Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
With the Allied beachhead forces in Italy – (by wireless)
The sailors aboard an LST (landing ship tank) have the same outlook on life that the average soldier overseas has. That is, they devote a good part of their conversation to home, and to when they may get there.
They are pretty veteran by now, and have been under fire a lot. They’ve served the hot beaches of Sicily, Salerno and Anzio. They know a gun fired in anger when they hear one.
On the whole, although the boys who man these beachhead supply ships are frequently in great danger, they do live fairly comfortably. Their food is good, their quarters are fair, and they have such facilities as hot baths, new magazines, candy, hot meals and warmth.
The sailors sleep in folding, bunks with springs and mattresses. The officers sleep in cabins, two or so to a cabin, the same as on bigger ships.
An LST isn’t such a glorious ship to look at – it is neither sleek nor fast not impressively big – and yet it is a good ship and the crews aboard LSTs are proud of them.
LSTs roll and twist
The LSTs are great rollers – the sailors say “They’ll even roll in drydock.” They have flat bottoms and consequently they roll when there is no sea at all. They roll fast, too. Their usual tempo is a roundtrip roll every six seconds. The boys say that in a really heavy sea you can stand on the bridge and actually see the bow of the ship twist, like a monster turning its head. It isn’t an optical illusion either, but a result of the “give” in these ships.
The sailors say that when they run across a sandbar, the ship seems to work its way across like an inchworm, proceeding forward section by section.
The LST has handled every conceivable type of wartime cargo. It has carried a whole shipload of fused shells, the most dangerous kind. Among the soldiers of many nationalities that my LST has carried, the crew found the Indian troops of Jahore the most interesting. The Indians were friendly, and as curious as children. The Americans liked them. In fact, I’ve found that Americans like practically anybody who is halfway friendly.
Toilet-seat tragedy
The Indian soldiers base practically every action on their religion. They brought their own food, and it had to be cooked by certain of their own people.
They made a sort of pancake out of flour that was full of weevils and worms. But it was sacred, and if an American cook tried to help out and touched the pan, the whole panful had to be thrown away.
Even going to the toilet was a religious ritual with them. They carried special toilet-seat covers previously cleansed by some proper person, and would no more think of using an unflushed toilet then you would think of committing murder.
Capt. Joseph Kahrs told me of one touching incident that happened when the Indian troops were put ashore. One of them had fallen ill and had to be taken back to Africa.
He was the only Indian left on the ship. The tragedy of his pitiful case was that the poor unfortunate was caught without a sacred toilet seat, and he had dysentery.
“What did he do?” I inquired.
Capt. Kahrs said:
I never did ask. I couldn’t bear to know. To me, it is the most frightful incident of the war.
