TURTLES IN TRICOLOR

Cannoneers have hairy ears, according to an old artillery ditty. The infantry have dirt behind their ears, according to an infantry song. Tankers (who have no song at all, as yet) have dirty ears and dirty faces, and are proud of it. After a day in a tank's greasy, growling, churning innards, the begoggled men and officers of the U. S. Army's new Armored Force are sheathed in grime. But they wear their grime with a difference.

The infantry is still "Queen of Battles." But the Queen was hardly recognizable last week; she was scuttling around like a maid-of-all-work. In the incessant tug-o'-war for prestige within the Army, the cavalry, the field artillery, even the infantry were on the defensive. What had their wind up was the rapid growth, the ambitious airs of the air corps and the armored force. The Germans in conquered Europe, the British in Africa had shown what this new combat team could do--and what could happen to nations which had no team, or a poor one. The fustiest officer in the U. S. Army could hardly ignore the lesson, nor fail to see that U. S. airmen and tankers were certain to demand a large and possibly dominant place in the new Army.

Youngest of Army branches is the armored force. Until last summer the Army dozed along with a single, experimental mechanized brigade, and kept this little upstart haltered in the cavalry. What additional tanks and armored vehicles the Army possessed were scattered among older services. It took Hitler's Panzer divisions to wake up the U. S. Army. The lone Seventh Brigade suddenly grew (on paper) into a full-fledged armored force. Tank-minded pioneers were given command, plus a free hand to concentrate practically all of the Army's mechanized equipment in two divisions.

Orders to the first Chief of the Armored Force, Major General Adna R. Chaffee, were to be ready for combat by last Oct. 15. Within the sorry limits of the equipment then at hand, he was. For his two divisions he needed 548 light (12 1/2-ton) tanks, 220 medium (25-ton). He actually had about 500 light tanks, no medium.

Light-tank production (mostly by American Car and Foundry Co.) has zoomed to 125 a month; both divisions by last week had more than their allotted complement. But for the missing mediums they used old, twin-turreted crocks ("Mae Wests" to their crews). Production of the real thing is lagging at the Army's Rock Island (Ill.) Arsenal. Chrysler Corp. also has an order for medium tanks, has had to postpone its first delivery date from next March to next September.

At last count, General Chaffee's A. F. had 6,400 vehicles (tanks, trucks, motorcycles, motorized artillery, etc.), 26,000 men. The First Division was stationed at Fort Knox, Ky., the Second Division at Fort Benning, Ga. Next year, if all goes better with the armored force than with the rest of the defense program, two more divisions will be organized. At least two, perhaps six more will follow. Even then the U. S. armored force will be a puny rival of Germany's land fleets, which now have twelve full divisions, 55,000 tanks--and no Mae Wests.

What there was of the Second Division last week maneuvered in northern Florida, made a final 83-mile dash back to Fort Benning in three hours and 20 minutes. Rural gapers saw 400 tanks on the march, bounding along like agitated turtles with their three .30-calibre machine guns, a heavier (.50-calibre) machine gun or a cannon jutting from ports and turrets. On the shoulders of their dungareed, helmeted gargoyles was the Army's newest emblem: a black tank tread, superimposed on a tricolored triangle of yellow (for cavalry), scarlet (for field artillery) and blue (for infantry). For tanks are only the armored hearts of a modern, mechanized division; each has in addition a regiment of motorized (truck-borne) infantry, another of motor-drawn artillery, and a profusion of ex-cavalry officers.

In active command of the force was one of these unhorsed horsemen: peppery, profane little Major General Charles L. Scott, a onetime polo player and chief of the old cavalry's Remount Service. Adna Chaffee, having done more than any other U. S. soldier to compel respect for the tank, was ill in Boston. Pneumonia had sapped him, left him no better than a good fighter's chance to dirty his face again.

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