Flying Infantry

In the bagful of tricks opened by the Germans in the Low Countries, most spectacular eye-opener to complacent military men was the employment of parachute troops and air infantry. Pooh-poohed by all the big powers except Russia, Germany's flying infantrymen put on their most impressive show in capturing the Rotterdam airport, then deep inside the Dutch lines. Thoroughly schooled in the lay of the land around the field, a battalion of crack parachuters under a Lieut. Schulz bailed out from 300 feet, picked up weapons dropped with them and went to work on Dutch machine-gun nests. Next came 800 fully equipped infantrymen under Lieut. Colonel von Koltitz--followed by several hundred more. Landed on the field in airplanes, they spread out, seized bridges near by, reputedly shot down every one of eight British Blenheim bombers sent over to blast them out. Three days later, when the armored units of the German Army caught up with them, they had the situation perfectly in hand.

First army to try parachute soldiers was the U. S. Army, which had dropped the first troops in history in 1928, then abandoned the whole business as unpractical. Last week, with a good start toward regaining lost ground, the Army had its first full parachute battalion in training.

In a separate camp on the reservation at Fort Benning, Ga. the 501st* Parachute Battalion, 29 officers and 414 enlisted soldiers picked for sturdiness, self-reliance and intelligence, was going through jumps from dummy airplanes, exercises in combat tactics, bruising training in tumbling and other roughhouse, good for jumpers.

The first actual jumps for recruits were scheduled to begin the last of January.

The first platoon had already gone through that mill. From the commanding officer, Major William M. Miley, down to the last private, they had made at least six jumps each (the lowest from 750 feet), will make many more, working their jumping altitude down to 300. This week, husky Major Miley was ready to go back to his outfit from the post hospital where he had been laid up with a fractured shoulder (from jumping with an 80-lb. load of equipment), hoped that he would have his whole outfit qualified as six-jumpers by spring. Trained to pack and maintain their own 'chutes, Benning's jumpers go over the side armed, like the Germans, with pistol and a bag of grenades. The rest of their fighting equipment, from rifles to light mortars and folding bicycles, is dropped separately. By summer the 501st will probably be split into skeletons for more battalions.

Meanwhile at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., the Second Division is hard at work making up for lost time on air infantry. It could go a lot faster if it had more planes to use for training. To carry an infantry battalion requires 50 planes, and the 42 transports now in service are too busy hauling freight (engines, parts, etc.) to spare many of them for infantry work. But hauling troops by air is no new story to the Army, which has moved outfits before, bag & baggage, just to save time. Until the Army gets more transports, it will have to content itself with moving small outfits, learning how to stow bulky items like 37-mm. anti-tank guns (weight: 950 Ib.) in the planes it has.

* Numbered above 500 to designate it as a GHQ organization, as opposed to divisional, corps and Army troops.

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