Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LOS ANGELES – Since like the turtle I am slow but fairly sure, I will now report on that big “air raid” we had in Los Angeles. You know, the night we did all that shooting at we don’t know what. I happened to be in Los Angeles that night. I was in a high room in a downtown hotel, with no buildings obstructing the view, and it made a perfect grandstand seat.
At first I assumed it to be just another blackout in which nothing would happen. So after watching the lights go slowly out, I went back to bed. I was just going to sleep when there began those far-off rumbles, like Midwest thunder.
“My God!” I said to myself, and jumped out of bed again. For I knew that sound by heart. “Can this be happening in Los Angeles?”
It was happening. On the horizon – to the south, the east, the north – there were constant flashes of light, like sheet lightning low in the sky. The anti-aircraft guns were going. They seemed to fire much more rapidly than the ones I had known before.
But it was the searchlight display that fascinated me most, for that was something I had never seen before. The British had almost abandoned the use of searchlights when I got to England. They said it just outlined the city’s position.
But our Army – whatever they were following that night – certainly did a magnificently rhythmic job of it. There must have been at least two dozen searchlights pointed into the sky, all of them miles apart, covering a vast area in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles.
Converge into big spot in heavens
They all converged into a big blue spot in the heavens. And that spot moved very slowly but very definitely across the sky, with never a falter. Of all the many straight blue lines shooting upward to that one spot, not one ever wavered, or got lost, or had to “fish” or “feel” around for the target. They held it, and moved with it across the sky, like a leech that would not let go.
I could not see anything in that spot, for it was some 20 miles away. But I could see the anti-aircraft shells bursting around it. Now and then one seemed to burst right in the spot.
In London, the ack-ack bursts with a very white flash. Ours seemed to me much redder. In London, gunfire may be all around you during a raid, for they have guns in parks and on roofs, and portable guns on trucks that they run around. Sometimes they’ll come and shoot right under your window and shake the building and scare the pajamas off you.
But there was none of that here. There was no shooting from downtown Los Angeles at all. It was all from a great circle, surrounding the city. It was like distant lightning and thunder, and it gave you a feeling of horrible ominousness, rather than the more satisfying one of being excited to death in the midst of a din.
The blackout in downtown Los Angeles eventually was good, but it seemed very slow. Many lights were still burning after the guns started. My hotel pulled the main switch almost immediately.
With traffic stopped the city got very quiet, and I could hear the voices of wardens for blocks. I was amazed at how quickly they got out of bed and onto the job. They were out giving orders before the last of the street lights went off.
One refuses to douse lights
People in houses and apartments seemed to me careless the way they kept turning lights on just for a moment. There was one woman who insisted on keeping her light on even after the warden had warned her twice. (I could get all this from conversation in the street below.)
Finally an assistant warden, good and mad, started up after her again. And I heard the warden call to him, “Take it easy now. There are ways to deal with her afterward.”
The wardens used flashlights which seemed too bright to me.
Only authenticated traffic was allowed to move. No more than six cars passed my hotel in two hours.
In the downtown district, Los Angeles has lots of small sirens, placed on top of corner traffic-signal posts. They don’t sound so much like sirens as like whistles shooting off very rapidly. They were loud enough to awaken me – and I’m an old hand at sleeping through raids. But I was amazed at the number of people right in our hotel who never did wake up. I could hear them at breakfast next morning, absolutely unbelieving when told about it.
Although I spent a winter in England, I never did learn to tell the crack of gunfire from the burst of bombs, unless they were really close. And so it was that night in Los Angeles. Sometimes a distant explosion would be of a different timber, and I’d think, “That could be a bomb,” but was never sure. And, of course, as it turned out, there were no bombs.
I have been very frightened in London, but despite the terrific surprise of gunfire here on our own soil, I don’t recall being at a concerned here. And the thing that finally sent me back to bed was the fact that no fires ever appeared on the horizon. I couldn’t conceive of it being a real raid unless a few fires were started.
So I went to sleep, and three hours later was awakened by the all-clear. It was daylight. And as I looked out the window at Los Angeles, still whole, I had the same feeling I always had in looking upon damaged London after a raid. And that is, I couldn’t believe it was real. It all seemed like a prearranged show to me – even in London.
Mounted defense unit provides horses, guns
Klamath Falls, Oregon (UP) –
Klamath Falls has organized a mounted reserve for national defense.
Approximately 30 are enrolled, and their horses are kept at the fair grounds for immediate action in case of call.
Sheriff Lloyd Low is captain of the reserve. Each member of the unit provides his own horse, equipment and firearms, and each of the men contributes about $10 a month voluntarily.
