Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With U.S. forces in Algeria –
Being with the troops in Africa is, in many ways, like attending a national political convention. Especially if you’re around one of the headquarters set up in the various coastal cities.
In Oran, for instance, the censor’s office serves as the press box, and that’s where you meet other correspondents and exchange dope and listen to the radio news. Everybody eats at two big messes set up by the Army. If you want to see somebody and can’t find him, you wait till mealtime and you’re bound to see him there.
As at a convention, you run your legs off from one building to another, looking up various officers and having confabs. Everybody fills your ear full of dope, rumor, and fact. Most of it you can’t use, and most of it isn’t true anyway.
Convention-like, people wander in and out of my room all day and night. Some of them you know, and some you don’t. Rooms are scarce, and you’re liable to have one friend and two strangers sleeping on your floor.
Parade of faces goes on and on
You shake hands with scores of people whose faces you know, but you can’t remember their names or at what camp in Ireland or England you met them. And you’re always running surprisingly onto some genuine acquaintance.
A moment ago, Pvt. Crosby Lewis walked into my room. He’s a brilliant young American who joined the Canadian Army and was sent to England two years ago. Now he’s with us. The last time I saw him was at a cocktail party in London announcing his engagement.
Last evening, I bumped into Lt. Col. Louis Plain of the Marine Corps, who was one of my friends at Londonderry last summer. He’s a big Clevelander, hard as nails, who got the Marine situation well in hand here and then lost his voice, so he just makes motions.
On my first day here a beaming fellow in British uniform came up and started pumping my hand. It was Guy Ramsey, of the London News-Chronicle, whom I last saw nearly two years ago when we were following Wendell Willkie in England. Ramsey is the greatest reciter of limericks in England. All of them are unprintable.
Fellow college man turns up
Way out in the country one night, I was introduced in the darkness to Maj. William H. Pennington. We chatted a few moments, and it turned out we were in school together at Indiana University 20 years ago.
Yesterday, a fellow came up whom 1 hadn’t seen for 10 years. He was Grainger Sutton, once a linotype operator on the Washington Daily News. He is a major now.
So it goes. Friends you had in England, good friends from America, people you hadn’t seen for two decades. Tomorrow, they’ll disappear again.
In wartime, people leave without saying goodbye – a fellow will be gone for three or four days before you realize his absence. It’s no use to inquire. You just accept it, and months from now you’ll be pumping his hand in some other foreign country. Or maybe you’ll never see him again. You can never tell.
Luggage is nuisance
Personal luggage in wartime is a paradox. You must have it, and in order to have it you must carry it with you, and you can’t carry it with you because there’s too much of it. You have to carry your own bed and tent, some extra rations, your clothes, and a lot of purely military stuff such as gas mask, dust mask, tin hat, canteen, mess kit, and so on.
No man can carry all that on his back; I personally couldn’t carry that much if there were two of me. Consequently, it has to go on trucks. And inevitably it gets lost. The result of this overweight of baggage is that people simply abandon part of it, even if they don’t lose it. They’ll be less comfortable, but they just can’t lug it all. Go into any billet or barracks and you’ll find bedding, or clothes, or barracks bags that the guy ahead of you left.
In the room I’m now occupying, I picked up a nice cap which fitted me better than my own, and I also took the blankets I found on the floor and left mine in their place, because they were nicer than mine. There’s also a brand-new mess kit here if anybody wants it.
