ARMY: Baffle of Louisiana

South of Shreveport, where Spanish moss droops from the live oaks and watercourses slash the marshy Louisiana land like knife-cuts in a pan of fudge, 340,000 soldiers of the Army met last week in the greatest sham battle in U.S. history. It was also the most decisive.

By the time the five-day battle ended, Lieut. General Ben Lear's Second Army had had its ears pinned back. Advancing with a rush across the Red River, it met deceptively easy going against the Third Army of jug-eared, German-born Lieut. General Walter Krueger. But the Red neck was out. When last week's exercise ended, Ben Lear's army had been backed up against the Red River it had so dashingly crossed. Its flanks had been turned, many of its bridges to safety destroyed, its Armored Force's gasoline supplies captured in an old-fashioned cavalry raid. It was, so soldiers said, glad to start another scrap this week (with all last week's mistakes and losses canceled) to get its reputation back.

For a month before they lined up, 50 miles apart, for the Battle of Louisiana, the soldiers of the two armies had been put through smaller-scale field maneuvers. They were in good training. Newsmen noted their endurance, their cheerful disregard of stream and swamp as they marched into position, their scrap and determination when the fight was on. Ben Lear's Red Army was given the northern position. Numerically inferior to the Blues (125,000 to 215,000), it had the advantage of the better position (close to the Red River) and the powerful punch of the First Corps of the Armored Force (about 600 tanks). Walter Krueger's Blue Army, advancing from the south, had few armored troops (60 tanks). It had a division and an added brigade of cavalry. (Ben Lear had only one division.) It was vastly superior in infantry, artillery, the Army's new anti-tank groups (three).

Bluff Ben Lear took a characteristically vigorous course. At the jump-off he bridged the Red River, skillfully moved his 125,000 men across, charged deep into the heart of the Blues. Spearhead of his thrust was the Armored Force. It bit deep into the Blue middle, then dropped out of sight, let the Blues worry about where it would appear next.

They wasted their worry. After two days the Red tanks turned up again, right where they were last seen. They had been in a successfully camouflaged bivouac, waiting to make the final thrust into the Blues' vitals. But by then it was too late. Its avenues of attack canalized by a water-broken country, the Armored Force ran into traps, anti-tank posts. It was theoretically smashed by Major General Herbert A. Dargue's supporting Blue air force, which was used more skillfully than a U.S. air force had ever been used before in maneuver.

Meanwhile canny Walter Krueger was getting in other telling licks. A company of parachute troops, first ever dropped in U.S. maneuvers, fell from the sky behind Ben Lear's headquarters, cut off traffic on a vital highway and snipped communication lines right & left.