Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Oran, Algeria – (by wireless)
The Army’s Special Services Branch, whose job is to provide relaxation and entertainment for the soldiers, is having a tough time over here.
There are lots of reasons why it’s so tough. They haven’t any money and there isn’t much to buy here even if they had money. Lots of their athletic equipment never showed up, and they don’t know where it is. There are no stage or movie facilities at the camps, and you run onto all kinds of snags in dickering with the local business people for theaters, restaurants, and auditoriums.
But they have made some progress. They’ve picked up a local troupe of singers and dancers with the very un-French name of Robert Taylor Shows, who travel from camp to camp. They have also just hired a local circus, with wild animals and trapeze performers, to visit camps.
Since the Special Services Branch has no money, the soldiers have to pay admission, but they have plenty of money.
Movie people are headaches
There are no plans for bringing over Hollywood people, as has been done in England. They say the reason is that there’s no place at the camps for them to perform, and they are headaches to handle anyway, being temperamental.
But it seems to me that sincere entertainers could perform on the ground, out under the sky, and that thew Army could tolerate a few Hollywood headaches if the troops really benefited – and there is no question about the stars being extremely popular with our troops in England.
They say here that a soldier’s three first needs are: (1) good mail service; (2) movies, radios, and phonographs; (3) cigarettes and candy. Cigarettes are being issued free now, six packs a week, but the other items are very short in Africa.
Every radio in Oran has been bought up by the Army. Music stores are cleaned out. All the camps want more musical instruments; they are even advertising in the newspapers for second-hand ones.
Dancing is revived
Many camps rigged up their own forms of entertainment. Some had bands, and gave big dances which delighted the local people since dancing had been banned during more than two years of German rule.
Boxing is popular in the camps, and tournaments are being arranged. Boxing gloves are one thing that did show up in sizable amounts.
But it is simple athletic games in which lots of men can participate that the Special Services Branch is concentrating on in lieu of better things. Three such games – kick baseball, speedball, and touch football – have been inaugurated. In addition, I’ve seen lots of handball and even badminton being played at the more remote camps.
In town the Red Cross as usual has done a good job of setting up clubs and restaurants for troops on leave. The Army itself supervised the opening of two nightclubs for officers, and is negotiating for clubs for enlisted men, noncoms, and Negro troops.
Men need something to do
But with the shortage of sports equipment in the camps, and the towns so far away and no regular transportation, and with the different customs and different language, in a country stripped of almost everything a person would want to buy, life becomes far different from what it was in England. Some of the harder heads say:
Well, this is war and we’re at the front. The time for coddling troops is over.
But it happens that only a very tiny percentage of our troops in Africa are at the front. The rest are far behind the lines, doing the drab, hard work of supplying the Army or waiting impatiently to get into action. And as the war grows fiercer and troops come back from the front to rest, they will have to have something to do. So, if this is the spot we’ve picked to do our fighting in, I’m in favor of doing as much as possible to brighten dull and cheerless ones.
