Epic of a Bridge

From the U.S. First Army, fighting towards Cologne last week, came what one correspondent called "a minor epic" of the war. It concerned the building of a bridge. A small column of 8th Division infantry had a fingerhold across the Erft Canal. Ahead of them, the Germans were gathering tanks for a counterattack. Behind them, U.S. combat engineers were building the bridge, to bring up armor to support the infantry.

The engineers, under a rain of shell and mortar fire, worked feverishly all night. At dawn the German tanks began to move up. The doughboys across the canal began to yell for the bridge and for tanks. The engineers, now raked by a murderous spray of German machine-gun fire, coolly and swiftly worked on. Just as the German tanks struck, the last plank fell into place and U.S. tanks rolled across the bridge. They saved the bridgehead and opened the road to Cologne.

Big Erector Set. Although dispatches did not identify the type of bridge, it was a safe bet that it was a Bailey--a British invention which has carried Allied armies across the river-seamed face of Europe and is a main reliance in their coming big battle: the spanning of the Rhine. Field Marshal Montgomery calls the Bailey bridge "quite the best thing in its line we have ever had." The bridge, at once simple and ingenious, was first sketched on the back of an envelope in 1940 by a tweedy British civil engineer named Donald Colman Bailey.

Bailey's bridge, designed for speedy building, is nothing more than a large-scale erector set. It consists of interchangeable, prefabricated steel panels which can be swiftly put together in almost any shape. The panels are held together by steel pins stuck through ready-made holes. The only tools needed are a few standard wrenches. Six men can carry the heaviest panel.

Engineers erect a steel framework of the panels, lay down planks for the roadway and the bridge is ready for use. If necessary, most of the bridge can be put together on a river bank, rolled up on rollers and pushed gently into place across the stream.

Pre-lnvasion Practice. The bridge is adaptable to various kinds of traffic; a three-tier framework three panels wide can carry the heaviest tanks. A single span can be thrust 240 feet; by laying the ends on pontoons and joining sections, Bailey Bridges as long as 1,200 feet have been built.

In training for Bailey bridge-building, U.S. engineers practiced day after day through the pre-invasion summer of 1943, laying Bailey bridges across the Thames and tearing them down again. Today, under perfect conditions, a team of 115 engineers can build a five-span Bailey Bridge in 32 minutes flat. And its inventor, 42-year-old Donald Bailey, wears the Order of the British Empire.

At least five U.S. firms are now producing Bailey bridge parts for the Army and Lend-Lease, but none sees a bright postwar future for it. At 12 1/2-c- a foot, a Bailey costs twice as much as a conventionally built steel bridge. But in flood country, where bridge washouts are frequent, Baileys may well be kept tucked away for emergency use.

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