Taut Miracle

The story of the supply miracle that had put the Allied armies on Germany's border continued to unfold. In London last week, Colonel Leslie Arnold, onetime Eastern Air Lines assistant to Eddie Rickenbacker, told how the ten-day sweep of General Patton's Third Army across France had been serviced by hundreds of cargo planes shuttling back & forth from England. In the last stages of Patton's rush, 50 gallons of high-octane aviation fuel had been required for every 100 gallons of ordinary motor fuel laid down for Patton's tanks and trucks--but, Arnold added, "it was worth it."

The prefabricated ports which were towed across the Channel, and which were first publicly described last fortnight (TIME, Oct. 23), sluiced the bulk of invasion supplies ashore. But that was only the first stage of delivery. U.S. engineers have now rebuilt 1,500 miles of French railroads and 100 rail bridges which had been wrecked by pre-invasion bombing, by saboteurs or by the fleeing enemy. Much U.S. rolling stock has been put ashore, but 60% of the locomotives and freight cars are French, Italian, Dutch, Belgian and German. Some old U.S. freight cars left in France after the last war have been retrieved and put back to work.

On the celebrated "Red Ball" truck highway across France, Piper Cubs at low altitude now patrol the roads, radio the nearest salvage depot when they spot a breakdown. Behind the fighting lines, the "cannibalizing" of tanks and guns (piecing together new units from dismantled wrecks) has been put on an assembly-line basis. But even miracles have their limits: there came a point where the supply miracle had been stretched to the snapping point. Organization and improvisation had done their utmost. The Allied armies slowed down, stopped.

What the Allies now needed was a capacious, intact, nearby port--to wit, Antwerp (see above). Shortages of almost everything from ammunition to cigarets and field kitchens had popped up and were still popping up all along the front. Cursing doughfoots ate cold rations, got along on ten cigarets a day. At one point the Third Army fired captured shells from captured 88s. The First Army served their own 155s with ammunition which had been captured from the French by the Germans in 1940, retaken from the Germans in 1944.

By this week the situation had undoubtedly been improved. A vast road-and-railroad communications system had been built up, and it would grow & grow. But until the Allies had Antwerp, where locomotives, railroad cars and other heavy freight could be poured ashore, troops on the line would have to get used to shortages.

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