ARMED FORCES: Defense on the Rhine

Most of the American troops in Germany, about 160,000 strong, were in the field last week. In “Operation Combine,” the largest postwar U.S. maneuvers in Europe, the Seventh Army was testing the defense of the dangerous 85-mile front where the border of the Soviet zone swings west toward Frankfurt.

In the early morning, armored combat teams of the crack American Constabulary thrust westward in a surprise attack. Paratroops dropped near Frankenthal to secure a Rhine bridgehead. Partisan guerrillas closed in near Kaiserlautern and “destroyed” a supply dump. Threatened on their flanks, the 1st and 4th Divisions reeled back until units of the 2nd Armored Division, in reserve, moved up to hit the aggressors and cover the retreat.

This was a “fixed” maneuver, with lines of advance marked out for the aggressor, and the green-shirted Constabulary thought it was all too easy. “Not even any running around at night, except small patrols,” complained a belligerent rifleman. “And the guys against us aren’t too smart. Why, we had to wake up some … of the 4th Division to capture them. Found them in their sacks.”

Observers found other shortcomings in the performance of U.S. forces. Camouflage was sloppy, communication lines inadequate. Air strikes were too few, and too slow to attack when called. On the Rhein-Main Airfield observers saw cargo planes parked so close that they made inviting targets. Traffic moved placidly in daylight along the Frankfurt-Darmstadt autobahn while, just off the road, supply trucks piled up outside the Sunset P.X.

On their final defense line behind the Rhine, the defenders regrouped according to plan. Joined by units of the French and British armies, they prepared to launch a counterattack. Observed by SHAPE Commander Eisenhower, fresh from NATO’s impressive “Operation Counterthrust” (TIME, Oct. 1) on the northwest German plain, the invaders will be repulsed, as they always are when the script calls for it.