 The greatest weapons coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier stand ready on the alert all over the world to defend this 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 Stuart Queen. One of the problems which confronts any modern military organization is the problem of maintaining a proper balance of trained specialists among the troops. To train the specialists it needs, your army maintains a number of service schools, both here at home and with United States units overseas. Today we would like to show you a few of these schools in the U.S. zone of Germany, where men of the European command are learning everything from accounting to the care and training of war dogs. This is a Christmas tree fire, or at any rate that's what it's called by the student firemen in the special subject section of the Usurur Engineer School. Their tree is a perforated gas pipe with a valve at the bottom, and the object of this exercise is for the host team to move in close enough to shut off the valve and stop the fire. The site of this interesting exercise in practical firefighting is the Bavarian town of Murnau, since 1947, home of the Usurur Engineer School. The major service schools of the army are, of course, back in the United States. The Usurur schools train only enough personnel to meet requirements for which U.S. trained experts are not available. These student surveyors, for example, are members of units stationed in all parts of Europe and North Africa. Normal changeover of personnel leaves these units continually in need of new technicians. The requirement may be for a heavy equipment mechanic in England, or for a welder in France. In all of the instruction here at the Engineer School, emphasis is placed on having the students actually do what they are learning. Classes are small, with the instructor in a course like the heavy equipment operators, handling only four to eight students at a time. In this way, each student can be given close, individual attention. Before turning a man loose with one of these, you like to be sure he knows what he's doing. To an army man, engineer usually calls forth thoughts of one of the most important and most delicate operations in modern warfare. The use of mines, demolition charges, and booby traps. In any contest to select the world's worst road, this strip in the demolition area of the school would probably win hands down. For eight years, it has served as proving ground to one of the army's most expert wrecking crews. The bulk of the courses at the Murnau School, however, are constructive rather than destructive. An army engineer must not only learn how to blow things up, he must also be able to put them back together again. These men are learning how to handle the tools of the carpenter's trade. Like the surveyor's course and the course for mechanics, this course in carpenter construction has a civilian usefulness as well as a military application. If one of these young men should go on some day to become a carpenter, architect, or construction engineer, he would not be the first to learn his trade or profession in a usurur service school. There are few civilian occupations nowadays which do not have their army counterpart. That includes much of the work going on here in the lovely town of Oberammergau, site of the usururur intelligence and military police school. In just nine years, the Oberammergau school has risen to become the equal of some of the world's finest police academies. Perhaps they don't look much like it in their fatigues, but these men are policemen, military policemen. They're engaged here in mastering the standard formations for riot control. Experts at the military police school give instruction in every phase of police work to students selected from army units and other U.S. agencies throughout Europe and North Africa. Courses are also conducted for students belonging to the armed forces of other NATO powers. This is a course in judo, that remarkable science which for centuries has been used by the small, captured Japanese to cut bigger men down to manageable size. Pistol practice. A high degree of proficiency with this weapon is extremely important. This is a wall search used by policemen the world over because it is the safest way to search a dangerous subject. The suspect is required to place his hands on the wall at a point slightly higher than his waist and to spread them apart as far as possible. With his feet moved out away from the wall, the prisoner thus needs both arms and legs to keep himself from falling. He cannot use them to attack the searcher. These men are learning the most important phase of good police work, the art of striking a balance between safety for the policeman and fairness to a suspect who may be innocent. This accident is a fate, but a legal one, not an attempt to defraud the driver's insurance company. The collision is simulated, part of the student military police course, but it's conducted just like the real thing, including the alibis. Another branch of the Oberammergau school conducts training in intelligence and counterintelligence, training which includes such matters as how to question prisoners of war. And since prisoners of war will not always oblige us by speaking fluent English, the intelligence operatives work also includes intensive foreign language study. One of the byproducts of World War II was the advance it brought about in the field of language studies. New techniques devised to meet army requirements have greatly accelerated the speed with which languages can be taught. A single scrap of information, something learned from a POW or observed by an advanced patrol, can sometimes turn the entire course of a battle. But first, it must be put together with a lot of other information coming in from different sources. Here, in the combat intelligence section, men and women with special aptitudes are learning the art of fitting together that vast jigsaw puzzle which is the story of a modern military operation. A not insignificant aspect of this work is map making and map reading. A military map must be considerably more complex than an ordinary road map. It must convey a great variety of detailed information and all of the details must be exceedingly accurate. Much of the information used by commanders and their intelligence staffs in the construction of their big picture comes to them over the telephone lines and radios of the Signal Corps. In Europe, many of the technicians who handle this vast network of wire and wavelength receive their training at the Euseroar Signal School in Ansbach. Many of the Signal Corps must be able not only to send and receive messages as these students of radio telegraph procedure are here doing, they must also have technical understanding of their equipment which will enable them to locate trouble on their circuits and correct it. In their work, there is no such thing as calling your local repairman. The fuselage of an L-19, a type of plane used by artillery observers, is employed at the school to demonstrate installation of aircraft radio equipment. As the range of artillery weapons has increased over the years, the problem of accurate observation has also increased. This is one of the solutions. As we have already observed, many students in the Euseroar schools belong to the armed forces of our NATO allies. Here, Colonel Fink, commandant of the Signal School, shows Italian Lieutenant Leopold Urbano and Captain Gabrielle Nidion of the French Signal Corps an illuminated model of the installation. A source of special pride to men of the Euseroar Signal School, incidentally, is this post chapel, constructed entirely from materials furnished by the students themselves. The NCO Academy in Munich. In training here are the non-commissioned officers, the sergeants and corporals who are today, as they have always been, the very heart of the army. These men are among the very best the European command can offer. They have to be, or they don't get here. The old-time sergeant was usually a soldier with long seniority who had acquired most of his knowledge in the well-known School of Hard Knocks. These men are younger, but when they finish at Munich, they know their jobs. Discipline at the Academy is strict. Pass inspection here and you'll pass anywhere. The men in this sergeant's unit are liable to discover that when it comes to bunk check, they have suddenly acquired a very tough boss. The schedule here is intensive and rugged, for its purpose is to produce rugged soldiers. Military training alone is not enough. The soldier must have strength and endurance, agility and coordination. In other words, muscle. One of the best methods yet devised for developing muscle is a little exercise known as the Army Doesn't. The non-commissioned officer does far more than simply relay instructions received from his superiors. In a combat situation, the outcome of an engagement, as well as the lives of himself and his men, may depend on the good judgment and tactical skill of a single squad leader or platoon sergeant. A non-comm must first of all be a natural leader of men. But beyond that, he must absorb an ever-increasing amount of theoretical knowledge about the science of war, a science which, like all others, has grown enormously more complex in the modern era. Here is a portion of the course in map orientation. To the untrained individual, a map is often useless. He can get just as lost with it as without it. For example, the map may show you the place you are trying to reach, but before you can get there, he must first find out where you are starting from. Without road signs or highway markers, this is not always easy. To his theoretical knowledge, the non-comm must add much detailed, practical information. Part of his job is becoming familiar with the operation and capabilities of every weapon which may be used by the men under his command. Graduation from this Munich NCO Academy, as from any such institution, is a fulfilling experience, leaving each of its graduates with a feeling that he has earned the right to command. Not far from Munich, in the alpine town of Füßen, is the Army's largest overseas ordnance school. The commandant of the Usurur Ordnance School is assisted by 29 officers and 240 enlisted men who serve as instructors and specialists in the training of some 4,000 men each year. Army and Air Force personnel, together with officers and enlisted men from the NATO countries, study some 21 courses, covering tanks, artillery, tractors, ammunition, wheeled vehicles, and a host of related ordnance subjects. So varied is the work and responsibility of the ordinance today that it is impossible to designate any one of these subjects as typical. Certainly a very important one is the course dealing with the art of handling and storing explosives, taught by means of this scale model of an ammunition supply point. A less glamorous but equally important course teaches the testing and repair of automobile voltage regulators, one of the subjects covered in the five-week Automotive Electricians course. Students learn the fundamentals of automotive electricity in a modern, well-equipped shop under the close supervision of one of the school's many experts. The cutaway model of a jeep showing details of the engine, transmission, differential and brakes demonstrates to students in the Automotive Maintenance course the role each part plays in the overall operation of a vehicle. The engines of many military vehicles today are completely waterproof by means of a system whose effectiveness is dramatically demonstrated by this jeep engine which is capable of running entirely submerged in water. The 98th General Hospital at Newbrook, Germany. In addition to performing the medical services known to army hospitals and other parts of Europe and elsewhere, the 98th also incorporates a specialized course for nurses, the School of Anesthesia. Few areas of human endeavor require so much study or so many refresher courses as does medicine and its related fields. Nurses as well as doctors must continuously acquaint themselves with the newest ever-changing techniques and equipment of their profession. To assist its medical personnel in this task, the Army in Europe maintains this School of Anesthesia at Newbrook as well as a larger medical training school at Degrendorf, Germany. It is a number one requirement of the Army that every service man or woman shall have access to medical treatment of the highest quality. Every effort is expended to care for sick or injured patients to get them back on their feet again as quickly and efficiently as possible not only for their own sake but also to conserve the Army's fighting strength. Under the hospital team concept of the Army Medical Service doctor, nurse, medical aidman and the patient himself are united in a single group whose sole purpose is to make an injured man whole or a sick one well. This is the town of Longreys. Forty miles south of Munich, deep in the Bavarian Alps, Longreys is one of Germany's most attractive cities. A few kilometers outside of this quiet town with its gentle old world charm is also the site of one of the largest, busiest and most popular of the Usurur service schools, the QM School or Quartermaster. It is the Quartermaster Corps which feeds and clothes the soldier. In a service comprising several million men and women, this in itself is a job of staggering proportions. So wide felt is the need for trained personnel in this field that the Usurur Quartermaster School numbers among its students members of practically every branch of the armed services from every part of the European theater. Millions to supply and thousands of different items to be supplied. The equipment for just one soldier represents hundreds of man hours of work. Even so, the Quartermaster School at Longreys, in addition to its regular Quartermaster courses, also finds time to conduct what are known in the Army as adjutant general courses. These are the stenographers, the personnel clerks, the men who make up the payrolls. This is a student group in the midst of one of their administrative laboratories where they begin putting into practice what they have been learning in the classroom. Nobody knows exactly how many documents must be tabulated and filed for each serviceman and his equipment, but it's a lot. As a result, there is probably no office machine from typewriter to calculator which does not have its place in the Army. And of course, each machine requires not only an operator to run it, but also a man who knows what makes it run. Whether at war or at peace, the American Army today is a worldwide organization. The problem of supply is a big one and a continuing one. It is now several hundred years since a famous general remark that an army travels on its stomach. Whatever may be the broad strategic significance of the general's observation, it is certainly true that this subject has always been a matter of great personal concern to soldiers. It is therefore not surprising that fully one-half of the courses at the Usuror quartermaster school deal with some aspect of cooking. An army cook today has a well-earned right to that white hat, which is the traditional badge of the master chef. Cooking for the troops is no longer a simple matter of brewing a few gallons of coffee or frying a mess of flapjacks. The days of hard tack and sourdough are long since passed. Most of us know of the spectacular advances which have occurred in the development of new weapons and new modes of warfare. Less widely appreciated are the equally remarkable developments in that branch of military science, which deals with feeding the man who carries the gun. There was a time when the soldier not only risked his life for his country, but frequently had to do it on an empty stomach. Today we may say without exaggeration that few in the world are as consistently well-fed as the American soldier. Another place where good food is important and appreciated is the dog branch of the Usuror quartermaster school. Here are trained the war dogs. Canny canines recruited from among the very best of European dogdom to serve with the American army's most famous auxiliary. Thoroughbred or just plain dog, candidates are selected for brains and stamina, not family background. Although dogs have been used by armies from the beginning of military history, they first achieved their present honored status during World War II. Today, dogs are used to an increasing extent, not only by military organizations, but also by police departments and as excellent night watchmen for factories, stores and warehouses. The war dog school at Longreys is coeducational. All students, whether human or canine, receive pretty much the same instruction. There are, to be sure, some problems that are peculiar to the forefooted enrollees. But the bulk of their study consists of man and dog learning to work together. Much of the training takes place on an obstacle course not too dissimilar to the regular obstacle course of army basic training. The dog must learn not only what to do and how, he must also learn to do it on command. Each dog has the same master throughout the course. Seventeen weeks are required to complete the dog training course. Instructors at the school are fond of telling their students that the seventeen weeks, which is a relatively long course for a service school, is made necessary by the men, not the dogs. Dogs masters take longer to learn. Dog and master enroll in the school together. Take their exams together. Pass final inspection together. And stay together throughout their army careers. Love of man for dog and dog for man is one of the great romantic themes of human history. Judging by the long waiting list for admission to the Longarees War Dog School, it's a romance that is still going strong. They make a formidable fighting team. Those were some, but not all, of the Ucerus Service Schools. There are others, like the Bansman School at Dachau, the Finance School at Freitberg, the Transportation School at Mannheim, or the Troop Information and Educational School, also located at Dachau. All busy training specialists to serve with our own forces in Europe, or with those of our NATO allies. Now this is Sergeant Stuart Queen. Invite you to join us next week for another look at the Big Picture, the United States Army in action. 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.