"What Are You Doing?"

In Alsace, Allied propaganda leaflets asked the German soldiers: "What are you doing fighting here?", and went on to explain that Germany was gravely in need of good fighting men on the eastern front.

It was, indeed, a puzzle that the Nazis thought it worth while to attack in this area at this stage of the war. One ingenious explanation, offered by some U.S. Seventh Army officers, was that Nazi General Hermann Balck had hastily committed his best units to action in order to keep the German High Command from taking them away. Balck had two or more Panzer or Panzer grenadier divisions, one of mountain troops from Norway, one of SS infantry, one of paratroops--a parcel of the Wehrmacht's best.

Doughfoot in a Barrel. When Balck threatened to envelop U.S. Seventh Army units on the left, Lieut. General Alexander M. Patch pulled back ten miles, leaving some Maginot Line positions to the Germans. They followed the withdrawal, pierced the new line, crossed the small Moder River. Then the Seventh counterattacked and the Germans backed up. They seemed to need reinforcements and they seemed not to be getting any.

While the Germans were trying to take Strasbourg, they were in a fair way to lose Colmar. Major General Jean Delattre de Tassigny, who last fortnight attacked the Colmar pocket on the south, last week began to squeeze it on both sides. With Tassigny's French First Army was a crack U.S. infantry division, which got bruised one day in a fight against Panther tanks. One doughfoot who hid in a rain barrel saw Alsatian villagers pointing out U.S.-held houses to the Germans. When he got back and told the story, Thunderbolts and artillery reduced the village to rubble. Later the Yanks retook it.

Not Like Balboa. In Luxembourg, the new U.S. 17th Airborne Division and three other Third Army divisions moved up to a ridgetop road called "Skyline Drive," 1,500 feet high, whence they could look down across the Our River into Germany. It was not exactly like Balboa looking down on the Pacific. U.S. troops had been on that ridgetop before. This time they went down the other side and waded the icy river, to enter Germany at two points.

The 7th Armored retook Saint-Vith, a town of bloody and gallant memory. North of there, the Germans still stood on Belgian soil in a small bend of the border. They were smacked by the famed 1st Infantry, the stout peg which had held down the north shoulder of Rundstedt's salient. The doughboys attacked at 4 a.m. in a heavy snowstorm, without artillery preparation, and gained two miles.

Best Platform. The Roer River flows into the Maas at Roermond. Last week the British Second Army moved up to the west bank all the way from the confluence down to the U.S. Ninth Army's left flank above Juelich. The Ninth also took up some slack.

These moves gave General Eisenhower a 40-mile stretch of the Roer from the Maas down past Dueren. It was still the best platform for a leap to the Rhine--as soon as the Allies could make it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.