 from Korea to Germany, from Alaska to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the United States Army is on the alert to defend our country, you the American people, against aggression. This is the big picture. An official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the big picture, here is Sergeant James Mansfield. Today, we look at the American Army in Germany, the United States 7th Army. This area, along with the section of Berlin, is the sector we hold out. To the west is the French sector, the British in the north, and in the east, the Russians. We've maintained troops in Germany ever since we cracked the Siegfried Line, and at first, helping to denazify the country and helping law and order back on its feet so that one day, Germany might regain its place in the family of nations. When the Cold War in the Far East reached the boiling point with the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, the Cold War in Europe lost none of its chill. And still today, the 7th Army is ready for anything. And now, the big picture inspects the Army's effort towards getting ready and staying ready in Europe. In Berlin, Germany, there's a big bell. It hangs high in a tower of the Schoneberg Rathaus, seat of the government of West Berlin, a gift of the American people to the people of Berlin. Maybe you were one of the thousands who chipped in for it. On it, there is an inscription that this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom. At precisely noon each day, this bell is rung. To keep that bell ringing, to help make the bell's message stick, that's what the American Army is doing in Germany, alongside our lives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That's the job of the United States 7th Army. In the hottest spot in Europe today, it spells out just one word. For occupying Easter in Germany is a power that has long declared its intention to dominate the world. Army go home, they say. Yanks get out as they beat the propaganda drum. Heckle, kidnap, murder, spy, and enshrine men like Mao, leader of communist aggression in Korea. And behind their curtain, they mass their strength. We don't know when they're going to move or if they're going to move west. But whenever and if ever, we've got to be ready. Our tanks are gassed up and stay gassed up. The big guns are ready with live ammunition and so are the small weapons. The machines are ready and so are the men. Alert. A word here that means two things in the big picture, ready to discourage an enemy from striking, ready to meet him if he comes. But you can't keep an army wound up like an alarm clock just waiting. So the 7th Army comes and closes at Cannes to fighting its own war in Germany. In maneuvers like the recent joint United States French exercise rose punch. With the arrival in the field of Lieutenant General Charles L. Boathe, then commanding general of the 7th Army, and now in command of all United States forces in Europe, the exercise is launched. At all 600 hours, an aggressor force of 25,000 American and French troops representing the armored spearhead of an enemy went into action in the cold rainy dawn of northern Hesse. Mission? With a lightning surprise attack to seize the vital river crossings of the Middle Rhine between the German cities of Mainz and Bonn. With the job of defending the territory, 50,000 friendly troops, specific mission to cushion the shock for 72 hours while a strong defense line could be built up along the Rhine, and machines on the move. The aggressor elements trying to plunge through in four armored columns. The defenders slowly withdrawing, trying to keep their units intact, but delay the aggressor for those long, long three days. All the knowledge, all the training, and conditioning of every man put to the test that might one day come for real. With bullets instead of blanks. No enemy fire overhead, but if there were, the troops couldn't have moved any flatter. No enemy machine gun cutting loose on the embankment, but a sortie against one couldn't have been executed with much more realism. And when a man hit for cover, he hit, even though it might be a little soupy. Nothing to hide from, except maybe the future. But the time to learn to smoke screen a movement is now, where a mistake can be pointed out by an instructor instead of an enemy marksman. Alert, and it's food on the fly. And the stars and stripes, the GI newspaper, really on the fly, delivered to troops in the field by helicopter. And in place of enemy fire to determine which troops would have been killed or captured, umpires like the major. Even though it sometimes took an argument to convince an earnest lieutenant that he and his men had been legitimately captured by a French unit. But as in any kind of game, even one of war, the umpire is always right. French Marshal Jouin, NATO commander of Allied land forces in central Europe, was one of the many high-ranking officers on hand to study the preparedness of the troops, along with high-ranking officers from almost every nation allied to us by the North Atlantic Treaty, like Portugal's General Pinto Ribeiro. The German population too got an eyeful of the strength that is ready to be mustered should trouble burst out of the east. And just as wherever the United States Army goes, the smaller citizenry got a stomachful of chocolate bars and gumdrops. But out in the country, there were some hopping mad farmers until they learned the army would repay them for crops unavoidably damaged by the great treads of the tanks. For three days and three nights, exercise rose bush went on. Towns fell and were retaken again and again. The defenders falling gradually back but winning their goal. Winning the time that could be so precious should a real enemy ever decide to play the game for keeps. The defenders held stubbornly to every foot, every vantage point, till superior aggressor power incontrovertibly put them out of action. At the end of the exercise, the critique, our own high brass with that of the NATO nations conferring with the officers actually commanding troops in the field to hash it out, to find out what was right and what was wrong. What is the potential of the forces committed to dissuading or stopping an enemy attack? Opinion, certain kinks to be straightened out, concepts revamped, but verdict, our forces are on their toes, ready with just about everything they have towards discouraging or halting aggression. But to get back to that word alert, the key word of the seventh army and what it means to the American soldier, the GI himself in Germany. Sergeant Martin here is pretty typical. How about it, Sergeant? Alert, what is its significance to you? Well, right now I guess it means getting this VHF antenna up. Communications, it'll bring into the command post here the high frequency signals transmitted from battalion headquarters. That's the job for today. But you know, alert means something else to us GI's stationed here in Germany. We live a pretty good life when we're not in the field. Almost like back home in Detroit, except for that word alert. Take me for instance. I've got my car. I've got a pretty good home here in Frankfurt. Nothing fancy, but I've got my wife here and my kids. Karen, she's in kindergarten. Special school for army youngsters with teachers right from the States. Yep, and Christopher Martin, born Frankfurt, Germany. Who'd ever have thought that when we were coming through the Siegfried line? Leslie, Mrs. Martin, she's been over here for quite a while now. It was a little hard at first maybe for her to adjust. Now you'd think she was brought up in Germany. Bet she sets as good a table as any Hausfrau in Frankfurt. Knows how to shop. Of course, there's a commissary for military personnel. But there's shopping to be done with the German merchants too. Good morning. Good morning, Paul. Will you be here close to the stairs? I'm not here. Okay. So, how do you feel? I'm not safe. So, thank you. Paul adds up to good chow. For the rest of it, it's pretty much like it would be anywhere else, I suppose, for a working man. Of course, the football game you watch over here is soccer and there's that clock ticking away in your head with a built-in alarm that can go off at any moment to ring that alert. There's church on Sundays. Maybe a little fishing with the boys afterwards. There's window shopping with the wife. Wests and Germanies really back on its feet too. Plenty to shop for. Yeah, even a hot dog. Except that in Frankfurt, we call them Frankfurters. Then sack time till 6.30 when the kids blow their own special tune for Reveley. That is, unless... This Martin. Okay. Okay, I'll be there. And that's right where the happy family life of yours truly takes on a different picture. The whole family is geared for getting pop out on the fly because there's just one thing we're really here for and whether it's the real thing or another practice alert, we've got to be on our toes. A good part of most GI's time in Europe is put into special training to better fit him to meet an enemy wherever and however he comes. At the Mountain Warfare School, South Feldon, Austria, it's done on skis. A little clumsy now, maybe some of them, but before the course is over, learning from Austria's top instructors, men who never saw a pair of skis before will be riding them as though they were born wearing a pair. Sport? Sure. But with obstacles that don't usually race the polite ski run, they'll stay at it till every man can make that ditch and keep going, learn how to survive in the snow too, to live out in it and build their own shelters, be it ever so humble. Soldiers on skis, mountain troops, ready to go places on the white stuff fast if that's what's called for when an enemy strikes. In Lund, Greece, Germany, a former Nazi SS installation is used now by us for training infantry scout dogs. A nose for trouble, recruited and trained to sniff it out on patrol. Most of the commands taught an infantry dog are silent. You can't yell out here, Fido, when you're prowling around enemy territory and the dog has to learn something about that old business of the army traveling on its stomach. He must develop unquestioning obedience, regardless of what he is asked to travel through. Or, for that matter, over. He also has to learn to be tough if necessary. The idea isn't to make him a one-man dog exactly, but he's got to know that there are people in the world he isn't supposed to be fond of and that it's okay for him to attack where his nose is smelled out trouble. And every soldier has to learn to drill, to proudly swing out with soldier master in an infantry scout team. And here at Degrendorf, Germany, is where army nurses learn to be rugged. In an intensive course, every nurse learns how to live and work in the field, even to putting up their own canvas hospital. Learning to work outside the big, well-appointed hospital without the helpers and the stainless steel operating table. To understand what it's like to perform where a soldier's life can depend on the speed and the know-how of the nurse upfront, with the start of the shooting in Korea, every effort's been made to conserve supplies and training, as here in the Artillery Observation Course in Munich. In this problem, you will focus all the knowledge of artillery that you have gained in your other classes upon the destruction of a specific target. Gentlemen, your field of fire will be this puff board, which represents the actual terrain with road intersections and the church steeple. The maps that you were issued prior to the class represent the area that you see before you on the puff board. Okay, Sergeant, to Spain, you take the first problem. Your target will be this tank in the wooded area here. Now, Sergeant, fire this mission just as though you were on the observation post in the field. The ingenious puff board lets the student perform as though he's calling for actual artillery fire. Chemicals simulating shell bursts, register his shots on targets. Forward observer, able company, fire mission, asthma, 5,800, marked center of sector, enemy tank will adjust, 400. An operator under the puff board simulates fire on the exact spot it's called for. Overline, drop 200. Okay, Sergeant, to Spain, you're on the target. Now what will your next command be? Repeat range and fire for effect. It isn't all training for the GIs in Germany though. Through the German Youth Activities Organization, they're doing some of the teaching themselves, teaching German kids a way of life for one thing. The GYA just sort of grew up from the days when American troops were taking swastika handled daggers away from Hitler youths and teaching them how to play baseball instead. Now in almost every city and town in the American sector of Germany, GYA clubs sponsored by the army bring hobby and art instruction, recreation and sports to thousands of German youngsters. And boxing gloves with Marcus of Queensborough rules in place of Nazi daggers. Then there's the soapbox derby each year held by the GYA. Each driver has his own GI sponsor and coach. Entrance come from all over the American sector to the final heats on a Frankfurt slope. American general to the winner. Symbol of the thought that the soldiers of a democracy are here to help, not as conquerors. Seventh Army troops have had other opportunities to demonstrate themselves as good neighbors in Europe. When Holland's dykes went out under the hammering of tremendous seas last winter and new storms were blowing up, army engineers went into fast action. Sandbags were the fingers in the dykes this time and GIs prepared them by the thousands working night and day to ready the dykes against a new onslaught of nature. A bulwark against the further devastation of flood. The Dutch will not soon forget help rendered in time of desperate need by American soldiers working shoulder to shoulder with their own men around the clock helping to save the lowlands from further ruin. But mostly with the Seventh Army, it's preparation to meet man's worst catastrophe, war. Remember all the river crossings our troops made in Germany when we were shoving ahead in World War II? Well, our army is still crossing German rivers the hard way in training exercises like Operation Boat Ride. Problem, a division crossing of a mine river from Hanau to a Schaffenberg. The farther shores theoretically held in strength by the enemy. To cover the crossing, keep the enemy ducking on the other side, heavy firepower. The division artillery including the big self-propelled howitzers are ready to throw across a curtain of steel and lead as a screen for the hazardous operation. Machine guns ready. The artilleryman working as fast against time as though lives depended on a quick ranging of the pieces. The combat engineers too fighting the clock as they hurry the construction of a bridge across the river. A bridge on floats that must sustain the thousands of tons of a division's armor. And meanwhile the infantry moves out to secure the other end for the bridge, a beach head on the enemy shores. A striking force that has to hit hard and fast in a dangerously exposed job of a river crossing. Tanks too ferry across the mine on steel treadway rafts to join in the simulated fight for the beach head. Armored support for the infantry to smash ahead where enemy resistance is most stubborn and let them roll. We did it before and to make sure we can do it again if we have to. We're doing it right now. In the strange shadow war we wage in Germany. Your seventh army on the alert, ready to lead trouble out of the east. That this world under God shall have a new birth for freedom. That's your seventh army in Germany. An army devoted to discouraging a fight but meanwhile building up a solid stiff punch should it come. Next week on The Big Picture, it's firepower. The story on the artillery. A study of our great new atomic cannon. A look at the fantastic sky sweeper designed to keep enemy aircraft out of our skies. Also The Big Picture will show you how American artillery is employed in Korea. How and why we fire 10 shells for every one the communist fire at us. You're invited to be with us. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the army at home and overseas. Produced by the Signal Corps Pictorial Center. Presented by the U.S. Army in cooperation with this station. You can be an important part of The Big Picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped, the best trained, the best fighting team in the world today, the United States Army.