ARMY: Battle of the Carolinas

Tanks can be stopped by fast-thinking, fast-moving defense. The U.S. Army learned that vital lesson last week during a five-day sham battle over slightly rolling country, straddling the borderline between the Carolinas, on a terrain well gridded with roads—good tank country.

Head professor for the lesson was flashy, parrot-beaked Lieut. General Hugh Aloysius Drum, commander of the First Army, whose professional fitness (like other high commanders’) was being tested by the maneuvers. He came through with flying colors (though once his personal colors almost hit the ground). His force (numerically superior, equal in fire power, inferior in air power and mobility) did more than just stop the Panzer outfits; it theoretically hacked units of the proud First Armored Corps to bits, backed Major General Oscar W. Griswold’s army up a good 40 miles.

At the maneuvers opening, Hugh Drum’s Blue Army of 200,000 was in position east of the Pee Dee River. Fifty miles west were the Reds’ 100,000.

General Griswold’s first thrust was swift. While his fast-moving troops headed east, he dispatched his bombers, “smashed” every bridge across the Pee Dee. The Blues crossed anyhow. A cavalry outfit swam the Pee Dee. Others crossed by pontoons flung across the stream and by the bridges themselves, which became usable again after “repairs.”

Then the tankers got the surprise of their lives. Stubbornly retiring, Oscar Griswold flung armored spearheads at the Blue flanks. Thanks to the Blues’ reconnaissance and military intelligence, the baffled tankers plunged again & again into murderous anti-tank defenses.

To the gas-eating tankers this readiness was a stunning surprise, for the Blues were made up largely of ponderous, part-motorized square divisions and should have been slow on their feet. Hugh Drum had drummed up extra speed. While the rest of the Army, still without self-propelled artillery, had organized anti-tank groups, he had decided that attack was the best policy. He had drawn trucks and guns from his divisions, organized them into three independent Tank Attack Groups with plenty of mobility and terrific fire power. They went hunting for tanks, and found plenty.

In the excitement of the action, both sides often overstepped themselves. There was many a fist fight, one tragedy. Beating off a tank attack, one excited soldier flung a smoke bomb into a tank, permanently blinded the driver. Engineers, cooks, even aviation mechanics took a hand in the fighting before the battle was over.

The mechanics got their chance when the Reds made a parachute attack on Pope Field, in the Blues’ rear. The few newsmen who saw it got the thrill of their lives. Pope was first strafed by bombers and attack planes. Then the parachutists began pouring down—a whole battalion of them—followed by the varicolored ‘chutes carrying mortars, machine guns, etc.

On to the field charged grease-monkeys and Negro engineers working near by. ‘Chutists got out of their harnesses to face rifles and clubs. One ‘chutist, roughed up by a soldier as he landed, calmly unbuckled his harness, knocked three teeth out of the other soldier’s mouth, walked away without a word. No sooner had the air infantry landed than most of them were prisoners.

A few got away, prowled through the night until they were caught. But the attack was no howling success. One reason, besides the stout local defense, was that another new trick had been pulled out of the First Army bag. Secretive General Drum had placed fast-moving, heavily armed Airborne Protection Units all over the place. One of these trouble-shooting outfits, called on the radio, sped to Pope Field, backed up the grease-monkeys with jeep-mounted heavy machine guns.

By week’s end the Blues had plenty to brag about. On the first day of the maneuver they had knocked out 200 tanks, had done nearly as well every day thereafter. (Under maneuver rules, tanks destroyed on any day came to life next morning.)

Communications functioned better than ever before, although the Army is still critically short of radio equipment, will be until spring. Cooperation of air force with ground troops was more effective than ever before, although the strain of battle showed up many a minor bug in the new U.S. flying equipment. The Air Forces (including several squadrons of crack Navy and Marine flyers) went into the fight with a lot of new maneuver tricks. (Example: one side got into the other side’s radio channels, passed out false orders that messed up many a mission.)

Only goats were the tankers. They moved swiftly, without traffic jams, did well all the basic things they had learned. But they were cast in a strange role: the defensive. Instead of fighting in great surprise attacks, they were used piecemeal. And when they did swing around the flanks in the end runs they like best, they found Blue troops waiting for them.

Without the fast-moving infantry support they should have had (which will be supplied as the Army is motorized), they were comparatively ineffective. Tankers still had no reason to doubt that the Panzer division is the most potent force on the battlefield. But they had learned that it is not all-powerful, needs the support of other arms.

High officers had high praise for Hugh Drum’s slick, resourceful methods (such as persuading local radio “hams” to stay off his communications channels). But they lifted their eyebrows at one Drum beat that was a little too slick. On the maneuvers’ first day, a venturesome Red reconnaissance patrol penetrated Blue lines and captured Hugh Drum as he drove along a highway with only his aide and chauffeur. By bluster and guile the lieutenant general persuaded his captor, a young captain, to turn him loose. Grumped a ranker to the gullible youngster: “You should have taken him to the prison camp.” But the fact remained that Hugh Drum, by this and many another dodge that might have been employed against a real enemy, had won a battle.