Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
Fewer than a third of the sailors on our ship were Regular Navy. And most of that third hadn’t been in the Navy many years. Most of our crew were young peacetime landlubbers who became sailors only because of the war and who were longing to get back to civil life.
These “amateurs” made a crew somewhat less efficient than you would have found before the war. They just haven’t had tome to become thoroughly adept. But their officers say they are all terribly willing.
Here are a few sketches of some of the men who made the wheels go ‘round on the ship I was on:
Joe Raymer: He’s an electrician’s mate first class. His home is at 51 South Burgess Ave., Columbus, Ohio. He is married, and has a daughter four years old. Joe was in the Navy from 1924 to 1928, so he knows his way around ships.
He is medium height, a pleasant fellow with a little silver in his hair and a cigar in his mouth. I don’t know why, but sailors smoking cigars have always seemed incongruous to me.
Before the war, Joe was a traveling salesman, and that’s what he intends to go back to. He worked for the Pillsbury flour people – had central-southern Ohio. He was a hot shot and no fooling. The year before he came back to the Navy, he sold more pancake flour than anybody else in America, and won himself a $500 bonus.
Warren Ream: His home is at Paradise, California, and he has worked for several years in the advertising departments of big Los Angeles stores – Bullock’s, Barker Brothers, Robinson’s. He arrived over here just in time to get aboard ship for the invasion. Actually, he thinks he wasn’t supposed to be aboard ship at all, but he was glad he didn’t miss it.
Ream is a storekeeper third class, but that doesn’t mean he keeps store. In fact, he does a little bit of everything from sweeping up to passing shells.
His life is a great contrast with what it used to be. Ream is the kind of fellow you would think would be tortured by the rough life of the Navy. But we were standing at the rail one day and he said:
I wonder what’s happened to the old Navy we used to read about. I remember hearing of skippers who could cuss for forty-five minutes without repeating themselves. But from what I’ve seen, skippers today can’t cuss any better than I can. I’m disappointed.
Harvey Heredeen: He is now a warrant officer, which means he eats in the wardroom and is called “mister.” But a man’s a man by any other name, and Mr. Heredeen looked exactly like what he has always been – a regular old-time chief petty officer. He got orders to return to the States just before we sailed, but you wouldn’t get an old-timer to miss a show like that. He got permission to postpone the homeward trip until after we had made the invasion.
Mr. Heredeen retired from the Navy in 1935 after 17 years of it, 12 of them in submarines. He had met a Memphis schoolteacher so he got married and settled down there in a job at the Linde Air Products Company, making oxygen. He came back two and a half years ago. He is 45 now.
Before long, he will be back in America instructing at submarine school. His nickname is “Spike,” and his home is at 1200 Tanglewood St., Memphis. Back home he was a deacon in the London Avenue Christian Church. He says not to make any wisecracks about his cussing and tobacco-chewing when I write him up. Okay, Deacon.