ISU Library Shelley Collection: Box 8, Reel 6

hello wh oh this is your workhorse bonnet Jack Kelly reporting again from somewhere at Holland the Germans both in the southern Belgium is sadly crumbling these days if you've been taught under the closing pincers of the American first family from the north and the third army from the south but it's still a hard and bitter fight and I hope you haven't been given the impression it's a Nazi opposition has suddenly fallen apart or that the struggle has become an easier route I heard the other day for example there's some newspapers in London reported the situation in the body was remindful of the days of the American breakthrough and French now that gives an impression of a great sweeping Drive in which our forces night through with blinding speed and then whips around the cut off huge numbers of the enemy and to think that's the way the battle has gone down there in the snowdrift and the bitter sport of the Ardennes it's really unfair the foot soldiers and the tank men who've had to fight their way slowly forward and what to my mind has been one of the bitterest offensive actions Americans ever fought against almost indescribable handicaps of terrain and weather I've been down on the first family front again and I can tell you that although the enemy is being pushed steadily back and there's great offensive into Belgium here's a thing of the past every yard at these games must still be paid for at a high cost in many parts of the front we're still slogging our way through dense forests of pine and painfully working our way up to Pete bridges fighting to smooth this many think this trying to pick our way through them German minefield and against the period not the fire the Germans may be withdrawing from a large part of the boat but the rear guards they need behind to protect that withdrawal are fighting all the harder but the weather thank goodness was taking a turn for the better the last few days and the bright Sun was cunning although the air was still cold and crisp when I went down to business the third Armored Division which is then doing one of the outstanding job of this bitter campaign and that see that's the same we admit so severely during the earlier stages of this attack support far up in the core blue ceiling I saw 200 American heavy bombers grown over within five minutes their Cooper bodies gleaming in the winter sunlight long white paper trails caused by their patchy through the cold atmosphere of the high altitudes are rolling behind them long before you can see the planes themselves you spot these trails of white advancing through the blue and after the Bombers of past the milky craters hang in the sky for hours the heaviest pass thrown over a beautiful sight that made almost every soldier who wasn't actually locked in battle stops to look up in a smile it's good to see your own air power up after so many days when you didn't have it because of weather father falls over the German line plus the Vanier class fire began to appear among the bomber formations tiny little white balls to defense the head of the plane the bomber is altered their course now and then but otherwise being unaffected by the black they headed on a fairly bound for a target beep in the German boat we went alarms out of the front and in the small room of a typical girl torn Belgian village we talked to general rule the handsome gray-haired forceful commander of the 3rd Armored Division as we caught we had to cut off our conversation every to you moment when the blast of our own artillery round out every other phone tip the house and rattled a few windows left in the break there were the rough fight going on and there was no burn now by the German we heard a colonel commanding at a sport they fought by radio from the commanding tank the first element to be forced into the town and was fighting his way through it against the bitter opposition we move down closer I saw a sight that made the fighting men tear something up in the blue were American Thunderbolt fighter bombers they peeled off their formation one by one and seen the screaming down the target just on the other side of the wooded hill from where we stood it was the best view of a dive bombing I've had yet you can plainly see the cluster a bomb released from the plane as I reached the bottom of the diet you can hear the rattle of German anti-aircraft fire and the funderbolt nose down on the target and then the blast of the bombs they fell a conduction we can feel it while we could one by one the plane part of the German physique Anna you can see the smile the broaden on the faces of the armored division then this was the kind of air support they had gone without today as they battled through snow and fog in bitter cold the air armor combination foods often before we're getting a chance to function again by the time we left most of the bitterly fourth town of mortally bomb had been cleared we went back by way of Precure little delays near a vital crossroad where some of the most savage fighting of this whole attack raged within the last week all the way back to the crossroad there was evidence of the deadly battle nearly the frozen body of a German soldier man an American beside the Lord burnt out pain many of them most of them are because we were attacking some of the tank turned completely over others with turrets thrown entirely off the terrace pearled yards away from the rest of the cafe the film buildings of the little town of breaker completely gutted only a few blackened walls left spending and the queens of the forest along the road torn and splintered and those that were not broken off gallery by a flying crap no yes the germans boin is being collapsed but please in the name of the brave men who are fighting and dying here don't let anyone tell you it's easy it's bitter and brutal and it takes five words an incredible courage and endurance and a lot of American life this is actually speaking from somewhere in Holland I return you to the morning