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Show WINTER ADDS TO ALLIES' BURDENS Its Inevitable Hardships for Fighting Men Are Now Being Felt. ON THE WESTERN FRONT. The Allied armies that whipped the hedgerows of Normandy, stayed on the Germans heels in a hare-and-hounds pursuit through northern France and Belgium and then won the battles of the windy, rain-lashed canals of Holland now are facing an opponent new to them but familiar to the Germans: Winter and its inevitable hardships for fighting men. The Allies experienced the preliminary pre-liminary stages of winter in the final phases of their fight to clear the Schelde estuary and bring up the line to the south bank of the Maas river. Driving cold rain, Interspersed with sleet, has already fallen. It will continue In the months to come with snow and frost, and the few intervals of sunshine will be treasures. treas-ures. For the bulk of Allied officers these are new conditions under which to conduct a campaign, and for most of the men there will be harder work and a greater strain on supply forces. Early End Not Expected. On the basis of the makeup of the German troops encountered thus far, the remaining Nazi divisions are certain to be built on a solid framework frame-work of commanders and men who participated in at least one of the three great winter campaigns in Russia and who know what the weather requires of them. Ripht or wrong few of the Allies here now are looking for an early end of the European war. The general gen-eral view of the fighting men coincides co-incides with Prime Minister Churchill's Church-ill's recent warning that the war may carry on to Easter or beyond. The Germans have been fighting determinedly on the defensive and the lengthening lines of Allied supply sup-ply have forced a slower advance. It still remains to be seen if the Germans' reorganized and reforti-fled reforti-fled defenses form a thin crust disguising dis-guising a hollow or partly rotten core or whether they are solid right through. In either case there is little doubt the crust itself may be difficult and costly to crack. Decisive Months Ahead. "The next few months certainly will be interesting and also should be decisive," said an armored force officer, whose men have been in the fight against the Germans as long as any others in the entire Eisenhower Eisen-hower command. 'The rate at which our troops adapt themselves to new problems and difficulties, which - the winter campaign will involve, may settle the rapidity with which the war is concluded on the western front. "The German veterans are past masters of all the tricks of winter warfare. We still have to learn. It will be interesting to see what sort of pupils our troops prove to be." In the miserable terrain of the Dutch lowlands, where the German floodings and constant rains have made everything but dikes and built-up built-up roads impassable, and where progress on the roads is painfully comparable to a line of silhouetted ducks in a shooting gallery, armor is only of limited value. The Germans, with their passion for using tanks as dug-in pillboxes, have the edge. In western Germany, however, the land is better suited for armor and for the maneuvering tactics in which the Allied armored forces have - proved superior to the enemy. |