurt bad, boy?" the Colonel asked, then listened for a long time. "Well, see if you can't get your men moving again," said the Colonel, and he laid down the phone. "He's still on his feet," he said.

"Are You Advancing?" Headquarters called; the outfit in the center had shoved right up to the outskirts of the town. But it was exposed like a naked finger there. Our unit had been stopped and the outfit on the right had been slow in jumping off. The Colonel got the first unit again and roared: "Are you advancing? Wotthehell you doing, digging into defensive positions?" He called the second unit: "I want that first goddamned platoon up north to help. Now get 'em going quick!"

There were a lot of shells now. Through glasses I could see shells hit the farmhouse. Doughboys streamed out, running across the field with smoke blossoming around them.

Battle's Grist. There was a splashing below and an aid man appeared helping a wounded man. The injured soldier thrashed his legs ahead blindly in the water, for he could not see; his face was covered by one muddy, blood-soaked bandage. The aid man lowered the man to the ground.

A wounded lieutenant colonel sloshed down the ditch under his own power and climbed up the slope.

"How do you feel?" asked the Colonel.

"I couldn't pitch a good game of ball right now," answered the officer, and sat wearily down. He took off his helmet; there was a clean hole in the front of it and a jagged hole behind.

He pasted down the adhesive tape holding two bandages to his thin hair and said: "It was pretty awful. We couldn't have hit him in a worse spot. He was dug in all along the ridge line with machine guns, automatic weapons. Behind him he had a lot of high-velocity artillery and just poured fire on us in the open field. Frank got a coupla machine-gun slugs in his shoulder and I got a piece of steel in mine, as well as this." He pointed to the bullet hole in the helmet. "This is sure a young man's game."

The Colonel called over Major Chick Sinsel, of Meridian, Idaho. "Sinsel, you go up and take over the first. Send Frank back here immediately," he ordered, "and if you can't move forward, don't move backward. Don't give up an inch." "Yessir," said Sinsel, and disappeared around the bend in the ditch.

That afternoon Rosson captured a crossroads and Sinsel didn't give up an inch. But the most progress made was a mile and a half.

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