Brooklyn Eagle (July 8, 1943)
Gigantic preparations described for invasion explosion
Allies must pound foe into defeat
By Hugh Baillie
Allied HQ, North Africa (UP) –
The gigantic challenge confronting the Allies in assaulting Hitler’s European fortresses slaps you in the face when you enter this war theater and become aware of the tremendous preparations underway.
Back in Washington they talk of an offensive being “mounted.” Here you see it. You also realize where your young men, gasoline, rubber tires and beef have gone.
As President Roosevelt said, the enemy will be hit until he doesn’t know his bow from his stern. Prime Minister Churchill said it would occur before the leaves of autumn fall. When or where, who can say?
There is tension in the air. There is no thought of a quick, easy victory. A tremendously formidable enemy must be pounded to pieces mathematically with airpower, sea power and, above all, manpower. No quick Axis foldup, similar to the last days in Tunisia, is expected.
That Tunisian surrender was the result of a pulverizing drive, the full velocity of which may not be comprehended until history gives it perspective.
Eisenhower a busy man
The head of this colossal organization is dynamic Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is apparently able to come pretty close to being several places at once. He uses planes as Civil War generals used horses to get around over a war area of 2,000 miles – roughly equivalent to the distance from New York to Salt Lake City. In one day, he visited eight airdromes, flew 1,500 miles, and spent the remainder of his time inspecting, conferring, arranging and making decisions which must be right the first time. There is no second-guessing in this business.
Other campaigns and other wars will be dwarfed by this one. In the last war, the enemy lay in mud trenches and concrete pillboxes behind barbed wire across a narrow space called No Man’s Land, and yet you recall what unrelenting efforts were required to oust him. Here the enemy lies behind the Mediterranean Sea with fortified islands as outer bastions. The enemy has had plenty of time to prepare due to the staggering task of transporting men and equipment to this distant shore in sufficient quantities.
Yet that was only the beginning. No doubt the enemy beyond the Mediterranean has now constructed the most modem mantraps, accumulated the latest killing equipment and concentrated the best firepower devisable by the devilish ingenuity and brains which have a peculiar genius for war and for making war atrocious.
A serious misnomer
Nobody here expects it will be any picnic, any triumphal whirlwind. It will not be another October 1918, when the Germans collapsed. People who have such ideas at home are kidding themselves. The phrase “Europe’s soft underbelly” is believed to be a serious misnomer.
Armadas, compared to which the Spanish Armada was a collection of paper boats sailed by a child in a bathtub, are moving. You know they carry the hopes of the American and British peoples for victory – not in terms of statistics but in terms of young men, tanks, ammunition, hospital apparatus and blood plasma. And of weapons, the very names of which have not yet appeared in news dispatches.
Many harbors and many cities with exotic names and flavors, are scenes of intense activity, yet there is no confusion.
Practically every male is in uniform, but the uniforms are working clothes. A majority of the youngsters resemble football players trained to the finest physical perfection.
The terrific weight which was necessary to slug Pantelleria into submission may be but a small sample of what is ahead. There may be many more Dieppes, magnified manyfold.
Planes have big role
The fact that airpower is expected to play the most important role is manifested not only by the present fierce air battles which show that the Axis still possesses hordes of fighters, but also by the existence of huge Allied airdromes. To a layman’s eyes, it looks like all the airplanes in the world have come to this arena for what may develop into the greatest test of the Luftwaffe’s strength since the Battle of Britain.
Welding all of these elements into a tornado of explosion, fire and bayoneting which will pulverize the enemy when the proper time comes staggers the imagination.
War is in the very air you breathe, grim and sinister. Nevertheless, with all this picturesqueness sometimes it almost seems as if you were just around the corner from Sunset and Vine in Hollywood and you wouldn’t be surprised to see the people troop into soundstage No. 20 after lunch at the cafeteria on the studio lot. It’s real yet unreal, like seeing a man electrocuted.