Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
Sicily was known to be short of water in summertime, so our invasion forces brought enough water with them to last five days. In the case of the 45th Division, this amounted to 155,000 gallons.
It was brought in tanks and in individual five-gallon cans. There were three ships with tanks of 10,000 gallons each. On the transports there were 125,000 gallons, all in five-gallon cans. That meant that this one division brought with it from Africa 25,000 cans of water. Just think of it – 25,000 cans! And other divisions did the same.
Actually, we didn’t have as much trouble finding water as we’d expected, and we needn’t have brought so much with us, but you never know. Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach, but I think you could almost say an army marches on its water. Without water you’re sunk.
As an old punster, how in the hell can you sink without water? Well, I said it; you figure it out.
2 gallons per man
Throughout the Sicilian campaign, the 45th Division used about 50,000 gallons of water a day, or two gallons per man. Just as a comparison, the daily water consumption in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a city of 12,000, is a million gallons a day, or almost 100 gallons a person.
Although the difference seems fantastic, still our troops used more than absolutely necessary, for an army can exist and fight on one gallon a day per man.
It falls to the engineers to provide water for the Army. Engineer officers scout the country right behind the retiring enemy, looking for watering places.
They always keep three water points set up constantly for each division – one for each of the three regiments, and usually a couple of extra ones. When a water point is found, the engineers wheel in their portable purifying unit. This consists of a motorized pump, a sand filter, a chlorinating machine, and a collapsible 3,000-gallon canvas tank which stands about shoulder-high when put up.
Purified water is pumped into this canvas tank. Then all day and all night, vehicles of the regiment from miles around line up and fill their cans, tanks, and radiators.
Painted signs saying “Water Point,” with an arrow pointing the direction, are staked along the roads for miles around.
The sources of our water in Sicily were mainly wells, mountain springs, little streams, shell craters, and irrigation ditches. The engineers of the 45th Division found one shell crater that contained a broken water main, and the seepage into this crater provided water for days. They also discovered that some of Sicily’s dry river beds had underground streams flowing beneath, and by drilling down a few feet, they could pump up all they needed.
Sicilian supplies untapped
Another time, they put pumps into a tiny little irrigation ditch only four inches deep and a foot wide. You wouldn’t think it would furnish enough water for a mule, yet it kept flowing and carried them safely through.
In their municipal water systems, the Sicilians use everything from modern 20-inch cast-iron pipe down to primitive earthen aqueducts still surviving from Roman days.
Our engineers made it a practice not to tap the local water supplies. We made a good many friends that way, for the Sicilians said the Germans used no such delicacy. In fact, we leaned over the other way, and furnished water to scores of thousands of Sicilians whose supply had been shattered by bombing.
It doesn’t make much difference what shape the water is in when you find it, for it is pumped through the filter machine which takes out the sediment. Then purifying substances are shot in as it passes through the pumps. The chlorine we inject comes in powder form in one-gallon cans. We usually use one part of chlorine to a million parts of water.
The 45th’s engineers brought with them enough chlorine to last six months. In addition to chlorine, alum and soda ash is injected into the water. After you’ve drunk this water for as long as we have, you don’t notice the odd taste.
The 45th brought six complete water-purifying units with it and also brought a unit for distilling drinking water out of sea water, but this never had to be used.
Maybe a little ‘vino’
When he marches or goes into battle, an infantryman usually carries two canteens instead of one, but here in the hot summer it isn’t unusual at all to see a soldier carrying six canteens tied to the end of a leather strap like a bunch of grapes – half his canteens being captured Italian ones covered with gray felt for keeping the water cool.
And, I might add out of the side of my mouth, if you got real nosey, you might discover that a couple of those canteens, instead of holding our beautiful pure water, were bearing a strange red fluid known colloquially as “vino,” to be used, no doubt, for rubbing on fleabites.