Cleanup Man

Soldiers of the Allied armies in France were ready last week to salute the humbler military men who have followed in their wake cleaning up their wreckage: SHAEF's civil-affairs officers (G5 in the U.S. Army's general staff divisions). In helping to revive the normal life of a battered France they had proved to be a real military asset. The people of France hailed them as saviors.

G-5 had made a good record in Italy. In France the record was even better. The officers had luck. French crops were good. The retreating Germans had had no time to drain off France's food resources, had even left behind thousands of tons of their own supplies. Quick action on the part of the F.F.I, forestalled the destruction by Germans of water, light and sewage systems. But there was still a vast and complicated job to do when G-5 arrived on the heels of the fighting armies.

Heaven Helps Those. Frenchmen themselves pitched in with a will. G-5 teams cleared the rubble from shattered Norman towns with bulldozers borrowed from the engineers.

G-5 revived Cherbourg's waterworks by sending damaged turbo-electric units to England to be rewound, moved 60 tons of coal from Courcelles to Creully to stoke a pasteurization plant and relieve a desperate milk shortage. G-5 teams carted diesel fuel into the Bayeux district to get flour mills going.

G-5 organized the burial of thousands of dead horses and cattle, turned over to farmers horses captured from the Germans, moved 4,000 refugees from the Caen area to the Cherbourg suburbs, imported medical supplies for Caen's wounded civilians.

In Paris, isolated by three months of air bombardment which had destroyed practically every means of outside communication, G-5 teams helped get wrecked power lines working again, helped clear the Seine of broken bridges and sunken barges so that coal and wheat can be brought in by water. Last week G-5 was able to report that 3,800 tons of food were reaching Paris daily. This was 600 tons short of what Paris needed and Parisians were in for a cold, lean winter. But they would not starve or freeze to death. To the U.S. Army the Paris Prefect sent his thanks and "the living gratitude of the population."

No Kicks. Operating boss of this cleanup job is slow-talking, 52-year-old Brigadier General Frank Johnson McSherry, who was born in El Dorado Springs, Mo., fought in World War I, in 1942 served in Washington as director of operations for tRe War Manpower Commission.

McSherry traveled in the wake of war across Italy (although he got out in front of it at Naples and innocently rolled into that city ahead of the first combat units). A see-for-myself kind of boss, he now bounces back & forth across the Channel, up & down the map of France, traveling without fuss or feathers, hitching rides rather than put anyone to any trouble. Last week he caught a ride to Lyons in Major General Ralph Royce's private plane and luxuriated in a cushioned seat. Bucket seats in a transport are the cheerful McSherry's usual lot.

More often than not he is apt to find himself camping out, his hefty form huddled on the bedroll he generally carries with him.

Colleagues and superiors sum up McSherry's accomplishments: "His job is to see that there are no kicks, either from the inhabitants or the Army. Granted that we have had lots of luck, we admit we have had no kicks." ^

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