Reynolds Packard - Phantom Enemy

Soldiers of the press. This week, Phantom Enemy. This is Reynolds Packard, United Press Correspondent in Italy. I want to tell you something about what it was like on the Italian front during the days when the communiques read, no action of consequence. Something about the place where the Del Bois were fighting.

Wasn't a place really. Not a place where you could put a mark and say, here it begins and here it ends. Not even the boundaries were clear. For a mist and fog had smudged the skyline into dim, hazy shadows.

War had made grotesque and weird what the fore was a languid valley. Weather blotted out the rest, soaking the land, shrouding it in clouds. Until it seemed as if it were not a place at all.

It had been raining for four days. Hard, resistant, grounded, broken, given way. and become as much a part of the battlefield as the Grey Hills in the distance. Brain had become the third army on the battlefield.

Jeep slid it off the roads. Pools of water seeped under the tents. The mist was over the battlefield too. Like a sullen grey panther. It's heavy paws covering everything. There was little fighting. Just small bands of patrols waiting into no man's land.

Hardly able to see each other. Like this one. Oh, back in the middle of the way. Stick close. Quick, sir. Quick, sir. Quick, sir. Johnny, just stick close. You okay, Dave? I'm with you. Just tell me one thing, Dave.

Just one thing. Yeah? Where's the war? Huh? Where's the war? Where's the man with a gun that I can shoot at? Oh, I'd give my IT for something good and solid I could shoot. I'd give mine for something good and solid I could eat.