Push?

Last week rain fell continuously on the Western Front. In the 20-mile sector north of the Swiss border which faces the rocky fortress of Istein--Germany's "Gibraltar of the Rhine"--sodden French infantrymen came in from patrol to report that across the swelling river the German troops were busy in the flats. To stop this activity--whatever it was--French engineers had an answer that cost no lives, no ammunition. They closed the gates that drain Rhine water into the Rhine-Rhone Canal, let the river flood the flats.

Over all the front from Luxembourg to Switzerland the German forces were ominously quiet. During the fore part of the week Allied soldiers were busy with endless patrolling, laid a few ambushes and made a few raids to get prisoners for questioning by their intelligence officers. But toward week's end came sounds from the German line that Allied officers liked less than the boom of German guns.

Through the night they could hear the metallic clatter of tank treads, the ripping tear of exhaust from trucks mired in the mud, the metallic jangle of troops in large numbers on the move. To the Allies this could mean only one thing: the Germans were moving up troops along the entire front, perhaps were readying for an attack in force. Into action went French artillery --slim 75s, big-mouthed 155s, even a few long-snouted railroad guns of big calibre, firing across the line for the first time since the war began.

From the German artillery--silence. Did it mean that it had been reinforced, was in new positions? Did it mean the Germans held their fire because they did not want to expose their new position to counterbattery fire from the Allied side of the line? Allied officers feared it did, got set for a push.

This week it came--a small push along a four-mile front, but the first attack in force the Germans have made. It came along the northern flank through the Moselle Valley--an offensive that an official French communique described as "an attack supported by artillery fire." French outposts were slowly driven back toward the Maginot Line. From the rear came reinforcements and a counterattack and at the end of the day the German infantry had been stopped, at least for the time. But they had pushed back about a mile and a quarter into the no-man's-land between the Maginot Line and the Westwall.

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