Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Tunisia –
Little cameos – Late one night I was bedding down as a transient visitor in a frontline American hospital. Just before bedtime, a soldier came past and introduced himself and asked if I would like some fruit-cake. I didn’t especially care for any fruitcake but up here you never refuse anything so I went along with him and ate three pieces of fruitcake and half a pound of chocolate candy before going to bed.
The soldier was Cpl. Lester Gray, of 2443 Farwell Ave., Chicago. He has been married two years. The fruitcake we ate was made by his wife. It was, incidentally, the first one she ever made. Her success with it apparently went to her head, for Cpl. Gray said five more like it were on the way.
Gray is a laboratory technician with the hospital. Before the war, he was a salesman for a wholesale jewelry concern. Ever since he has been in Africa, he has kept a steady flow of letters going back to every one of his old customers. How’s that for salesmanship?
Army dog fears gunfire
One day in an olive grove where some troops were camped, I saw a beautiful German shepherd dog nosing around. It turned out that the soldiers had brought her all the way from America. Soldiers over here picked up literally thousands and thousands of dogs as pets, but this is the first one I’ve heard of that came all the way from home.
She originally belonged to Sgt. Edward Moody of Minneapolis, who was killed in an accident. After his death, the whole battery adopted her as a mascot. She has been on two long convoy trips, has served in Ireland and England, and been in several battles on the Tunisian front. She had eight pups on the way down from England.
Her name is “Lady.” She was only three weeks old when the soldiers got her, so her entire life has been spent with men in uniform. She is suspicious of civilians, and a person in civilian clothes cannot make up to her. Despite her martial career, “Lady” is afraid of gunfire. She gets the trembles when the big guns begin to thunder. Eventually they hope she’ll get over it and go charging right along with them into battle.
Another night, I was eating dinner with eight Air Force officers in the little hotel at Fériana. At the only other table in the dining room were a bunch of French officers. We ate and made a lot of noise, and they ate and made a lot of noise, and neither table paid any attention to the other.
Then when we were about through, some of the Americans started singing. I will have to say they were probably the worst singers I’d ever heard. They were so bad they finally just sort of bogged down, and we all laughed at ourselves in confusion.
The French can fight and sing
Seeing that, the French raised their glasses to us in toast – a tribute for a good try, I suppose. Then we toasted back, and they stood up, and we stood up, and we toasted each other back and forth till everybody was embarrassed. And finally, the French relieved the tension by saying they’d like to sing a song for us. And could they sing! It was like a professional glee club. Three of them were wounded veterans of the last war, covered with medals. One looked like an escapee from Devil’s Island. One was a chaplain, and he was just a youth but had a ferocious long beard and a bass voice like Singin’ Sam of the radio.
Those Frenchmen sang for an hour. Not ordinary songs that you’d heard before, but fighting regimental songs and catchy tunes with an almost jungle-like rhythm. The coal-oil lamp threw shadows on their faces, and it was truly an Old-World scene out of a book.
The touching part was just at the last, when the officer who looked like Devil’s Island came over and told us what the dinner was for. Their outfit had gone into the lines two weeks before. Today they had come out. Tonight those who survived were having a reunion, eating and drinking and singing for the ones who did not come back. Twenty-five had gone into the lines. Eleven were at the dinner.