European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 26, 1945, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Roll battalions and truck jockeys in the persian Gulf command have hefted almost million tons of vital lend lease supplies to despite Tough roads and killing persian gulp since december 1942 when i truck engineers and a horde of other technicians skidded off their transports into the gooey Gumbo mud of the port of Khorram Staihr on the persian this com Mand has toted More than tons of essential supplies to our fighting allies in the this figure and other statistics on the pc have been made Public by Don Ald the in a recent War depart ment when american soldiers the monthly capacity of the two chief Gulf ports of Khorram Shah and Bandar Shahpur was Only it took More 50 Days to unload a Liberty ship and get it moving Back on the Long voyage engineers took Over the Job of extending existing they worked in heat that hit 170 degrees and better in the but Sun or no and Winter Rains and mud they kept on the while the engineers worked to extend the longshoremen worked beside them unloading the incoming keeping the cargo first White then negro outfits tackled the Job of emptying the holds of lend lease material for our soviet the heat cramped this and Metal was so hot to the touch that men moving it wore heavy still the longshoremen managed to break exist ing Dock records and went on to break the rec ords they had set by october 1944 the capacity of the twin ports had been increased to almost three times the output when the yanks the railway mostly old railway men from famous roads like the Union Pacific and Santa started their operation on a single track built mostly by the abdicated Shah of the Road ran through desert and it had 133 tunnels in 163 and the heat in the tunnels in summer with ancient British we Coa burning locomotives was just a trifle less than the railway men were handicapped by Lack of i tools were delayed in and they had to dig Down to the Bottom of their Barracks bags for old favorite tools of their own and make new ones by expediency methods in persian railway shops before they could even assemble the shiny new diesel engines that had been shipped from the they got their die Sels put together and and railway ton nage in before the arrival of the i the Road carried in while the Road and its equipment were still undergoing reconversion by the the figure jumped to in the first 10 months of an Al time record of tons rolled from the Gulf North to this record Means that the command moved each month in close to the total tonnage for All of the Highway from Khorran Mshar to where supplies were turned Over to red army Drivers for the final Lap to was mostly an ill defined Camel Trail through the desert and an unfinished Road partially hacked out of the in the desert i truck Drivers choked on fog thick in the mountains they wound around hairpin turns that dropped off into sheer there were traffic hazards All the including Nomad caravans Complete with sheep and horses along the and occasional native Drivers heavy on the in spite of these hazards american Drivers put in More than 97 million Miles of driving Over the Khorran Mshar to Kasvin stretch and delivered to Miles of supplies to the russian dump at in the Elburz Mountain Engineer who improved the Road and kept it in usable made that record the engineers took Over the Road con Striction Job in the desert from a civilian com Pany using a Sandstone base material that had to be hauled from Miles estimated it would take a year to Complete the the army Road builders developed a new Type of Soi Asphalt base that could be mixed on the they used native with gis acting As they finished the desert Section in five months and kept up the work of improving the rest of the route by june the whole Road was Able to Bear its full Burden of truck All this was done in the face of Spring Rains that often washed away in one night the engineers efforts of painful two relatively unpublicized phases of the pc were its airplay and automobile Assembly the set up by army and Douglas aircraft men in february before the pc even turned out planes at Aba an Airport on the persian for the red army men gradually replaced Douglas personnel at this Plant from february 1942 to october assembled or checked a total of tons of operational these of were tested by and pilots and then were flown out by red air Force some of in the Early Days of the went into combat Over Stalingrad less than 24 hours after they left the persian Gulf Assembly they helped substantially to turn Back the German there were two truck Assembly at a War swollen Boom town in the desert and the other at they had been begun by the general motors overseas corporation in the Spring and summer of 1942 like the plane they were gradually taken Over by the army As the pc moved at both trucks were loaded and turned Over to the red whose Drivers took them from the Assembly lines and headed after a final checkup at the hands of i ordnance men at of these inspectors had come Over before the com Mand was organized and worked with russian Drivers As far North As russian Drivers drove trucks and loads directly to Battle lines in the these american assembled by gis and driven by accounted for Gross tons of vehicles and a total of vehicles of All jeeps to fire engines from Detroit to Southern Iran to rus Sian combat Connolly figures give an unto Date estimate of the Job done by his As figures on they Are in terms of work done under Adverse condition in a killing often without proper equip sometimes hampered by Lack of Man pow they Are Damn near