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Memories. In 78 hours last week units of General Patton's Third Army swept over the Marne near Paris, zipped through to Verdun and a minor battle. Within another 48 hours they were in Alsace, at Metz; then they were reported stabbing into the Reich's rich industrial Saar Basin.
In four days they had covered an area that, in World War I, had been fought over for four years.
Lieut. General Courtney H. Hodges' First Army trod a route rich in U.S. battle memories 26 years after another historic offensive — through Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Soissons, Reims. His tanks were in Sedan on the 74th anniversary of Napoleon III's capture and surrender there. They were well into Belgium before many of his tankmen knew it.
Both Patton and Hodges were 24 to 48 hours ahead of SHAEF communiques. General Eisenhower again had put a security blanket over their most advanced plunges. Front reports had Patton patrols near Strasbourg, near Saarbrücken ; placed Hodges' spearheads close to the Belgian-German border.
Graves. To the west, the British and Canadians were on traditional ground. There was only a skirmish near the graves of Canadians who had stormed the beach at Dieppe in August 1942. British tanks clanked over the Somme where in September, 28 years before, the first tank had straddled a German trench. Five years to the day after Britain's declaration of war on Nazi Germany, Tommies were greeted at Arras by the carillon of the 16th-Century Hotel de Ville. The bells rang out God Save the King. Brussels was liberated well ahead of schedule. Dunkirk, of proud and awful memory, was on the Canadians' list.
There were flurries of frenzied fighting in this swift parade. Skirmishes, small-size battles sputtered 100 miles behind the advanced forces. The enemy did insane things in his panicky attempts to escape. He tried, with small forces, to spear through long columns. He savagely bombed Verdun after it had been taken, as if in blind spite for two historic defeats. At Mons he fought viciously to break out eastward to the Reich. But other Americans were already two days ahead on his escape route. In the Compiegne forest (where two armistices were signed) Germans hopelessly held out, were passed by.
Ike Eisenhower could look ahead confidently to new phases. He named Major General Ivan Gerard to direct Belgian patriots. He rallied the Netherlanders' resistance under Prince Bernhard's leadership, urged them to block damage to Rotterdam and other ports. To Germany he said again: its war will be over in 1944. Unless the Wehrmacht could show more than it had in France, no snow would fall on the Battle of Germany.
*One minor one: dropping eight tons of maps of Germany to Lieut. General George S. Fatten Jr.'s troops last week as they approached the Reich.