The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-12-23
By TOM TREANOR United Press Special
 COrreSpOndent)

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 Correspondent)
 With the American Fifth Army, at the Italian Front, Dec. 23-(UP) On the trail to Mastro Giovanni, First Lieut.. Donald Rich, a 23-year- old, red-bearded Scot who used to be butcher in Portland, Me, had a seconrd look at the Qualifications before which his platoon melted until on the day that Mastro Gio- vanni and its sister town, Lagone, fell, he had only 12 men left-a squad.
 The walk with Rich was an edu- cation in the bitter mountain fight ing that is going on in this section of the line. If we'd gone without sightseeing, we could have made the tour in three minutes. But to clear the way for our stroll took IS days. on every one of which Amer ican boys died.
 And Germans died, too. Behind the lowest rock wall on this ridge which Is wooded with spindly trees huttering their last, yellow leaves, Rich found the body of the first man he had killed. The soldier lay face down with his helmet on and his soaked uniform showing no bloodstains. He'd been hit in front while he was trying to kill Rich.
 Foe Just Hugs"
 What the hell" Rich said when he saw him. Those boys in steel gray are just so many Jugs to me. Besides. they picked up 8 couple of my boys on the slopes near this one
 The German evidently had crept to the wall from cunningly-con- cealed dugout heaped with stones. When the Americans came in on the attack, he was waiting. From his post he covered the approach to a German machine gun post on the left and was in turn covered from behind by three more machine gun posts, all sitting snugly at the intersections of the thick rock walls that covered the hill like the frosting patterns on birthday cake.
 You can't see a thing" Rich explained. They use an absolutely smokeless powder. You circle and try to spot them by sound and then you try to move in and shoot them out"
 He led the way to a machine gun bunker which days ago he had get them with grenadeS.
 You get hill like this,' he said, "by an endless series of encircling movements, working your men in position to pin down their gunners. Meanwhile, their gunners all over the hilltop see what you are up to and try to protect their men by pinning you down. One afternoon we got the two gunners in this bun- ker nailed down and moved in to get them with greades.
 Grenade ExplOdes
 'They must have stuck their heads out five or six times but each time my boys famed them back in. Then I got close enough to pass in a gre made. I had to duck to protect my self from the explosion in case the grenade didn't go inside. But it went into the entrance and exploded.
 When I looked up, two Germans were coming out hell-a-whooping. don't know yet why they weren't killed. They went up and over wall and got away, although we cap tured them little later"
 Rich, having his rifleman in posi- tion, crept up on two other machine gun bunkers one after another and yelled in his best high school Ger man 'rauskommen init haende hoch'. Eight Germans came out with their hands up" from one of the bunkers, set so that they are nearly invulnerable shell and mortar fire and usually can be taken only by the personal approach.
 Then we came to the tallest and thickest wall just above the brow of the hill which Rich and his boys never succeeded in taking. It was here that for many days the Amer jeans crouched on opposite sides of the wall, occasionally tossing gre nades across at each other.
 Our Side Better
 That's game at whic' we're little better because we can throw farther and more accurately than the Germans" said Rich. Also our grenades are better. But still we couldn't move them."
 Looking over the wall you could see why. The Germans were cased in deep, stone, protected dugouts, some of them with room for three hunks, while the Americans on the other side, being on the attack. were crouched in the rain in slit trenches and fox holes.