 In tribute to the people of Belgium, Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower comes to Brussels from the battlefront. Prime Minister Pierrot and other governmental leaders here at the Palais de la Nastion welcome the chief of the Allied Forces of Liberation. Inside the General addresses the Chamber of Representatives, symbolizing the return of government of, by and for the people. For this inalienable right, Belgians and Americans have fought side by side twice in one generation. Honoring the heroic dead of two world wars, General Eisenhower brings his tribute to Belgium's unknown soldier. On this hallowed spot, the Allied leaders consecrate themselves to the eternal battle of liberty. For victory over despotism, another generation of brave men are fighting around the world. Before the great ports of France and Belgium were opened up, before the railroads were serviceable, the problem of supply was perhaps the greatest problem Allied commanders had to face. The only available means of bringing food to the liberated areas, equipment and supplies to the battle zones, was by highway, by a highway which came to be called the Red Ball Highway, an endless stream of trucks and trailers rolling to the fronts on one way roads. Along the narrow French roads in fair weather and in fowl, over the battered bridges through the smashed villages, 24 hours a day, the Red Ball moved. It was the Red Ball who, in the fighting in Brittany, had to break its way past enemy patrols to get gasoline up to the forward troops. It was the Red Ball who brought the first food into Paris when the city had been liberated. It was the Red Ball who, on a maze of unfamiliar roads, supplied the Allied armies stretched from Antwerp to the Vosges, supplied six armies and kept supplying them for three long months. Pauses on the long road didn't come often, and when they came, they didn't last for more than a few minutes. And there was more than driving to be done. The trucks had to be kept in tip-top shape, for a faulty spark plug or battery could be as dangerous as enemy straffing for keeping supplies away from the fronts. In 81 days of operations, the Red Ball carried half a million tons, 1,000 million pounds of supplies. The trucks themselves devoured 200,000 gallons of fuel. The American drivers and packers and loaders and maintenance men, the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, did a job that had never been done before in the history of war. No blackout at night, enemy bombers held fewer dangers than did driving in the dark. Dusk and night and dawn, 60 feet intervals, eyes on the road hour after hour, four hours on duty, four hours off. Sometimes there were accidents. In spite of every precaution, the inevitable did occur. But the trucks moved on, the supplies kept going forward. By mid-November, with the opening of Antwerp and the partial repair of the railroads, the Red Ball job was done. But it had been one of the greatest factors in all the victories in the West. Allied attacks by air and ground are battering the Reich arsenals of the Ruhr and the Tsar. For a single assault, 1,200 American heavy bombers with 1,000 fighters of the 8th and 9th Air Forces roared toward Nazi workshops supplying the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe flings up new jet and rocket fighters, but the American fighter escort breaks up the attack. Because of non-stop raids on the Reich, British and American airmen knocked down over 200 Luftwaffe planes. Thickening hails of bombs stepped the monthly record up to 56,000 tons for American air fleets hammering the Reich. For foot soldiers of Britain, America, and France, the western front stretches between the mines of Strasbourg in the south and of Geilenkirchen in the north. Storming out of Aachen, the American 9th Army hammers on the northern sector in partnership with the British. Flushing out Nazi snipers from every cranny, the troops comb the town warily for the enemy. Every street is dangerous, and thick walls hide cracked marksmen gunning for American soldiers every step they advance. But the 9th Army rolls on relentlessly toward industrial Eschweiler, blasting the barricades of the German armies. Eschweiler means steel and brass to the Nazis firing from the shadows. The allies reply, stone by stone the gateway to the roar crumbles. Street by street, the soldiers ferret out the enemy lurking behind barred doors. Taking 50,000 prisoners in its autumn drive, the 9th Army pounds grimly along the northern road through the roar toward Berlin. Thrusting for the Rhine, the 3rd and 7th American armies and the French forces in the south enclose the Sar Basin. Soldiers of the 7th slog through mud in the vogue, flanking a major German force to storm Strasbourg. Guns start the attack. Bottled up in the hills, the Wehrmacht deserts heavy guns and even tanks to race frantically from an allied ring of armor. Like their fathers, these boys and the French bring liberation to Alsace, twice freed from the same enemy. Strasbourg becomes a battleground. The Reich covets the mines and factories of this city near the Rhine. Over the river, Wehrmacht guns lob shells into the city, trying to release the trapped Nazi troops here. But the Americans link with the French to shut the only gap of escape. Here is the debris of fascism. Swastikas litter the square as mementos of another surrender. On the western front, Allied prisoners now total three-quarters of a million men taken since D-Day. Another pair of Nazi generals yield to the Allies. And once again, liberty returns to another great city.