Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With U.S. forces in Algeria – (by wireless)
Of all the American troops who are about to bust a hamstring to get into battle, I suppose the Rangers are the worst.
That’s because they’re trained like racehorses, and if they can’t race every day they get to fretting.
As you know, the Rangers are American commandos. For months their training has been a violent, double-barreled curriculum of body toughening and scientific elimination of the enemy. All summer and fall in the cold waters of Scotland, they practiced until they were as indestructible as Superman and as deadly as executioners. Then they had a shot of the real business. A few went on the Dieppe raid, and all of them came to Africa.
Here they had one specific and highly dangerous job to do. And they did it so expertly that they suffered almost no casualties and spared all the Frenchmen’s lives.
Rangers want more lands to storm
Since then, the Rangers have had nothing to do. They are in camp now, running through mock landings, swimming in the Mediterranean on the coldest days, doing military police duty in a nearby town. And they are gradually going nuts waiting to get into action again.
Since the specialty of the Rangers is landing on enemy beaches and storming gun positions, I asked one of them:
Do you suppose you’ll just have to sit here until we invade another continent?
He said:
My God, I hope not! It might be too long a wait.
I have got acquainted with one Ranger officer, Capt. Manning Jacob. He called Morristown, New Jersey, home, but before the war he was an oil operator in South Texas.
Capt. Jacob took me on a cross-country walk, following a detachment of Rangers. I had to run to keep up. Finally, I couldn’t go on any longer, and had to sit down and pant. I thought to myself:
I’m ashamed of being so soft and feeble, but after all I’m past 40 and I shouldn’t be expected to keep up with guys like Jacob.
And then it turned out that this lethal athlete called Capt. Jacob is 40 years old himself. Maybe he gets more vitamins than I did.
At any rate, the Rangers are good. If somebody doesn’t think up a new shore for them to storm pretty quick, they may resort to storming Africa all over again.
It’s a small world, Ernie finds
A nurse in an old blue sweater came walking down a muddy street at an Army hospital out in the country. An Army friend with me yelled at her, and stopped and introduced me. And the nurse said:
Well, at last! I’ve been saving sugar for you for two years, but I never expected to meet you here.
I had never seen the nurse before in my life, so a little inquiring about the sugar, business was necessary. The facts in the case are as follows:
Mary Ann Sullivan is a former surgical supervisor in Boston City Hospital. She and her sister nurses were reading this column two years ago, when I was in London and complaining bitterly in the public prints about not getting enough sugar. So, it seems the nurses laughed about it and started saving sugar. Whenever a cube was left over, they would save it, and laugh and say:
This one’s for Ernie.
Then a year ago, these nurses joined a Harvard unit and set sail for England. And they carried with them that sugar especially earmarked for me. Their motive was high but it came to naught. For the Germans torpedoed their ship and my sugar went to the bottom of the Atlantic.
The nurses were eventually picked up and taken to Iceland, then to England, and finally to Africa. And here we all are, and isn’t it a small world after all even if my sugar is gone?
Mary Ann felt badly about my sugar being sunk, but she did bring out a hospitable commodity which both censorship and the ethics of war forbid me to mention. So, our meeting after two years was not without a certain rare delicacy to put in our mouths after all.
Mary Ann wants action too
Mary Ann Sullivan came ashore in Africa on the very first morning of the landings. They operated on wounded men for hours, with snipers’ bullets still pinging on the walls, which is just the kind of life Mary Ann had been waiting for.
She is so steamed up she can hardly wait for the next battle. She is now with a mobile surgical truck, which she calls the super-commando truck. It is equipped to rush into the thick of things, slam on the brakes, and operate on wounded men for 36 hours without replenishments.
I am arranging officially with General Headquarters to be wounded in Mary Ann’s vicinity.