IX Engineer Command

during the same period. A continuous convoy of dump-trucks hauled rock to the subgrades of the various runways. By the middle of November, rail shipments had picked up and more pierced steel plank was rolling in. Winter specifications were now standard for all fields and the first snow began to fall.

During this period, the 862nd had several losing arguments with buzz-bombs at Liege; a company of the 818th went into the Duchy of Luxembourg to build a "Brass-Hat" field at Sandweiler; the 850th fought a classic mud campaign in construction at Rosieres on Haye; the 846th built the first American field in Holland, near Maastricht; the 833rd returned to Hagenau to rebuild the first and only drome which was abandoned by the command as the result of enemy action; and the 840th and 832nd bolstered mud-sagged runways in eastern France. It was also in this period that General Newman found it necessary to leave the Command on an official visit to the Air Engineer and War Department in Washington. During his absence, Colonel Schilling commanded the organization.

Mud was still a king-size problem. Ice and snow had to be kept off the runways. Repair hangers and temporary huts were built and the engineers became more popular than ever in the eyes of the Air Corps. The Command's three Engineer Maintenance Companies, the 471, 475, and 973rd, were hard pressed to keep equipment operating.

But the mud, cold, and snow didn't stop the war. The battle for Metz had been won and the story of how the Metz airfield was rehabilitated by the 830th battalion in December rates as one of the winter highlights in the engineer operations. "The 8-Ball" men under Lieutenant Colonel Philip P. Melody, of Falmouth, Mass., worked on the airdrome while under observation and fierce shelling from an enemy held fort on nearby high ground and in the face