 The latest weapons, coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier, stands 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. The greatest peacetime troop and dependent movement in Army history was completed recently with the replacement of the entire First Infantry Division in Germany by the 10th Infantry Division which shipped out from the States. By the time it was finished, more than 46,000 soldiers, wives and children made the transatlantic crossing and are now singing praises for an entirely new approach to the troop rotation problem. These are men of the First Infantry Division, the Big Red One. The place is a coast of North Africa opposite Oran, the time the morning of November 8, 1942. It's the start of an odyssey, the root of the fighting first from Oran to Tunis and bloody fighting against German troops pouring across the Mediterranean from Italy, from North Africa to Sicily, where in 37 consecutive days of bitter fighting, the first suffered 1,700 casualties from England across the Channel to a place called Normandy. The first Allied troops hit the Normandy beaches at 6.30 a.m. on the 6th of June, 1944. After that came six weeks of grueling fighting in the difficult hedgerow country of northern France. The kind of terrain where tanks and infantry must fight every foot of the way. The fighting at the front was fierce. It was a period of fight and weight. Hold on while men and supplies piled up on beaches to the rear. It was sleep with your boots on if you did sleep. Eat on the run when you did eat. Finally, by July 4, 28 days after landing, there were one million Allied soldiers on the German-held continent and the Allies were ready to move. Oran, the story of the fighting first, became the story of the war in Europe. Coutants. Morten. État. Moe. Soinsault. It was hard and bitter fighting all the way, from town to town, sometimes from building to building. Suddenly it was over. Thousands of outfits started home, but the big red one did not. The first stayed behind in Germany. They remained as occupation troops, then as defense troops guarding the free world's eastern frontier. They stayed at the ready and honored their death. For 13 years, the fighting first did not come home. Then finally, late in 55, they were replaced by the 10th Infantry Division. I'm a noncom in the first, and this is the living room of what used to be my apartment in Würzburg, Germany. If it looks like I'm coming instead of going, that's because of the new rotation system the Army started working with. It's unit rotation. Instead of bringing one man home when his tour is up the way we used to do, now we replace the whole outfit. It's a big job, but there are a lot of advantages to it. Under this new setup, replacements find a much better deal waiting for them when they get to their new assignment. In our case, for instance, we knew another Army family pretty much like us would be moving in. We tried to leave the place the way we'd have liked to have found it. Something cold to drink in the icebox, food in the kitchen, a lot of little details all taken care of. On an Army post overseas, the wife doesn't just go shopping, there's paperwork to be cleared first, unless it's been done in advance by somebody who knows the setup. Here's the ship bringing in the first units of the 10th Division from Fort Riley, Kansas. They're replacing us in Germany, and we're replacing them in Kansas. It was only natural that the big red one should be one of the first rotated home under Operation Gyroscope. Under this new system, the 10th will be overseas 33 months, then back home to trade places with us again. Every outfit gets back to its own home station every couple of years. A family man can now take the wife and kids right along with him, instead of leaving them to follow later. Arriving in a strange place together makes you feel a lot more welcome somehow. My wife and I enjoyed meeting our new tenants, and taking them for a little get acquainted tour of the town they'd be living in for a while. Under the old system, this sort of thing couldn't happen. Most Army families like to travel, or they wouldn't be Army families. It's an interesting life, seeing new places every few years, meeting new friends, hearing new languages. It's not the traveling that gets you down, it's the moving out and the moving in. This gyroscope system makes things a whole lot easier. It's like going to a town where old friends live. Someone to make introductions, point out the sights worth seeing. It's the formal color ceremony, even in the Army. By the time a replacement division arrives, the old outfits usually gone. Here, we have the colors of two divisions on the field at the same time, representing about 35,000 men, more than the population of most towns. First division's colors are fur, as the 10th takes over. You know, this isn't the first time that Barracks has changed names. It used to be called Adolf Hitler concern, up to about April 1945. Then somebody decided, it would be Barracks was easier to pronounce. For the first infantry division, it's the end of an era, 13 years of overseas duty, of bloodstained beaches in Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and even bloodier battlefields, like Hurtkan Forest, Aachen, the Rhineland. The first is finally coming home. Some of our kids have never seen American. The older ones can speak German as well as English. They've made friends, shared experiences that will last them all their lives. They say, join the army and see the world. You see it all right. It's a great experience too. I mean to keep right on having it. But 13 years is a long time. For the next couple of years, I think Fort Riley, Kansas, is going to look awfully good to the big red one. The first to arrive, the last to leave. The first can be replaced, but not forgotten. Goodbye, Europe. Good luck, 10th Division. Members of the 10th will find, as have thousands of army families before them, that the European command is well equipped to look after them. They're a long way from home, but they and their families can still get American schooling, American medical care, even American spectacles. Attached to this army hospital in Lahnstuhl, Germany, is an eye clinic, one of many available to personnel of the European command. It's in such a dispensary that the process begins of providing army personnel or their dependents with correctly fitted heavy duty eyeglasses. Maintaining a staff of doctors or other medical specialists to perform this work is one of the army's most important day-to-day problems. This attractive young patient is Sergeant First Class Wanda Fleming of Chawney, Oklahoma. Sergeant Fleming represents one reason why the old-style steel-rimmed GI spectacles have had to be supplemented by newer, more style-conscious models. She is here beginning the standard examination, which will determine whether or not glasses in her case are necessary. The Sneller Eye Test Chart is familiar to almost everyone. The different-sized lines of type on this chart are designed to reveal near-sightedness or far-sightedness, the two most common forms of seeing defects. An ophthalmoscope enables the optometrist to look deep into the patient's eyes, a bit of necessary medical routine which in this instance can hardly be an unpleasant duty. The large device we see here is a furopter. A selection of trial lenses in the furopter may be rotated in front of the patient's eyes until precisely the right combination is found that will enable her to see clearly. Our human eye is in many respects like a camera. It has a lens system whose focus can be changed. A diaphragm do regulate the amount of light that gets in, and a sensitive plate, the retina, upon which an image can form. When trouble develops in this system, it often is a simple matter to add an extra set of lenses and bring things back into focus. The trick is knowing exactly what type of lens to use, and this requires both skill and delicate equipment. But with or without equipment, there comes a time when science gives way to art, the art of fashion design. Science can find her trouble and solve the optical problem, but that's only the first requirement. The doctor may know what the patient needs, but it's the patient who knows what she wants. A pretty girl not only wants to see, she expects to be seen. Lens prescription, frame size, and the patient's style preference are sent to the Rhine Medical Depot, where the optical section takes over. When a prescription is received at the section, it is first carefully checked to make sure that all necessary information has been included. This man is an expert at reading a doctor's prescription, no small accomplishment. Although there are unusual eye disorders, a surprising number of defects are so common that they can be corrected by standardized, almost routine procedures. The depot can actually anticipate most of the requests it will receive. A check of the lens file shows whether Sergeant Fleming's requirements can be met from among the 18,000 lenses already on hand. For the rare prescription, which cannot be filled from stock, facilities exist at the depot for grinding special lenses. The first step in grinding a new lens is known as blocking. The piece of optical glass is fitted to a cast-iron block with the aid of hot pitch. This will enable craftsmen to insert the lens in the various grinding machines to which it must eventually pass. The first of these is a lens generator, which gives the glass its necessary basic curve or curves. Next, the lens goes into a roughing pan where excess glass is removed. Five different grades of emery are used in this process, rough, medium, smooth, fine, and polished. Each grade serves to bring the lens one step closer to its final shape. After the lens is polished, it remains for a few moments in a chill-off cabinet. This shrinks the pitch so that the lens can be easily separated from its cast-iron block. The finished lens can now be cut to shape with the aid of a lensometer. This technician is locating the exact optical center of the lens before marking it for cutting. If he neglected to do this, the finished lenses might end up off-center in their frame, and Sergeant Fleming would find herself living in a lopsided world. Next, the lenses are cut to shape for fitting into frames. The cutter who ruins a lens at this late stage is likely to suffer a chilling drop in popularity among his coworkers, who must begin the elaborate process of grinding and polishing all over again. Trimming off the excess glass also requires care. These pieces can later be remelded to make new lenses. There is very little waste. After cutting, the lens is placed in a semi-automatic edging machine, which can give it either a beveled edge for fitting into frames, or a smooth edge for rimless glasses. The technician makes the proper setting and starts the edging machine, which will turn itself off automatically when the process is completed. Now for the frames, which the lenses were cut to fit. A tray of hot salt is used to clean somewhat and allow the lenses to be snapped into place. Salt holds heat well and maintains exactly the right temperature for softening the plastic frames. The glasses are given a final alignment and inspection. Before shipment, a technician checks each pair of glasses to make sure lenses are the correct power and that there are no flaws in either them or the frames. A final cleaning and packing and the finished glasses are ready The optical section of the Rhine Medical Depot serves 45 stations in the European command which dispense glasses to army optometrists who send in the prescriptions. And here on her final visit to the Landstuhl Hospital is the object of all the painstaking activity by skilled craftsmen. The beneficiary of several hundred years of optical art and science blended with all the resources of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Do you know why, how do they look, of course? The customer seems to be satisfied. 24 people were involved in making and fitting Sergeant Fleming's glasses. Like all Army Medical personnel they are skilled technicians well qualified to perform any task required of them. It's a big jump from a pretty girl in Germany trying on her first pair of glasses to a mule train crossing the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. But they're all in the Army. One Saturday last July the Army's only two remaining pack outfits, the 4th Field Artillery Battalion and the 35th Quartermaster Company were drawn up in full regalia before the Colorado State Capital Building in Denver. Many spectators were on hand to watch the Governor of Colorado and the Mayor of Denver present officers of the mounted outfits with gifts to be delivered a week later to Wyoming. The March 2 Cheyenne by 160 men, 18 horses and 160 mules served as a reminder that less than 100 years ago, safe passage through our western territories depended almost entirely on the United States cavalry. It was an age of outlaws, stage holdups and Indian wars. Many kinds of animals have been used as beasts of burden since man first discovered a hunting on his own back. The elephant, the camel, the ox, even the reindeer. But no animal, even the horse is so much a part of the story of the American far west as is the mule. Until the turn of the last century the Army hired civilian packers to handle its mule trains. Colorful individuals with jangling spurs and Spanish style sombreros who led their charges over terrain very different from the paved highways traversed by this modern-day outfit. Root of this 20th century trek was planned to parallel closely that of cavalry troops during the Indian wars of 1870 when a long column of soldiers, mules and horses rode from Denver to Cheyenne in preparation for action on the Indian front to the west. The father of modern pack service in the U.S. Army was General George Crookes who rode a mule himself in preference to a horse. General Crookes made excellent use of his mule trains against the Apaches and other warlike Indian tribes. His successes led to the adoption of pack trains by Custer and many other legendary figures of western history. In the old days there were no towns, paved streets or other amenities to provide a refreshing rest from the ardors of a long and usually dusty march. Camp was pitched on the open plain not on the campus of a modern college though iced desserts during stopovers on a trip where even drinking water had to be carefully rationed. Even the mules have it better today. Poeds in Colonel Custer's day and no impromptu college variety shows for men on their way to bloody campaigns against the Comanches, the Sioux or the Cheyennes. Much has changed yet there were times during this journey when it seemed to the men of the pack train that they had left 20th century America back in Denver for wide stretches of the west's vast rolling plains and seemingly endless deep blue skies remain practically unchanged. But progress soon catches up. The northern terminus of this historic pack trail is no longer a tiny frontier outpost Fort Russell but it's descendant, bustling up to date Cheyenne, capital city of Wyoming. The march of the 35th quartermaster and the 4th field artillery which lasted 7 days and covered over 20 miles was planned to coincide with Cheyenne's frontier days an annual occasion during which the people of Wyoming and her neighbor states pay homage to the tradition of the old west from which they sprang. Preceding the big rodeo were a servicemen from other branches in particular the men of Warren Air Force Base which today occupies what once was Fort Russell. This time too there were Indians times have changed. Echoes of the frontier were annexed by a rodeo recalling the excitement of the old west in which the army played so historic a part. Now this is sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at your army in action on The Big Picture. 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 United States Army in cooperation with this station. You too 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.