Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, North Africa – (by wireless)
Little items… The constant boom and roll of heavy artillery are still to me the most saddening, sickening, doom-spelling sound of all the ghastly war noises I know… One of the funniest sights of the war to me so far is to see an Arab, clad in nothing but American GI skintight winter underwear, running along behind a caravan of camels…
The most pathetic little sight I’ve seen in the war was just after a 500-pound bomb landed in the garden of a monastery (only 50 yards from my tent, incidentally) … We went over to look at the great crater it left, and lying there just outside the rim of the crater was a big frog, dead from concussion. His legs were still spread, in leaping position, his eyes still open, his mouth still agape as if just about to say in hurt wonderment:
Why did you want to do this to me?
Captor buys prisoner’s camera
Maj. Charles Miller of Detroit had a Rolleicord camera and 10 rolls of film that he bought from an English-speaking Italian prisoner. When he offered to buy it, the prisoner was aghast. He said:
Why, I’m a prisoner. It’s yours. You don’t buy it, you take it.
But Maj. Miller told him we didn’t do it that way over here, and he gave the Italian three times as much as the price the prisoner finally proposed. At home the same camera would cost $200.
We aren’t the only ones who like to collect enemy gear. The Germans did the same. German prisoners showed up with American mess kits and with Tommy guns, and even wearing pieces of American uniforms.
The Germans worked up a terrific respect for the uncanny accuracy of our artillery. It was so perfect it had them agog. They tell of one German officer, taken prisoner before the collapse, who when brought into camp said:
I know you’re going to kill me, but before you do, would you let me see that automatic artillery of yours?
We didn’t kill him, of course, and neither did we show him our automatic artillery, because we haven’t got any. We’re just crack shots, that’s all.
Killing sickens pilot
A fighter pilot I know – a squadron leader – sent close to 200 Germans to their doom. He was homeward bound from a mission and flying right on the deck – in other words, just above the ground. He zoomed over a little rise, and there straight ahead, dead in his sights, was the evening chow line behind a German truck.
It all happened in a second. There wasn’t time for the Germans to duck. The pilot simply pressed the button, cannon shells streamed forth, and Germans and pieces of Germans flew in all directions.
The squadron leader barely mentioned it in his report when he got back. He says it almost made him sick. Killing is his business, but it is killing an opponent in the air that he likes. I’m not even giving his name, because he feels so badly about it.
I have run onto another dog that came all the way from America. He is a black-and-white springer spaniel, and he sprang from the dog pound at St. Petersburg, Florida. Two pilots originally had him – Lt. Richard East, of East Orange, New Jersey, and Lt. Harold Taft, of Jeffersonville, Indiana. They named him Duckworth, after the third member of their original flying-school trio – Lt. John Stewart Duckworth of Boston.
Mascot dog loves to fly
Duckworth has checked out in seven different kinds of airplanes. He has flown across the Atlantic, and twice across Africa, and once up and once down Africa. He loves to fly.
I heard one pilot who had a pet cat that burst its eardrums on its first flight and is now stone deaf. But the boys stuff cotton in Duckworth’s ears and he’s okay.
The dog’s namesake, Lt. Duckworth, is now at Randolph Field, Texas, fretting because he isn’t overseas in combat. The dog’s co-owner. Lt. East, is one of those who never came back from a Tunisian mission. So, Duckworth now belongs only to Lt. Taft, who humors him and cusses him and is very proud of him.
He says “Duckworth” is the biggest ladies’ man in Africa.
