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Tunisia was strange and far from the American traditions he had absorbed. He had often taken his wife and his namesake son, maps, books, thermos bottle and lunch, to the fields of Manassas and Gettysburg, and he and his army of Pattons had fought the battles out. "George, go down in that field, you're Beauregard's artillery. . . . And Bea, you go over there in those trees and don't move until I tell you." Tunisia was far from wooded Georgia and bloody Chickamauga, far from the tableland beside the Tennessee where Grant won the battle of Shiloh in spite of himself, far even from the foreign forest of Belleau where the living Marines grew so tired they lay down beside their dead friends and slept under shell fire. Tunisia seemed another world, another time almost—it was the place where the Battle of Zama was fought and the arrogant Hannibal was beaten.
Tunisia was far, too, from the training grounds: it would be nice if everything happened as punctually under the Tunisian Patton as it had under old Hurry-Up-and-Wait Patton at Fort Benning, or if Tunisia were as flat and dry just now as the western training reserve, the triangle from Desert Center, Calif., to Yuma, Ariz., to Searchlight, Nev.
This fighting in Tunisia did not sound like the March of the Armored Force, composed by Mrs. George Patton, in spite
The Winter's Net. For the first time, Moscow newspapers last week printed maps showing the "official" battle line in Russia. The net geographic results of Russia's winter campaign, if that line is correct, are shown above. The net strategic effect has been to leave the Germans on something very like the line from which they started a year ago, except that they now hold all Crimea and the Novorossiisk bridgehead. The map also pointed up the smallness of Russian gains in the north. The Rzhev salient was reduced and the Leningrad siege lifted, but nothing like the hoped-for offensive eating into the Baltic states had been realized.
In summaries issued last week, the Red Army claimed that it had, in the winter campaign, killed 850,000 Germans and captured 343,525. Earlier Russian figures had stated that during the battle of Stalingrad the Germans had lost 175,000 dead and 137,650 captured. Using the relatively reliable figures for prisoners, this means that 40% of the total casualties were inflicted at Stalingrad. It appeared that the Germans had sacrificed land in favor of men, and that the Russian winter campaign had done more to destroy Hitler's prestige than to destroy Hitler's force. of the three blasts of a tank siren in the opening measures. It did not smell like Virginia in the spring. It did not feel like that night in Washington when Patton said to some officers of the General Staff: "I want to fight the champ. If you lose, you've lost to the champ, and it's no disgrace. If you win, you're the new champ."
Tunisia was different, distant, and hard. There was only once to do each thing in Tunisia. There was so much to worry about. Supply lines were long. And take the rain. ...
At the headquarters building one day in a sudden downpour a man who looked like General Patton stood on the roof. He had a tin hat on, his slicker was buttoned close up around his neck. He was looking up at a grey heaven and he seemed to be wondering.