The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-15
CENERALS' HQ.'S PLACES WHERE
 BATTLES WON
BY WALTER CRONKITE United Press War Correspondent


 Western Front. March l5-(UP)-- Battles are fought in the acrid smoke of burning powder but they are won in the stinking, eye-stinging smoke of coal-oil stoves and carbide lamps.
 They are won in propped-up re- mains of shattered farm-homes where the bomb-torn windows are draped with blankets and card board. These are the places gen. erals call headquarters. It never took Mata Hari to find headquarters. It Is a war-wrecked building into which leads that spider web maze of telephone lines. It is the building surrounded by muddy jeeps, and with even mud tlier colonels and majors, map-cases tucked under their arms, filing in continuous procession through its doors.
 One-Way Traffic
 Inside, this headquarters has all the hustle of a beehive--and is just as crowded. Tall Americans have to stoop to make thei- way down its narrow little corridors, and there are SO many booted men fight ing for space in the halls, the traffic is one-way most of the time.
 Tn every room of the little house more people are packed in than probably ever passed through the entire village in a normal year. They are sitting at the portable combination desks and filing cases or standing in little groups along side the ever-present wall maps and charts or shouting over the field telephones.
 Many are clerks grinding out on checking typewriters the hundreds of thousands of words of written orders it seems to take to run any army They call themselves the chair borne forces"
 War Room Is Center
 Each of the rooms is separate department which the army calls sections" This bedroom is G-2, In- telligence, where the lofty-browed boys keep track of the enemy move ments. This one Is G-1 crammed with filing cases with the name and army number and next-of-kin o1 every man out on the fighting line And in another is G-3. Operations where the progress of our towr troops is planned and plotted.
 Back in the kitchen, because It i' easy to string wires from there tC the portable generator parked in itt jeep trailer in back, is the sigma center with It's small, compact, con- stantly- packed telephone and radio switchboard.
 But the real nerve-center of thi' headquarters is the war room This is the generals office" Here the walls are papered with floor to-ceiling maps overlaid by trans parent plastic like celluloid. These are the composite maps of similal but partial maps in G-2 and G-3
 Maps Change Consistently
 On the plastic are red and blut wax-crayon Scribblings at which kindergarten pupil would blusi but they mean success or failure for this army, life or death for thu men in 1t. They mark the exact pos 1tion Of our troops ana the eneinyS Ours are marked in red.
 Every few minutes an office from G-3 comes in to change thu rcd markings, or an officer iron G-2 steps up to alter the blue. I'h' general watches the map more intently than chemist studying the test-tube results Of neV formula.
 He snaps up a phone and bark an order More artillery is brough to bear there, a company moves in to new position here, reinforce ments start up from the rear.
 When he isn't entirely satisfie' the general slips Into his field coal claps his helmet on his head, am chambers into a jeep for frontlin trip to get his information first hand