First of all, there's the danger angle. People will say that
it's dangerous working in an ordnance plant. It is dangerous--but just
because it is more dangerous than work in other types of plants, the
safety precautions which are taken are very much more complete than in
other types of plants. Any of you who have been through a shell-loading
or powder plant knows how they make you wear shoes without any metal
in them, make you leave your keys and your belt buckles and your hard
money outside--make you get rid of anything that might strike a4 spark.

And those precautions work. Here's something that may sur-
prise you--it did me. Only one industry has a better accident record than
the powder and shell-loading plants. What industry? The women's
clothing industry, gentlomen!

Now somsbody may ask you why we need so many heavy guns, so
much heavy gun armunition. Somebody may say that we didn't shoot off
such huge quantities of ammmnition in the last war. That's quite true--
we didn't. In one month of the battle of Cassino, General Mark Clark's .
Fifth Army alone used 64,750,000 pounds of heavy artillery arrmnition.
That leaves out aircraft bombs, machine-gun, rifle, am mortar ammunition
and it is, I'm sure youtll agree, a staggering figure.

Yes, we're using a lot more heavy gun ammunition in this war.
And wetre using more airplanes toc-more tanks--more of a lot of things.
In other words, the business of fighting a war changes--and one of the
changes is a necd for heavy gun ammunition much greater than any one could
have imagined.

But that's only one angle of the problem. Because the fact is,
our Army could fight this. war without so mich heavy gun ammunition. They
could use men instcad. Instead of paving the way for an infantry advance
with a battering barrage from heavy artillery, they could send the infantry
in behind a smaller barrage. And the infantry might get there too, might
take such-and-such a position in France, or suoh-and-such a position on
a Pacific Island, But not so many of them would get there, would be alive
when the position was taken--a great many more would be killedececee

I don't know whether any of you read the story a few weeks
ago in one of the big magazines about what made the invasion of Normandy
succeed, with thirty percent fewer casualties than had been expected.
Just one thing kept those casualties down--the tremendous artillery
barrage from naval ships that preceded the attack on the beaches. Yes,
it was a naval barrage, but it was none the less artillery--seaborne
artillery, if you want to call it that. It is possible that the invasion
would have succeded without this barrage--but it would have succeeded
at the cost of a great many more good American boys.

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