"War in the Siegfried Line" by Ernest Hemingway

War in the Siegfried Line

"Ernest Hemingway with Colonel Charles T. (Buck) Lanham September 18, 1944" (source)

From Collier's magazine, November 18, 1944, pp. 18, 70-71, 73. (See Hemingway's other World War II essays here.)

WAR IN THE SIEGFRIED LINE

BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

BY RADIO VIA PARIS

Perhaps it seemed that we easily broke into Germany's strong defenses, but here is the story of conflict in the Schnee Eifel range—and how the Wump gun did its part.

A lot of people will tell you how it was to be first into Germany and how it was to break the Siegfried Line and a lot of people will be wrong. So this will not be held up by the censor while all the claims are threshed out. We do not claim anything. No claims, see? You get it? No claims at all. Let them decide and then we will see who was in there first. I mean which outfit. Not which people.

The infantry cracked the Siegfried Line. They cracked it on a cold rainy morning when even the crows weren't flying, much less the Air Force. Two days before, on the last day before the weather broke for the bad, we had come to the end of the rat race. It had been a fine rat race from Paris up as far as Le Cateau, with bitter fighting at Landrecies that few saw and fewer still are left to remember. Then there had been the forcing of the passes of the Ardennes Forest in country like the illustrations for Grimm's Fairy Tales only a lot grimmer.

Then the rat race went on again through rolling, forested country. Sometimes we would be half an hour behind the retreating enemy's mechanized force. Sometimes we would get up to within five minutes of them. Sometimes we would overrun them and, from the point of the recon, you would hear the fifties hammering behind you and the 105-millimeter Wump guns going on the tank destroyers and the merging roar and rattle of enemy fire, and the word would come along: "Enemy tanks and half-tracks in the rear of the column. Pass the word along."

Then, suddenly the rat race was over, and we were on a high hill, out of the forest, and all the rolling hills and forests that you saw ahead of you were Germany. There was a heavy, familiar roar from the creek valley below as the bridge was blown, and beyond the black cloud of smoke and debris that rose, you saw two enemy half-tracks tearing up the white road that led into the German hills.

Our artillery was blasting yellow-white clouds of smoke and road dust ahead of them. You watched one half-track slither sideways across the road. The other stopped on the turn of the road after trying twice to move like a wounded animal. Another shell pounded up a fountain of dust and smoke alongside the crippled half-track and when the smoke cleared, you could see the bodies on the road. That was the end of the rat race, and we came down a trail in the woods and into the ford over the river and across the slab-stoned river bed and up the far bank into Germany.

We passed the unmanned old-fashioned pillboxes that many unfortunate people were to think constituted the Siegfried Line, and got up into good high ground that night. The next day we were past the second line of concrete fortified strong points that guarded road junctions and approaches to the main Westwall, and that same night we were up on the highest of the high ground before the Westwall ready to assault in the morning.

The weather had broken. It was cold and raining and blowing half a gale, and ahead of us was the dark forest wall of the Schnee Eifel range where the dragon lived, and behind us on the first hill behind was a German reviewing stand that had been built for high officers to occupy when they watched the maneuvers that proved that the Westwall never could be broken. We were hitting it on the point that the Germans had chosen to prove, in sham battles, that it was impregnable.

A Fighter's Report of the Assault

The rest of this story is told in the words of Captain Howard Blazzard of Arizona. It may give you a little idea of what happens in combat.

"That night we got L Company into that town to hold it. It was practically unoccupied. Six Jerries, and we shot them. (This was the town, or small village rather, from which the attack started in the morning up the hill and across the level field of fire over a cropped wheatfield, the wheat shocks stacked, to assault the main fortifications of the Westwall which were in the thick pine forest of the dark hill beyond.)

"The Colonel, of Washington, D. C., got the three battalion commanders together and the S-2 and the S-3 and planned the break-through for in the morning. Where this break was going to be made (you notice the phrasing 'Going to be made,' not 'Going to be attempted') we were supposed to have one company of tanks and one company of T.D.s (Tank Destroyers) but they only gave us one platoon of tanks (five). We were supposed to have twelve T.D.s and we had only nine. You remember how everything was then and how the gas was short and all.

"The way it was supposed to be now (There is a great difference in combat between the way it is supposed to be and the way it is—as great as the difference in how life is supposed to be and how it is): L Company, that had moved into town the night before, was going to be on the right flank, and they were going to make the holding attack with fire.

"K Company had started walking early, before six A.M., and they were going to ride the tanks and the T.D.s. While they were coming up we got the T.D.s up into town and finally by twelve-thirty we got one platoon of tanks. Five of them. All five of them.

"Now I Company was back so far they couldn't get up. You remember everything that was happening that day. (Plenty. Plenty was happening.) So the Colonel, he took a company away from the First Battalion and threw them in, so he'd have three companies to make the attack.

How the Attack Got Started

"That was around one o'clock. The Colonel and I went up this left fork that was sort of drawn off on the left, to watch the attack get started. It started fine. K Company started riding the tanks and the T.D.s, and then they moved up and got just below the crest and fanned out. Just as they should. Just as they hit that little crest, L Company on their right opened up with machine guns and 60-millimeter mortars and all that fire, to attract attention from K Company.

"The tanks and T.D.s got up the hill and the flak guns (German antiaircraft guns,which fire almost as rapidly as machine guns, being used for direct fire on the ground against the attacking troops) opened up first. The 88 which we knew was in there held its fire. When the ack-ack and the machine guns opened up, the men started to dismount from the tanks, just as they should, and they went on up and they went fine till they got out in the open on that big bare field and almost to the edge of the last field in front of the woods.

"About that time they really opened up with the 88s—the 88s and all that flak. One T.D. hit a mine over on the left by that little road, you remember, just before it goes into the woods, and the tanks began to run. Lost a T.D. and a tank and they all started backing up. You know how they are when they start backing up.

"They started coming back down across the field, dragging a few wounded and a few limping. You know how they look coming back. Then the tanks started coming back and the T.D.s coming back and the men coming back plenty. They couldn't stay in that bare field, and the ones who weren't hit started yelling for the medicos for those who were hit, and you know how that excites everybody.

"The Colonel and I were sitting by the house and we could see the fight and the way it started fine and good. We thought they'd got right through. But then this stuff starts. Then come four tankers tearing along on foot and yelling and hollering how everything was knocked out.

"Then I asked the Colonel—I'd been in the Third Battalion a long time—and I said, 'Sir, I can go out there and kick those in the tail and take that place.' And he said, 'You're S-2 in a staff function and you stay where you. are.' That chewed my tail out. That made me unhappy.

"We sat there another ten or fifteen minutes, and the wounded kept drifting along back, and we were just there and I thought we're going to lose this battle. Then the Colonel says, 'Let's get up there. This thing has got to move. Those chickenspits aren't going to break down this attack.'

"So we started up the hill and we passed little groups here and there—you know how they drift together—and you know how the Colonel looks, and he is carrying his forty-five and walking up that hill. There is a sort of little terrace at the top where the hill starts to come down; under the cover of that little terrace were all the tanks and the T.D.s, and K Company was lined up along in a sort of skirmish line and they were all just sort of dead, and the attack was gone.

"The Colonel came up the hill and out over this terrace where they were all lying and he said, 'Let's go get these Krauts. Let's kill these chickenspitters. Let's get up over this hill now and get this place taken.'

"He had his goddam forty-five and he shot three-four times at where the Kraut fire was coming from, and he said, 'Goddam, let's go get these Krauts! Come on! Nobody's going to stop here now!' They were plenty cold as hell but he kept talking to them and telling them, and pretty soon he got some of them, and in fifteen minutes he got most of them moving. Once he got them moving, the Colonel and I and Smith (Sergeant James C. Smith from Tullahoma, Tennessee), we went on ahead of them and the attack was going again and we headed into the woods. It was bad in the woods but they went in good now.

"When we got into the woods (The woods were close-planted fir trees, and the shell-bursts tore and smashed them, and the splinters from the tree bursts were like javelins in the half-light of the forest, and the men were shouting and calling now to take the curse off the darkness of the forest and shooting and killing Krauts and moving ahead now) it was pretty thick for the tanks, and so they went to the outside. They were shooting into the woods, but we had to stop them now because K Company had pushed through ahead of them way into the woods.

Ambush in the Woods

"The Colonel and I and Smith, we went on ahead and found a hole in the timber where we could get a T.D. in. Now the attack was going good on ahead and all of a sudden we saw a bunker right beside us, and they started shooting at us. We decided there were Krauts in it. (This bunker was completely hidden by fir trees planted over it and grass growing over it and was a subterranean fort on the Maginot Line style with automatic ventilation, concussion-proof doors, bunks fifteen feet underground for the men, special exit provisions so that it could be run over and then its occupants attack the enemy from the rear, and it held fifty SS troops whose mission was to let the attack pass and then come out and fire on it.)

"All there was left with us now was the Colonel, I and Smith and Roger, this French boy who had been with us ever since St. Poix. I never knew his last name but he was a wonderful Frenchman. Best boy in a fight you ever saw. These Krauts in the bunker started shooting at us. So we started walking over toward it and we decided we'd got to get them out.

"There was an embrasure over on our side, but we couldn't see that, the way it was all planted over. I had only one grenade because I wasn't expecting what we were going to do. We got over within about ten yards of the pillbox, coming in this side of it. We couldn't see the aperture at the bottom of it. It all looked like a wooded hillock.

"They're shooting sort of scattered all the while. The Colonel and Smith were at the right of it. Roger was going in right toward the aperture. You couldn't see the fire.

"I yelled at Roger to get down, and right then they shot him. I saw the goddam hole then and I threw the grenade to go in, but you know how those apertures are beveled, and it hit and bounced out. Smith grabbed the Frenchman by the heels and started to drag him clear because he was still alive. In that slit trench on the left, there was a Kraut and he stood up, and Smith shot him with his carbine. You can tell how fast this happened because just then the grenade went off, and we all ducked.

"Then we started to get a lot of fire from the field out in front of the woods—the field we'd crossed to get into the woods—and Smith said, 'Colonel, you better get down in that hole because here comes those Krauts.'

"They were firing from the wheat shocks in the field right there in front of the woods and in that little tongue of brush. The Krauts started shooting at us from out there, which should have been our rear.

"The Colonel dropped one Kraut with his forty-five. Smith shot two with his carbine; I was in back of the pillbox and I shot the one who was in back of us across the road about fifteen yards away. I had to shoot at him three times before he stopped and then I didn't kill him good because when the T.D. came up finally he was lying right across the middle of the road and, seeing the T.D. coming up, he sort of scrounged up and tried to get out of the way, and the T.D. went over him and flattened him out.

"The rest of the Krauts sort of took off across the field and we didn't have any real trouble with that lot. Just sort of long-range fire. We know we killed three and we wounded some more that took off.

"We didn't have any more hand grenades and the b——s in the bunker wouldn't come out when we yelled at them. So the Colonel and I were waiting for them to come out, and Smith went off to the left and found a T.D. and brought it up. That was the T.D. that ran over the Kraut I had to shoot three times with that little old German pistol.

"The Krauts still wouldn't come out when talked to, so we pulled that T.D. right up to the back of that steel door we had located by now, and that old Wump gun fired about six rounds and blasted that door in, and then you ought to have heard them want to come out. You ought to have heard them yell and moan and moan and scream and yell 'Kamerad!'

"The T.D. had that old Wump gun pointed right in the door, and they started to come out, and you never saw such a mess. Every one of them was wounded in five or six different places, from pieces of concrete and steel. About eighteen good ones came out, and all the time inside there was the most piteous moaning and screaming, and there was one fellow with both his legs cut off by the steel door. I went down to see how everything was and got a suitcase with a couple of quarts of whisky in it and a couple of boxes of cigars and a pistol for the Colonel.

"One of the prisoners was in pretty good shape, not really good shape but he could travel. He was a noncom. The rest of them were lying down outside, all moaning, wounded and shot up.

"This noncom showed us where the next bunker was. By then, we knew what they looked like, and you could spot them by any sort of rise of ground. So we took the T.D. and went down the road about seventy-five yards to this second bunker—you know which one—and had this bird ask them to surrender. You ought to have seen this Kraut. He was a Wehrmacht, regular army, and he kept saying, 'Bitty. S. S. S.' He meant they were those real bad ones and they would kill him if he asked them to surrender. He yelled at them to come on out, and they wouldn't come. They wouldn't answer. So we pulled the Wump gun up to the backdoor just like the other time and yelled to them to come out, and they wouldn't come. So we put in about ten shots from the Wump gun and then they came out—what was left of them. They were a sad and bedraggled lot. Every one of them was in awful shape.

"They were SS boys, all of them, and they got down in the road, one by one, on their knees. They expected to get shot. But we were obliged to disappoint them. There were about twelve that got out. The rest were all blown to pieces and wounded all to hell. There were legs and arms and heads scattered all over that goddam place.

"We had so many prisoners and nobody to guard them but the Colonel and I and Smith and the Wump gun, so we sort of sat around there until things sort of clarified. After a while a medical aide came up and looked at the French boy, Roger. He was lying there all the time and when they came to dress him, he said, 'Mon colonel, je suis content. I am happy to die on German soil.'

"They put a tag on him reading 'Free French' and I said, 'The hell with that,' and changed the tag to read 'Company L.'

"Every time I think about that Frenchman, it makes me want to get to killing Krauts again.". . .

There is a lot more to the story. Maybe that is as much as you can take today. I could write you just what I Company did, what the other two battalions did. I could write for you, if you could take it, what happened at the third bunker and the fourth bunker and at fourteen other bunkers. They were all taken.

If you want to know sometime, get someone who was there to tell you. If you wish, and I can still remember, I will be glad to tell you sometime what it was like in those woods for the next ten days; about all the counterattacks and about the German artillery. It is a very, very interesting story if you can remember it. Probably it has even epic elements. Doubtless sometime you will even see it on the screen.

The Cinematic Possibilities

It probably is suitable for screen treatment, because I remember the Colonel saying, "Ernie, a lot of the time I felt as though I were at a Grade B picture and kept saying to myself, 'This is where I came in.'"

The only thing that will probably be hard to get properly in the picture is the German SS troops, their faces black from the concussion, bleeding at the nose and mouth, kneeling in the road, grabbing their stomachs, hardly able to get out of the way of the tanks, though probably the cinema will be able to make this even more realistic. But a situation like that is the fault of the engineers who, when they designed those concussion-proof doors, did not expect to have 10.5-mm. Wump guns come up and fire point-blank at them from behind.

That was not provided for when the specifications were laid down. And sometimes, observing such sad sights and such elaborate preparations gone wrong, I have a feeling that it really would have been better for Germany not to have started this war in the first place.

THE END

1943. Film and Theater in Wartime Russia

Foreign and Domestic Productions for Russian Audiences

Source: A scene from Volga, Volga (1938), said to be Joseph Stalin's favorite film

CBS' Moscow Rep Details How U.S. Pix Click in USSR

By BILL DOWNS

Moscow, April 21, 1943.

(Following comments on the current tastes of Moscow film-goers, transmitted in advance by cable to CBS' N.Y. headquarters, was to have been broadcast from Moscow as part of the network's 'World News Today' program Sunday matinee (18), but reception trouble intervened).

Moscow theatre-goers like American films. Any kind. There's an old Lawrence Tibbett film whose American title I've forgotten, but in Russian called "Thrilled by You." And suburban theaters for the past two years have been showing Deanna Durbin's 100 Men and a Girl. People get up at six o'clock in the morning and stand in front of box-offices to get a seat to see a Walt Disney reel.

These American films are the closest link people in the United States have with Russian people. I was talking to the old Soviet film commission the other day. He said his department had been buying American films, "but prices [are] so high we can't get [as] many as we want—we need money for the war." Then he said he thought it important that the two nations exchange films to let each see how the other is fighting and living in this was against the common enemy.

One of the best known women in Moscow today is "Lady Hamilton." She's a favorite topic of conversation...subway, street corners; anywhere you find a group of Russians. It took me several days to discover that when Moscow speaks about the the lady friend of Britain's famous Lord Nelson—"Lady Hamilton," it's a film. Last week the British-produced motion picture Lady Hamilton opened in Moscow theaters and immediately set record[s]. It's now playing in one theater and seems set for permanent run. I have known dozens of Russians who have seen the picture three four times—and Russians never go to the theater alone. They go in groups.

It's a mystery to foreigners here why Russians take such an avid interest in last century doings [of] a man and woman they never saw or heard of before. But this, in many ways, is a mysterious country.

For example, no one ever figured out why a not-too-good Hollywood comedy, The Three Musketeers starring the Ritz Bros., has been running steadily somewhere in Moscow for over six months. When a Russian likes something, he really likes it, and he doesn't consider he knows anything about a motion picture or play unless he sees it three or four times. That tradition extends even to film and theater critics. They don't write anything about a production until they see it a half dozen times or more.

____________________________________________________

17 Pictures Doing Capacity In Moscow; Russians Praise Victory

By WILLIAM DOWNS

Moscow, May 1, 1943.

There are 17 films in Moscow cinemas playing to packed houses. It is not uncommon to see a line of people booking seats at 6 a.m.—they are the night shift from war industries seeking seats in jampacked Moscow theatres.

The only way for a Moscow theatre manager to set a new house record is to put a couple of extra seats in. There are no 'house records' in Moscow. Every theatre is full at every performance. There are no first-run traditions in this country. When the Russian people like a film they appreciate it enough to see it three or four times. They are easy to please.

Released this month were two wildly different films, both doing the usual land office business. One is a documentary, 'In the Lands of Middle Asia,' a popular science film about animals in Asiatic Russia. The other, 'The Actress,' is directed by one of the Soviet Union's best directors, Leonid Trauberg, stars Galina Sergeyeva. The story concerns an actress who thinks theatre is unnecessary during wartime and who leaves the stage and becomes a war nurse. A Red Army commander convinces her otherwise, and later she returns to the theatre and joins a theatrical brigade.

Other films listed briefly are:

'Mashenka,' which was performed in 1942, is the story of the Soviet Union's first war nurses—Leningrad girls—at the Finnish front. Stresses the heroism of the Red Army.

'Antosha Rybkin,' produced in 1943, is a comedy demonstrating the trend away from the serious. The story concerns a group of actors giving a performance at the front.

'Fortune Seekers,' produced three or four years ago, is still popular. It stars an honorary artist of the Soviet Union, Maria Blumenthal Tamarina, and the Jewish theatre star, Zuskin.

'Volga, Volga,' made several years ago, concerns the competition of two amateur brigades from collective farms in the Volga region and their adventures in a Moscow amateur show. 'Volga, Volga' is still a popular Russian song.

'Alexander Parkhomenko,' produced in 1942, is about Parkhomenko, a hero of the civil war in Ukraine.

'Last Gypsy Camp,' completed six or seven years ago, depicts the life of the gypsies in the Soviet Union, and the changes under communism.

'A Soldier Comes Back From the Front' is another picture showing the civil war in a Ukrainian village. It currently stars Yanina Aheimo, the current Soviet Shirley Temple.

'Kotovsky,' produced this year, is the story about Kotovsky, the outstanding guerrilla leader in the civil war.

'Fedjka,' made about five years ago, is about the participation of children in the civil war.

'Youth of Maxim,' produced three or four years ago, concerns the struggles of workers under the Czarist regime.

'Chapayev' tells about one of the principal heroes of the civil war. Produced 10 years ago, it is still going strong. It is considered by many the best film ever produced in the Soviet Union.

'Dowerless Girl' is patterned after a Russian classical dramatic play by Ostrovsky, who is as good as Shakespeare for regular Russian theatre goers.

Also being shown, Alexander Korda's 'Lady Hamilton,' is one of the most popular films yet released by the Soviet Union.

Also 'Desert Victory,' which has drawn the same kind of praise from the Russians as they gave their own excellent documentaries, such as 'Stalingrad,' 'One Day of War,' etc.

____________________________________________________

Russian Dramatic Standards Remain High, Apparently Unhampered by War

By BILL DOWNS

(Another in a series about Soviet show business)

Moscow, May 25, 1943.

Dozens of Moscow theatres are keeping Russian dramatic art standards on a level with the best in the world, and there is little evidence that their production and staging are hampered by the war.

The Russian people are generally serious minded and like their drama heavy—and when they like something they go to it for the rest of their lives. Live entertainment in Russia centers around serious drama, the ballet, and the opera. It is classical and cultural—all with a capital 'C.'

Between the acts in these theatres one can hear 14-year-olds criticizing the ballet star for faulty execution of a dance with the knowledge of an expert, while other youngsters delight in catching some actor misquoting Pushkin. Americans in Moscow who had previously never been to anything more cultural than a baseball game are not becoming experts in the ballet and opera, a knowledge which is going to sound funny kicked around local taverns when those Americans return home.

There are three general schools of Russian drama which divide the Moscow theatres. They are the classical, the realistic, and the modern, headed respectively by the Maley Theatre, the Moscow Art Theatre, and the Komsomol Theatre. People know by their classification just what kind of show they'll see and are thus able to choose a night's entertainment. Like the cinemas, they have to choose a week ahead in order to secure tickets. The crowds are that great.


Publish Programs

Every 10 days the theatres publish programs which are broadsided in factories, on streets, and in newspapers. The same is true for the ballets and the operas. At present there are two big ballet theatres, with classical productions at the Bolshoi and modern productions at the Stanislavsky.

Last week classical drama fans had an opportunity to see Gorky's 'On the Bottom,' Chekhov's 'Three Sisters,' Maeterlinck's 'Bluebird,' 'Anna Karenina,' 'Cherry Orchard,' 'School for Scandal,' Balzac's 'Eugenia Granda,' 'Twelfth Night,' and others.

Modern plays include 'Front,' by Alexander Koreneichuk, Ukrainian author who is now Vice Commisar of Foreign Affairs. It is Russia's biggest wartime success and tells the story of conflict between an old-time revolutionary general and a young officer, presenting surprisingly sharp criticisms of old-line generals. Koreneichuk's 'In the Steppes of the Ukraine' was also produced last week.

War correspondent Konstantin Simonov early in the war wrote a hit play called 'Russian People,' which is still popular. It is the story of a besieged Soviet garrison ['Russian people' flopped in New York this season when produced by the Theatre Guild.—Ed.]


The Opera

The opera fair is standard: 'Tosca,' 'Rigoletto,' 'La Traviata,' 'Barber of Seville,' Tchaikovsky's 'Queen of Spades,' and the newly produced 'Ivan Susanin' by Glinka, which is a variation of his opera 'Life for a Tsar.'

Russia's famous ballet ranges from the famous 'Swan Lake'—the Bolshoi company takes four hours to present four acts—to the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' or an original production by the modern Stanislavsky company, built around the adventures of Falstaff. Other ballets include Delibes' 'Coppelia and Ballet,' built for Chopin's music called 'Chopinana." Stanislavsky also presents a ballet called 'Straussiana,' which is one of the best in town.

Operettas include old favorites such as Offenbach's 'La Belle Helene,' Strauss, 'Gypsy Baron,' Friml's 'Rose Marie,' and a Russian modern operetta called 'Girl from Barcelona,' which is a hit. It's about one of the Spanish children educated in the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War.

____________________________________________________

Soviet Set for 'Biggest' Legit Season, 600 Pro Theatres Map Productions

By BILL DOWNS

Moscow, June 29, 1943.

The legitimate theatre is getting a wartime shot in the arm throughout Russia, from the front line to remote Siberian villages, as the demand for entertainment advances in direct proportion to the intensity of the fighting.

Mikhail Borisovitch Krapchenko, head of the State Art Committee—a position amounting to Commissar for Drama of the Soviet Union—has said the theatres are now preparing for 'the biggest season ever' next fall. All off Russia's 600 professional theatres are concentrating on new productions as well as revival of the Russian classics. Krapchenko has been head of the Art Committee for four years. He was formerly a university professor of history and literature. The job has all the hazards of American theatrical production. Krapchenko and his committee invariably produce nothing but successes, but even they sometimes fail when the Russian public manages to stay away in droves. However, Krapchenko's batting average is good enough to make him one of the best chiefs the Soviet theatre has ever had. In addition, his job include the display and production of Soviet art and music.

In an exclusive Variety interview, Krapchenko said the wartime Moscow theatre is tending toward serious drama and tragedy. When asked why, when the theatre in the United States and Great Britain was heading in the opposite direction toward light comedy, Krapchenko replied, 'One reason is that during wartime it is easier for Russians to weep than to laugh. Also, in wartime it is easier for our author to effectively compose tragedy than comedy. The world today is essentially sad and full of tragedy—in this respect Soviet theatre reflects the times. And it is doing a good job.'


Comedies Not Successful

Krapchenko said several comedies, plays, and operettas have been tried on Moscow audiences but were not very successful. He explained that the legitimate theatre is generally divided into two sections—the State Theatre, which is a government project, and the National Theatre, governed by art committees of the individual Soviet republics. Both these divisions send art brigades with plays and vaudeville to the front lines. Since then the war there has been a flood of plays by amateurs. These are examined by various reading committees who pass along the best to the authorities, where they are re-read by directors and committee heads. Krapchenko said many amateur plays now showing were mostly in provincial theatres. An outstanding example of a successful play now showing in Kuybyshev is called 'Long Range Aircraft.' It is a story of Soviet bombers written by a flier who was awarded Russia's highest medal, Hero of the Soviet Union. He is now working on another.

The Soviet Union's professional playwrights often receive assignments to write a play dealing with some specific state of war effort, such as partisan farmers, the Red Navy, and such. However, the professionals generally are given a free hand to write anything they want.


Balanced Repertoire

A balanced repertoire is due this fall, to be divided among new productions and classics. For example, the Moscow Art Theatre is now preparing four productions, two modern, including a new story of Russian oil fields called 'Deep Bore,' and a popular one called 'The Russian People.' The latter is the story of a surrounded Russian garrison in a Soviet village (produced the past season in New York by the Theatre Guild). Classical productions include 'Hamlet' and the classic 'The Forest' by Ostrovsky.

Krapchenko said that, since the war, the Soviet Art Committee virtually lost all connection with what is going on in the American theatre. 'We are extremely interested in wartime trends of drama in the US, but it is most difficult to maintain any sort of liaison. I feel we have things going on in the Soviet theatre which are extremely interesting to American producers. I am sure the American theatre is doing things we want to know about. However, with transport as difficult as at present, nothing much can be done about it right now. It is something to remember for after the war.'

He adds that his committee would be glad to exchange plays with American authors—if not for production, then for the exchange of ideas.

____________________________________________________

Dubbed Russian Version of 'In Old Chicago' a Wow

By BILL DOWNS

Moscow, July 6, 1943.

A Russian version of an American film, 'In Old Chicago,' opened this week in Moscow. It is the Soviet Union's first major attempt at adopting Russian soundtrack to a foreign cinema.

After six months working in the Alma Ata studios, this film came out with one of the best technical jobs yet achieved in Russia and is fully comparable to anything of this type yet done in America.

The only bits of American soundtrack remaining are Alice Faye's songs and general overall sound effects of street and crowd noises.

The remarkable thing about the film is the selection of actors whose voices were dubbed in. Miss Faye's throaty waverings were copied by a Russian actress, and a Russian comic even emulates Andy Devine's pebble soprano so effectively that his gags and mannerisms are fully preserved.

Another remarkable achievement is that the Russian script writer seems to have chosen Russian words which more or less match American lip movements. Despite the difference in language, there is no time when the players are not talking.

The job shows extreme care and extensive rehearsal. The audience doesn't know who the Russian actors are taking the American parts until the end of the film when the cast is given. They rate a big salvo.

'In Old Chicago' is packing them in for another reason. Rowdy love scenes and Miss Faye's portrayal of a woman of questionable reputation is a little shocking to the Russian public—the kind of shock that is good for the box office. There is an embarrassed silence, for example, at the corny dancing of the Can-Can, which many Russians are seeing for the first time. However, Alice Faye's buxom curves fit the Russian male's ideal of what women should look like. And there's many a Soviet sigh heaved over the masculine beauty of Tyrone Power.

However, one of the strangest things is the audience reaction to the Chicago fire. Russians who have endured bombings, Red Army men who fought at Stalingrad and Leningrad, and evacuees whose homes have been a battlefield, all leave the theatre remarking with feeling about the horrible burning of Chicago.

"The G.I. and the General" by Ernest Hemingway

The G.I. and the General

"Ernest Hemingway in uniform, wearing a helmet, and holding binoculars during World War II," 1944 (source)

From Collier's magazine, November 4, 1944, pp. 11, 46-47. (See Hemingway's other World War II essays here.)

THE G.I. AND THE GENERAL

BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

(By cable from France). There were weary tank men and German machine guns and a guy who once sang with a good band—and there was a man who knew that "there should never be tired generals."

The wheat was ripe but there was no one there to cut it now, and tank tracks led through it to where the tanks lay pushed into the hedge that topped the ridge that looked across the wooded country to the hill we would have to take tomorrow. There was no one between us and the Germans in that wooded country and on the hill. We knew they had some infantry there and between fifteen and forty tanks. But the division had advanced so fast that the division on its left had not come up, and all this country that you looked across, seeing the friendly hills, the valleys, the farmhouses with their fields and orchards, and the gray-walled, slate-roofed buildings of the town with its sharp-pointing church tower, was all one open flank. All of it was deadly.

The division had not advanced beyond its objective. It had reached its objective, the high ground we were now on, exactly when it should have. It had been doing this for day after day after day after week after month now. No one remembered separate days any more, and history, being made each day, was never noticed but only merged into a great blur of tiredness and dust, of the smell of dead cattle, the smell of earth new-broken by TNT, the grinding sound of tanks and bulldozers, the sound of automatic-rifle and machine-gun tire, the interceptive, dry rattle of German machine-pistol fire, dry as a rattler rattling; and the quick, spurting tap of the German light machine-guns—and always waiting for others to come up.

It was merged in the memory of the fight up out of the deadly, low hedgerow country onto the heights and through the forest and on down into the plain, by and through the towns, some smashed, and some intact, and on up into the rolling farm and forest country where we were now.

History now was old K-ration boxes, empty foxholes, the drying leaves on the branches that were cut for camouflage. It was burned German vehicles, burned Sherman tanks, many burned German Panthers and some burned Tigers, German dead along the roads, in the hedges and in the orchards, German equipment scattered everywhere, German horses roaming the fields, and our own wounded and our dead passing back strapped two abreast on top of the evacuation jeeps. But mostly history was getting where we were to get on time and waiting there for others to come up.

Now on this clear summer afternoon we stood looking across the country where the division would fight tomorrow. It was one of the first days of the really good weather. The sky was high and blue, and ahead and to our left, our planes were working on the German tanks. Tiny and silver in the sun, the P-47s came in high in pairs of pairs and circled before peeling off to dive-bomb. As they went down, growing big-headed and husky-looking in the snarl of the dive you saw the flash and the smoke of the bombs and heard their heavy thud. Then the P-47s climbed and circled again to come down strafing, smoke streaming gray behind them as they dived ahead of the smoke their eight big .50s made as they hammered. There was a very bright flash in the trees of the wooded patch the planes were diving on, and then black smoke arose and the planes came down strafing again and again.

"They got a Jerry tank then," one of the tank men said.

"That's one of the b—s less."

"Can you see him with your glasses?" another helmeted tank man asked me.

I said, "The trees hide him from this side."'

"They would," the tank man said. "If we used cover like those damned Krauts, a lot more guys would get to Paris or Berlin or wherever it is we're going."

"Home," another man said. "That's all I care about going. That's where I'm going. All those other places will be off limits anyway. We're never going in no town."

"Take it easy," another soldier said. "Take it a day at a time."

"Say, correspondent," another soldier called. "One thing I can't understand. You tell me, will you? What are you doing here if you don't have to be here? Do you do it just for the money?"

"Sure," I said. "Big money. Lots of money."

"It don't make sense to me," he said seriously. "I understand anybody doing it that has to do it. But doing it for money don't make sense. There ain't the money in the world to pay me for doing it."

A German high-explosive shell with a time fuse cracked overhead and to our right, leaving a black puff of smoke in the air.

"Those lousy Krauts shot that stuff too high," the soldier who wouldn't do it for money said.

Just then the German artillery started shelling the hill on our left where one of the battalions of the first of the three infantry regiments in the division lay above the town. The side of the hill was jumping into the air in spurting dark fountains from the multiple bursts.

"They'll shoot on us next," one of the tank men said. "They've got good observation on us here."

"Lay down under the back of the tank there if they start to shoot," the big tank man who had told the other soldier to take it a day at a time said. "That's the best place to be."

"She looks sort of heavy," I told him. "Suppose you have to start backing out in a hurry?"

"I'll holler to you," he grinned. Our 105s opened up behind us in counter-battery fire, and the German shelling stopped. A Piper Cub was circling slowly overhead. Another was off to the right.

"They don't like to shoot when those Cubs are up," the big tank man said. "They spot the flashes, and then our artillery gives them hell or the planes go in after them." We stayed there a while but the German artillery only opened at intervals on the hill the battalion was holding. We were not attacking.

"Let's go back and see where the rest of the combat command has got to," I said.

"Okay," said Kimbrough, who drove the captured German motorcycle we rode on. "Let's go."

Equipped for Any Emergency

We said "So long" to the tank people and went back through the wheat field and got on the motorcycle, me on the back seat, and rode out into the dust of the road that the armor had churned into thick clouds of gray powder. The sidecar held a mixed lot of armament, photographic equipment, repair equipment, miscellaneous captured German bottled goods, live hand grenades, various automatic weapons, all belonging to Corporal (now Sergeant) John Kimbrough of Little Rock, Arkansas.

It could easily have served as a showcase for an advertisement of the well-armed guerrilla's dream, and I often wondered how Kim planned to deploy himself in the event we had to take other than evasive action on those rides through territory whose possession was in doubt. Versatile though he is and much as I respect his ability to improvise, yet I was sometimes appalled at the prospect of him managing more than three submachine guns, a variety of pistols, a carbine and, once, a German light machine gun, at a time, without dispersing his fire too much. But finally I decided he must be figuring on arming the countryside as we proceeded deeper into enemy territory. And, as it turned out, this worked out very well on one occasion and was worth one whole new stripe to my farseeing and, I then considered, slightly overarmed pal.

We headed back down the road to the town that we had taken that afternoon and I stopped in front of the cafe across from the church. The road was full of armor passing in their clanking, grinding howl; the noise of one tank dying off into the rising, retching, steel-tortured approach of the next. The tanks had their turrets open, and the crews returned perfunctorily the waves the boys of the village gave each vehicle. An old Frenchman in a black felt hat, a boiled shirt, a black tie, and a dusty black suit, with a bunch of flowers in his right hand, stood on the terrace of the church above the road and saluted each tank formally with the flowers.

"Who is the man by the church?" I asked the woman who owned the cafe, as we stood in the doorway to let the armor pass.

"He is a little crazy," she said. "But very patriotic. He has been there ever since you came through this morning. He has eaten no lunch. Twice his family have come for him, but he remains there."

"Did he salute the Germans, too?"

"Oh, no," madame said. "He is a man of extreme patriotism, but since several years, slightly touched, you know."

Pause for Refreshment

At a table, three soldiers were sitting with a carafe of cider, half full, and three glasses. "That slave driver," one of them who was unshaven, tall, thin, and limber with drink, was saying. "That dirty damn slave driver. Sixty miles back of the front and he'll kill every one of us."

"Who you talking about?" Kimbrough said to the soldier.

"That slave driver! That general!"

"How far did you say he was?" Kimbrough asked.

"Sixty miles if he's a damned inch. Sixty miles that we have died on. We're all dead. Don't he know it? Does he give a damn? That slave driver."

"Do you know how far he is back? He isn't three thousand yards back of here now," Kimbrough said. "Maybe he has gone up ahead. We passed him on the road a while back."

"Oh, you dope," the unshaven soldier said. "What the hell do you know about the war? That damn slave driver is sixty miles back if he is an inch. And look at me! I used to sing with good bands—good, good bands. And my wife is unfaithful to me. I don't have to prove it. She told me. And there's what I believe in, right over there."

He pointed across the road above the tanks where the middle-aged Frenchman was still lifting his flowers at each tank that passed. There was a priest in black, crossing the graveyard behind the church.

"Who you believe in? That Frenchman?" another G.I. asked.

"No, I don't believe in that Frenchman," the soldier who had sung with good bands said. "I believe in what the priest represents. I believe in the Church. And my wife is unfaithful to me not once but many times. I will not let her have a divorce because that is what I believe in. And that is why she would not sign the papers. And that is why I am not a bombardier. I went through Bombardier School and she would not sign the papers and right this minute now she is unfaithful to me."

"He can sing, too," one of the G.I.s said to me. "I heard him sing the other night and he can sing all right."

"I cannot say I hate my wife," the soldier who had sung with good bands said. "If she is unfaithful to me now, this minute, while we are here and have just taken this town, I cannot say I hate her, although she has ruined my life and kept me from being a bombardier. But I hate the general. I hate that blackhearted slave driver."

"Let him cry," said one of the other G.I.s. "It makes him feel better."

"Listen," the third G.I. said. "He's got a domestic problem and he has his troubles. But let me tell you something. This is the first town I have ever been in. In the infantry we take them, and more often we by-pass them, and then when we come back they are off limits and full of MPs. So far there is not an MP in this town except the traffic at the corner. It isn't right, truly, that we never can go in a town."

"Later on—" I started to say. The soldier who had sung with many good bands cut in.

"There isn't going to be any later on," he said. "That slave driver will kill every one of us. All he is doing it for is to be famous and because he does not know that men are human."

"He hasn't any more to say about whether we are in the line than I have," Kimbrough said. "You don't know what a divisional general does, or that he gets his orders like you or I do."

"All right. You get us out of the line, then. If you know all that, then you get us out of the line. I want to go home. If I was at home maybe none of this would ever have happened. Maybe my wife would never have been unfaithful to me at all, ever. Anyway, I don't care about anything now. I do not care about anything at all."

"Why don't you shut up, then?" Kimbrough asked.

"I will shut up," the band singer said. "And I will not say what I think about that general who is killing me every day."

That night we got back to advanced Division Headquarters late. After leaving the G.I.s at the cafe in the newly taken town, we had followed the armor down to where it had been stalled by mines, a road block and antitank fire.

At Division someone said, "The general wants to see you."

"I'll wash up."

"No. Go over. He's been worrying about you."

I found him in the trailer, stretched out in an old gray woolen union suit. His face that was still handsome when he was rested was gray and drawn and endlessly tired. Only his eyes were alive and his kind, warm voice said, "I was worried about you. What made you so late?"

"We ran into some armor and I came back the long way around."

"Which way?"

I told him.

"Tell me what you saw today with the this and the that" (mentioning the names of the infantry units committed).

I told him.

"The people are very tired, Ernie," he said. "They ought to have a rest. Even one good night's rest would help. If they could have four days . . . just four days. But it's the same old story."

"You're tired yourself," I said. "Get some sleep. Don't let me keep you awake."

"There should never be tired generals," he said. "And especially there should never be sick generals. I'm not as tired as they are."

Just then the telephone rang, and he picked it up, answering with the code name for the G.O.C. of the division.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. How are you, Jim?. . . No. I have them bedded down for the night. I want them to get some sleep . . . No. I am attacking in the morning but I am not assaulting. I am going to by-pass it. I don't believe in attacking towns, you know. You ought to know that by now . . . No. I'll come in below there . . . Yes. That's right."

He slipped off the blanketed shelf bed and over to the huge wall map, still holding the telephone, and I watched his compact, belly-less body in the gray woolen underwear, remembering what a spit-and-polish general this had been before the division had been in action.

He went on talking into the telephone: "Jim? . . . Yes. The only trouble you have ahead of you really is that cloverleaf-shaped business. You'll have to work around that. Now you know there's been some talk of something . . . Yes. I understand. Now if this happens, and when you're up with me, you can have all my artillery if you need it . . . Yes. Absolutely . . . That's quite right . . . No. Of course, I mean it. I wouldn't say it otherwise . . . That's right . . . Good . . . Good night."

A Promise of Some Rest

He hung up. His face was gray-glazed with tiredness. "That was the division on our left. They've done very well but they had slow going through the forest. When they come up and pass us, we are supposed to have four days' rest. The infantry needs it very badly. I'm very happy that they will have it."

"You ought to get some sleep now," I said.

"I have to get to work now. Keep off those lonesome roads and watch yourself."

"Good night, sir," I said. "I'll be by early in the morning."

Everybody thought that the division was going to be pulled out for four days, and the next day there was much talk of showers, clubmobiles, beautiful Red Cross girls including Whitney Bourne, who had played in the movies in a picture called Crime Without Passion, and we were all deeply moved by the prospect, ignoring the year in which the picture had been made. But it didn't turn out that way. There was a big German counter-attack instead and, as I write this, the division is still in the line.

THE END

1944. Trouble with Tank Maintenance

Tank Maintenance and Underground Newspapers in Belgium

"The crew of a Cromwell Mk IV tank of 2nd Welsh Guards on the drive into Brussels, 3 September 1944. Despite sporadic resistance from the Royal Palace and Gestapo HQ, the city's capture went smoothly, 'the chief difficulty being to cope with the populace who were very effusive in their welcome,' as the Battalion’s war diary put it with typical understatement" (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Brussels

September 5, 1944

This is Bill Downs speaking from Brussels.

The most common sight in a military convoy on the crowded roads of Belgium today are the worried faces of British tank men checking the bogies of their tanks, checking their gasoline, checking the treads, and wondering just how many miles the good tank Matilda or Gwen or Loch Lomond has left in her.

For the armored columns have traveled so far, so fast, that tank maintenance has become a serious problem. There has been no halt since the tanks left the Seine, and these monster vehicles literally wear themselves out because of their great weight when traveling at the speed and distance they have the past few days.

Rubber bogies on the Sherman tanks heat up and wear out. Tank treads break and weaken with use. Engines begin to stall and wear with use. However, every army that has used the Sherman has nothing but praise for its reliability at all times. There is no doubt that the reliability and good worksmanship of the German tank has been one of the major factors in the Allied blitzkrieg thought northern France.

And supply is another problem. I have seen a few tanks stalled along the roads because of lack of fuel—maybe four or five. Somehow they were not able to get fuel; probably because they simply outran their supply columns and were waiting for them to catch up.

But the advance continues. The Germans are not getting a chance to sit down. Allied troops have the scent and are pursuing it all out. However, if in the next couple of days there is a pause, you can think of the concern for maintenance and for supply which, after a hundred mile push, takes clever administration to bring forward.

The people of Brussels today are chuckling over the jokes of the new newspapers—the underground newspapers which they have read for the past four years in secret. Now these newspapers are being sold in the open.

The paper Free Belgium prints a column of classified advertisements worth repeating. Incidentally, the editor of this paper is published as "Peter Pan." The address is given as the former German headquarters. It seems that the Germans were never able to locate the exact spot where the paper was published.

This column, printed as a joke, gives some interesting sidelights on the Nazi occupation of Belgium.

One advertisement says: "German woman, very wealthy, wishes to marry a Belgian, any Belgian. Accepting nationality in exchange."

Another reads: "For sale: 15,000 false identity cards. Price: 50 francs."

A third reads: "Will exchange 5,000 photographs of Goebbels for five of Churchill."

These joking advertisements in the Free Belgium newspaper are a good barometer of the people and their feeling.

As a matter of fact, the Belgians are just a little disappointed that we invaded their country so rapidly. The general strike was scheduled to come off today. All policemen were to strike, all public services were to cease, all industries and shops in the city were to close. But now there is no need.

The famous Belgian White Army has never received direct orders to rise and fight, but they needed no orders and are rising and fighting very well without them.

This is Bill Downs in Brussels returning you to CBS in New York.