AS aan Si shy > reason. Rate Just Doing A Jo FT HE dead leaves drift from every tree. peeps furtively and the By. the roadsides, with their everwidenings fringes of thick ) black mud, down narrow [ance between the deep ditches. in forlorn farmhouses, our men go about their endless thousand _and one jobs of war. .§ The bright lights of Brus- p sels (now very much dimmed I hear) seem part of another | world. This is still the same | war. But it is not the exhilar- ating cavalry charge of liber- ation through towns and cities with their cheering crowds and beflageed streets. The night falls clammily on friend and foe alike. Those’ of 2nes © our boys who can, bed down in whatever scant shelter is near. A By Will Nally Reynolds News Reporters Others stand by. For death has 2 way of stalking about this heavy dank darkness. The soldier in the tarpaulin- roofed slit trench crouches over his Bren gun. About his feet his comrades lie huddled in un- - easy sleep. He wipes the dank moisture from his face and strains ‘eyes and ears in the direction of an enemy only a few hundred yards away. Between him and them there iS a no man’s land of neglected | fields and woods, and, as the black starless night obscures it all, little groups of men, some- times ours, sometimes enemies, sometimes both, make ready to pick a wary way through that From Moscow via Prewi By ILYA EHRENBURG - down to thicken the great sodden carpet. Whe rain falls steadily Over the desolate countryside of this battlefront a cowardly sun GH scurties back for cover. little wilderness in’ search of odds and ends of information upon which biggér battles are planned. : Se HAVE been with one of these small units out in the wastes of water and mud. What they are doing makes no headlines. It isn’t even back page news. All is quiet on this front. Day by day a few lIittle . white erosses join the others. An oc- easional ambulance jerks its way to the rear with somebody who had his name on some- thing. Yes, it’s all quiet. Miner patrolling activity, of course, but what the hell e Retribution FEW days ago, one of the German villains, Doctor Ley, wrote, “Perhaps we have been too decent and our enemies laugh at us for trying to reeducate people through ap- | peals to reason and by example instead of resorting to cruel and ruthless methods. Perhaps we ourselves regret our prover- bial German good nature.” So the Ovens of Majdanek 'Sabiber Tremlinka, represent ‘reeducation through appeals to So Panary Trostinetz | Babiyar are German Good Na- » ture. They will have to be hanged - twice; once for what they have done and once for what they have said. The end is now close. The eurtain has already risen over § the last act of the tragedy. The villians are struggling in vain » —they will not escape judg- ment. The Red Army and the armies of our allies are re- lentlessly pushing ahead. How Jong is it since the Germans were on the Volga and in the Gaucusus? Now we are in East Prussia and in the suburbs of Budapest. e@ JN these great days I want to speak of retribution. [ have a feeling as if I had long ago ceased speaking for myself and have become the mouthpiece of the dead. I have a feeling as © if millions of innocently slain | are directing my pen. : Here are some of the inscrip- . tions on the walls of Bialystok prison: “J was born in Bielsk-Pool- aski. My whole family has perished. I was the last Jew in the prison of Hofman He- nach. I am going to my death with my head lifted high. -f ereet my friends, the Okun prothers and the Poznanskis. Avenge my death. July 18, 1944” “We are going to our death calmly. We are defenceless- = Avenge us. Resident of Baily- stok, Joel Samolsky-” : _ “The last day of our life. Avenge us! Residents of Bailystock, Abram Botchkoy- sky Yankel Stelmakh, Resi- dents Grodno Kirshenbeim, Kulkin, three brothers Lip- tzes, Meyer Prussak.” ERE are mscriptions in Kovel synagogue where Jews were kept imprisoned before their execution: “Moshke and Tunik are taking leave of all. Septem- ber 15, 1943. Last of the Mohicans, Brizeli and Toibic- hey.” “Ahre Leib Ben Izknok, Isyi Lieberman of -Brest, Es- ther, daughter of famed Rab- bi Svi Morgenstern of Kot- sk were seized on the day of Reshashona and left this life in ten days. Please mform my death to the Rabbi of Brest so he may say Kadish for “us.” “Whoever comes ‘after us, do not forget! In our deaths will be spilled the blood of our sons, pure like the waters of Lake Kinereth. We de- mand reyenge! Yehuda She khter.” “T.et innocent bleed fall on all Germans. May they be smitten by thunder. Revenge and revenge. Isrul Wein- stein, on August 28, 1942 “Barth, do not conceal our blood! Sun, avenge us! Thursday, 14 Elul. Bluma and Jacob.” “Tere, Ben Zion is going to his death—he does not know why- “Quiet. Murderers are comings. At the sound of their voices all our hearts beat faster and at the sound of voices our hearts cease beat- ing. God, take us into your eternity! May the murderers pay with bleod! I want the last children of the people to tear them to pieces. Another hour another minute. Fare- well world which I have neyer seen! Fanya Arbeiter and the whole family.” “Rosa Henechovna is dy- ing. I fought. ¥ wanted to live, but it is hard. [ am sorry for Myniusenka, I should like to live for her buts. = HERE are many such com- plaints and curses. Met them sound to us in our dreams too. Let us see them even after our death! Aanid great grief there is no wall between peoples. The grief of a Jew is the grief of a Rus- sian, just as the grief of a Russian is the grief of a Jew. I receive many letters from the front. Often Russian officers and men relate with anger about innocently slain Jews in Belorussia, WLithuania and Po- land. They exclaim: “We shall avenge them.” And Jews tell- ing of burnt villages in Belorus- sia, of murdered Russian com- trades, of hanged Poles exclaim: “We shall not forget this.’ @ur holiday wall be no holi- day to us, and victory will be no victory if criminals are not punished according to their de- serts. We have faith in the goodness. of man and in the doom of villains. We are on German soil. Judgment has be- gun. There has never been and there never will be a greater triumph of human conscience than the Red Army entering Berlin. P. A. Features, December 23 — Page 13 . does that add up te in a big war like this. I jeeped across to company headquarters the other morn- _ ing, about ten thirty. This is a good thing to do, as lashings of hot coffee appear at this hour. _ The H.Q@: is a dirty, dilapidated small farmhouse, pitted about with small craters, as, at the beginning: of the week, the Ger- mans were mortaring- better than they knew. Over the cof- fee we talked about patrols and - patrollins. “Three of the boys were out last night,” said the Major. I went into the next room. There was a huge cupboard in the corner of it. Two of the trio were lying in it curled up in their blankets. The lad on the outside woke up and rubbed his eyes. I said hullo. He was 19- year-old Colin Benson, of Burn- ley, a lance-corporal. A slim, pale-faced jad, who worked in a clothing: warehouse, he joined the army just before his eigh- teenth birthday. I asked him about the patrol. He had start- ed at midnight, leading 19- year-old Joe Cunningham and Pat Battersby, of Manchester. The patrol was out until 4:15. Patrol orders were simple enough. They were to find out whether the enemy were still in a position 1,700 yards.away- and whether a little farmhouse midway between our line and: that point was still unoccupied. Just that. The trio set off promptly at midnight. It was a piteh black night.- All three had, done the same patrol before, but it was young Benson’s first job as patrol leader. “Tt was that that worried me a bit,” he told me. ‘Most of the time my stomach felt it was up in my throat, and though it was a cold night my hands were sweating all the time.” The three kept close to- gether, with Benson in the lead. Hivery few seconds they touched: each other to maintain con- tact. They moved cautiously along the ditches and hedge- rows. They found the farm- house still uneceupied. A little farther on they heard two Ger- mans talking. They were pre- sumably a listening post. Benson made a detour and passed the Germans ten yards to the right behind a tall hedge. On their stomachs through the thick “mud the three crawled up to the enemy position. They stayed awhile watching the Germans moyinge about. They had got the information they wanted. bodys eup of tea,” said Colin. “Tts then you get a bit panicky about your sense of direetion. little things mean a lot. A funny-shaped tree, the smell of a dead cow in the ditch; it’s things like that that guide you back.” On the returm journey they. approached the post. -where there had been the two Ger- mans. They were still there, but both men were tired and certainly not expecting any- thing except from the front of their post. Benson opened up with his tommygun at pointblank range before the Germans had time eyen to litt their