Word: cumberlands
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Along Tennessee's Cumberland River, Army maneuvers reached their climax. Foot soldiers and jeepers, tankers, airmen and artillerymen tried every trick, threw everything they had except real ammunition, tramping out a problem. The problem: can a tank blitz be slowed and even halted. Answer: by well-organized opposition, yes. The engineers with tank traps did the job of slowing, but the star of the action last week-as in the whole two previous months of maneuvers-was the Second Army's tank destroyer battalion. The Cumberland's will-o'-the-wisp struck, destroyed, disappeared and struck...
When the destroyermen hit Tennessee, they had had three months of experience fighting tanks, began to bewitch and bewilder their opponents, almost swept them into the Cumberland time after time. They never seemed to sleep during a maneuver. They figured out where the tanks were likely to come (and usually they guessed right), then lay in wait to enfilade them, fleeing during the confusion, firing again from another angle. They reconnoitered all night, all day, maintained constant. radio communication with all units...
...Army engineers, interrupted by enemy fire, had labored to lay rubber pontoons, then wood crosspieces, finally steel tracks just wide enough for the 28-ton General Grants. At dusk the light tanks had crept out of the woods and skipped across the oily Cumberland River on the new pontoon bridge. When the mediums came down to cross, puncturing the dark with their exhaust flashes and red signal lights, the shore was lighted for safety's sake, making a 200-yard circle of yellow dust-fog through which turrets poked, each with its pygmy...
Crusty Lieut. General Ben Lear, Second Army Commander, was in charge. Under him the Reds, commanded by Brigadier General Julius Ochs Adler (New York Times), and the Blues, commanded by Major General Paul Peabody, fought along some 75 miles of Tennessee's deep-cut Cumberland River...
This week the maneuvers will develop into a bigtime mock fight when planes and many tanks join the fray. When the dust has cleared, the generals will confer. The hot, dirty, tired, hungry men along the Cumberland hope the generals will decide they are ready...