Following the Front

Book excerpt: Following the Front is a compilation of WWII dispatches written by Sidney A. Olson for TIME and LIFE magazines, 1944-1945. Olson, who joined Time Inc. in 1939 and served as a senior editor there, asked to be assigned overseas as a war correspondent. In mid-December, 1944, he received his accreditation from the War Department and sailed for London. Attached to the European Theater of Operations (ETO), Olson followed the Allied Forces as they pushed the Nazis back into Germany. He typed up his reports and cabled them to his editors in New York. Following the front meant being on the move constantly. In late January, Olson made his way to Paris, flew to Brussels, then drove to the battlefront in Holland. From that time forward, he never really stopped moving. He would race ahead and circle back, hopping from one military division to the next, gradually making his way across Germany and into Austria. His dispatches illustrate--line by line, battle by battle--the extraordinary Allied effort to defeat Hitler.