Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Oran, Algeria –
The American soldier will not be denied fraternization with his fellow man. Regardless of barriers, somehow our soldiers got along and made themselves understood, even though they couldn’t speak a word of French or Arabic. I saw a soldier sitting at a café table with two French girls and their father, apparently spending the whole evening just smiling and making gestures. And I also saw Americans walking arm in arm with Frenchmen of the Foreign Legion. What they talked about or tried to talk about, I have no idea. A really comic sight was one of our boys standing on the street with an English-French dictionary in his hand, talking to a girl and looking up each word as he spoke it.
One night, far out in the country, I passed a small roadside fire with two American soldiers and two turbaned and bewhiskered Arabs squatted closely over it like old pals – a really touching sight.
Our soldiers were filthy rich, for there was little to buy. They loaded up on perfume and lipsticks, which were plentiful. They sent, perfume to their girls in America and lipsticks to their girls in England, the old Lotharios.
Navy sets up hospital
The native crafts are largely silverwork, rugs, and leather. Some of the Algerian rugs resembled our Navajo Indian ones. They were beautiful and the prices were about the same. One officer I know thought he’d have an Arabian horseman’s regalia made, to wear to costume balls after the war. But he found it would cost about $100, that he’d have to get a special dispensation to obtain the materials, and that it would take anywhere from several weeks to six months to make.
There weren’t many American sailors in Oran at first, but the Navy, as usual, took excellent care of those who were. One day I bumped into Lieutenant William Spence, a good friend of mine, who invited me down to look at the Navy’s hospital, of which he was in charge.
Lt. Spence was at Bellevue, in New York, before the war. He came ashore here, the morning of the American landings, with eight men, and they spent the next few days tending wounded sailors and soldiers on the beach. Then they went to Oran and started looking for a place to set up their hospital. They found a French Red Cross building standing empty and promptly moved in. In a day or two the navy was all set in what probably was the nicest hospital in North Africa.
I always like to hang around with navy men, they take such good care of me. At the time I still had a cough from the convoy trip, so they fixed me up a bottle of cough medicine and even made a blood count, to get a line on whether I was going to live or not.
It turned out that the pharmacist’s mate who poured the medicine was an old Hoosier boy – in fact, he used to live only 20 miles from where I was raised. His name was Ben Smith of 620 S. Fifth Street, Terre Haute, Indiana.
Guards like the menu
Lt. Spence is getting all his beach boys promotions, so maybe Ben will be a chief pharmacist by the time this is printed.
One of the army hospital commandants who came ashore the first morning of the occupation had a tale to tell. It seems the Medical Corps took over a barracks that the French had vacated in haste, and turned it into a hospital. The Americans found the place full of ammunition, and the officer got the creeps for fear the French would come back that night and try to retake it.
His problem was solved when he spied two Tommy-gunners walking along the street. He rushed out and asked them if they would guard the ammunition all night. They said, ‘‘Sure,’’ and the doctor went on about his business.
It was a couple of days before the fighting was all over, and the two guards never entered his mind again until about a week later, when he happened to see them. They hadn’t reported back to their own outfit; they were still hanging around, faithfully guarding the ammunition.
And why did they do that? The answer is simple. Hospital food was always better than could be had anywhere else. These guys hadn’t spent their months in the Army for nothing.
