Looking at an Invasion
SOLON, S.L.
Looking at an Invasion By S.L. SOLON TtMft* paragraphs, based mi Mr. Solon's nfrimc* It Wnmtm landings, were wrtuen before the Great Invasion. Mr. gelsei west to Kurope as The New...
...They were good pilots and they came in low...
...An able British seaman earns about 4*24 a month as against the Indian's variable rate of from a little over 14 to slightly more than SS...
...And the tough sergeant said briefly: "They can have my place for thruppence...
...And now when the Spitfires were over we saw the Indian beachhead troops, ignoring the Herman bombs, rise from their trenches and cheer...
...We hope to receive "copy" from him as soon aa contact can be re-established...
...The volumes are to be deaigned in accord with existing constitutional provisions for education...
...And the men who fought by his side and who are still alive to drink tea remember, remeif.ber in the sad, blunt way of men in battle...
...Sweden haa a Peace High School, organised in l...
...You look at the flares coming from the beaches and wonder what they mean...
...They will not see the newspapers you will read tomorrow, or listen to the broadcasts...
...The Hippodrome, which was badly bombed when Nazi troops neared the Soviet capital, has been restored, and the fields and parts of the track which had been planted to vegetables have been put into racing condition...
...How far are we...
...Argentina has changed ita rhild-Jabor lews ao that minors between the ages of 14 and IS may work In regular employment for a maximum of eight hours a day or 48 hours a week...
...Jjfe e« o Landing Craft . . . 2^ATCH them from a plane and a flotilla of jjaning barges looks like a school of porpoises, "atch them from a destroyer and they reliable a flock of waterlogged geese in the wake •fa turkey-cock...
...What is the news...
...The paper itself was bani.rd four years ago, but still circulates clandestinely...
...It is reported by underground observers in France that at the corner of the Boulevard de la Chapelle and the Chemins de Ker du Nord, in Paris,, there is the old sign, ten meters high, advertising "La Populaira, free paper, of a free party (Socialist), for free people...
...Yon listen and wonder what is happening...
...It is difficult to measure distance...
...The trucks are being unloaded, plowing through the shallow water up the beaches...
...Is resistance growing...
...The copy was delivered...
...In the pale morning light new craft come in...
...Suddenly it snapped the tension, though not spoken for that reason...
...As for apace for seaman's accommodations, whereas Australian law provides 140 cubic feet per...
...Crews are digging in...
...Sooner or later the shriek of the enemy's fighter bombers will be heard...
...I remember Paddy who was carrying "copy" from the battle at San Salvo to catch the plane at Foggia in Italy...
...What was that...
...It is beautiful, incredible and for a moment as remote as the Northern lights...
...Elaborate preparations have been planned so that we can get the news to you by wireless, plane and motorboat front the beeches...
...The antiaircraft guns have been set up...
...Signal lights are twinkling and you can hear the stutter of small arms...
...1 remember one remark when we were approaching the Sicilian beaches in the early hours of July tenth...
...Now with three successful invasions behind them—with commanders ex|>erienced in the complex and most difficult military problem of landing by sea—with thousands of troops who have invaded before and learned the lessons— the Allied fist has swung across the waters and is smashing at the wall of concrete and steel which surrounds the Nazi citadel of tyranny...
...It oigaiur.es courses on preparation and education for peace and reconatruction...
...It is a world where time has suddenly expanded into monstrous proportions...
...carries infinite implication...
...You listen to the dull thumping of explosions coming over the water...
...Let me tell you something about this world...
...Like masses of grey wool blanket it suffocated the effects of the bombs...
...Indian troops comprising the beachhead were unloading at ten in the morning when the first moaning of approaching aircraft was heard...
...The second time was the sweep of the great armadas to the Sicilian beaches on July 10 1943...
...The last great death struggle aith the "supermen" and their "super-armies" which have dominated Europe for four years will have begun...
...Four times he was shelled, atrafed, hurled from his motorbike into the mud of the road...
...News on the Four Winds The Polish government in exile, through its Minister of Education, has announced that, because Polish textbooks hav: been so consistently destroyed by the Nazi occupying forces, two publishing houses hsve already been created, one in Jerusalem and one in Great Britain, which have printed large editions of 129 textbooks to replsce those destroyed...
...That is the way your fighting men want it...
...And here is one I knew and on the gray face, under the cropped hair, there is just one red mark and nothing more...
...The signs of battle are there an the captured beaches where groups of men may be huddled around fires "brewing up" as they did in Sicily, south of Syracuse on that invasion morning...
...Some of them get stuck and the furious bulldozer—that marvelous vehicle of all work— has the task of pulling them out...
...He waa one of the first eerreeawadeata aehore in Sicily and in Salerno aad hie dispatches were carried on the front pages ef nearly every paper in the muni ry...
...The Indians, as a rule, earn about 26 per cent as much...
...You can make out the shore now, like a black ice berg around which the waters lap...
...Solon ia now in France with the Allied invasion forces...
...Italy was knocked out of the warv Great German armies were drained off to defend a territory that had become a liability...
...I remember them at the beaches south of Syracuse...
...respondeat far the London Newa Chronicle and covered the North African, Sicilian and Italiaa campaigns...
...If They are the landing goes on nevertheless...
...You look at your watch...
...Has a beach been taken...
...Now the drowned vehicle will have to be towed out and dried...
...Poor bloke," I hear someone say...
...As you listen to this, be assured that neither bomb, nor shell, nor machinecan bullet will keep the reports from reaching you...
...A simple question "What was that...
...No philosophic query has ever excited more speculation, most of it silent in the mind, than this phrase spoken softly on a landing craft...
...It is an almost speechless world under the black sky...
...The first ten bombing attacks are the hardest," an Indian officer told me later that day...
...Two weeks later the Allied troops leaped the •traits of Messina and swung north where they joined with the powerful forces that had landed south of Salerno and battled their way up the bloody beaches...
...Are we going to the right landing space...
...It is intended to send these volumes into Poland st the first opportunity...
...A mile...
...A minute has become hours long and hoars bulge Into years...
...The reporters with them are proud to do their bidding...
...Then, suddenly there is an explosion of activity, great flares turn night into daylight...
...Looking at the spectacular display bursting on shore a British officer said: "I bet there are people back home who'd give a hundred quid to see that...
...Three words censored...
...The men whose actions your war correspondents are reporting know what the ordeal of waiting means...
...gelsei west to Kurope as The New Leader eorrespondent...
...Later he became a war cor...
...man, Norway'a the same, France'a 123, and Britain's 120, the Indian allotment is only 72...
...The first time it was in Africa in November 1942 when Rommel's proud Afrika Korps was ground between Montgomery's Eighth Army and the British and American forces that landed in North Africa...
...It is only when you are in one, waiting for H-hour of D-day—the hour of attack—that the *?I—which means landing craft for infantry— er LCT—which is a tank landing craft—be•amea a world in itself...
...In the darkness you see the silhouettes of the men around you, weapons jutting from them like new incredible limbs...
...Mexico's educational authorities are at work on a study of textbooks for children, with the aim of providing new texts which, while avoiding subjecta and methods that are psychologically unsound and harmful, will remain free from propaganda and partisan pontical ideas...
...It will be the fourth mighty series of Allied landings in the Atlantic-Mediterranean theatre...
...Covered with mud and bruises, exhausted and hungry Paddy said, and he was Still smiling, "Fancy getting up on a rainy learning in London or New York—and no newspaper...
...Wages are fixed at a minimum of eight U. S. cents an hour during the first year's employment, and 12 for the aecond Worldorrr rVest...
...The angry spluttering driver comes to the surface...
...Tie News WIN fief Hem* . . . LONDON.—When this will be printed the great invasion will be under way...
...Sand cushions the shock, we learned, and when the geysers came up sprinkling us all with tine rain we knew that the sea, turbulent during the night, was again friendly...
...What was that...
...Ours or theirs...
...Keep 'em Dry . . . Al.L night and all day and ail night and all day they will keep coming—these landing craft...
...and atill functioning...
...The fourth time that thousands of ships and lauding craft have thrown their tanks at^d guns and fighting men up on the enemy's beaches...
...A half mile...
...As k Africa, Sicily and Italy if some do not get through others will take their place...
...Great crowds have turned out, and Anna Chixh, a woman jockey, haa become popular...
...dropping their bombs as we sought shelter in the sand or clawed under the rocks at the side of the narrow road...
...The All-India Seamen's Union has initiated a series of demands for treatment that would bring their atatus up closer to that of British sailors...
...Has only a minute passed ? Is it possible...
...Watch out when they come...
...Fortunately the first attack did not cause many casualties during those vital early hours...
...Hew does your own breathing sound to them...
...Dispatch riders in the day and in the night and under fire will carry frontline dispatches back to centres where they can be relayed to you...
...Sometimes there's a miscalculation and lorries sink into depths they cannot manage...
...How does the day go'.' What's on the other side...
...Finally with his motorcycle shattered, he continued by foot, hitchhiking *hen he could get a ride...
...Horse racing haa been revived in Moscow...
...He stopped one...
...A wave "*of fire and steel will be hammering on Hitler's fortress...
...How far—how far is death...
...You see flashes...
...For after the assault waves capture the beaches and sweep forward the great massed armies must pour in and consolidate...
...And in six weeks the battered Axis troops had been killed, captured or driven from their craggy stronghold...
...Around them the bodies are still unburied, sprawled upon the white sand as if thrown up by the sea—the seared and shattered hulks of men who yesterday were alive...
...The heavy guns are sounding...
...Are the big shells of the German eightyeights raining down on the beaches as they did at Pizzo in Italy on September 8th...
...The work of unloading went on—"beachhead business as usual...
...How far does the sound of a machine-gun travel...
...All men look the same, but quickly you learn to tell them apart for all men somehow breathe differently and in the silence you can hear them...
...Words count, besides your throat is dry...
...Children under II cannot work on Sundays...
Vol. 27 • June 1944 • No. 24
