Wick Fowler
War Correspondent of The News
( Dallas Morning News - 1944 )

I have just left the misery, the maiming and the death that goes with the western front in Germany.

I have been at home only a few hours now. I feel very safe.

Not many days ago, in the slush, the snow and the shellfire near Strasbourg and the Rhine River I had my last glimpse of an ugly, yet magnificent, sight.

I saw your American men — sons of Texas and Oklahoma and every state — fighting your war.

If I have a message, it is this:

It is hell — multiplied hell — over there that you can’t picture. Get that clearly in your minds. Your sons are thankful you are not experiencing it — not a witness to the thirst of a German 88 for blood, the Godless fanaticism of a Nazi soldier.

They pray to God they soon will be out of it. But they know there are many, many gray uniformed men to rise before them, bitterly fighting Germans, who must be cut down before their prayers are answered.

Little Faith in miracles

They would want you to believe, as they believe, that this war on the western front is in its bitterest phase. Unconditional surrender is as far away from them as the farthest German. There will be no early collapse of the Wehrmacht — unless a miracle occurs.

The boys on the front have little faith in miracles.

It is the weary, glazy-eyed doughboy, the mortar men, the bazooka men, the tank, the tank destroyer crews, the artillery batteries, the monstrous chains of service troops feeding supplies toward the front, the engineers and the airmen I speak for.

For more than a year I followed the gallant Texas 36th Division, the 45th Division from Oklahoma, the 3rd Division, the Air Force and many other units through the shambles of Cassino, Anzio, Velletri, Pisa, Southern France and to the Rhine River.

So few of those original men are still fighting. Causalities have been tragically heavy.

When you watch them your heart goes out for the foot soldiers, the front line medical men for whom recognition has been so slow in coming. Medical men whose morale would be boosted sharply by a distinctive badge pinned on their chests — something like the combat infantryman’s badge with a red cross substituted for the rifle insignia.

Home Optimism Vs. Front Realism

When I reached the United States a couple of days ago I was confused by the optimism — talk that the German army would collapse in a few short weeks or months. It was in sharp contrast to the realism I just left.

A big offensive such as the ones now boiling on the western and entire eastern fronts calls for more belt tightening and determination than light optimism. Now, if ever, is the time for these States to reconvert to total war.

Generals like the beloved Ike Eisenhower can send men into the bloody rivers, deploy them across bullet-raked plains. But the push must begin on this side of the Atlantic and gather momentum as it nears the front.

Believe this — when the war news looks better, the effort must be strengthened all along the line.

I find the United States in the midst of a campaign that would have soared over its goal in twenty-four hours if every American could see with his own eyes just what the Red Cross means to a man overseas.

I know what the Red Cross means to the soldier, sailor and Marine stationed over there.

The American Red Cross is the morale supply line that reaches from your front parlor, dining room and heart to the men over there. It provides that simple communication line.

For the sake of those men, don’t let hesitancy infiltrate to cut those lines.

That’s the message I brought home from some great men.