Goodbye to Italy –
Ernie Pyle in England ready for the invasion
Ernie Pyle has been in England for some days, ready for his next – and biggest – job of war reporting.
In today’s column, he bids farewell to the boys in Italy. He writes:
Few of us can ever conjure up any truly fond memories of the Italian campaign. The enemy has been hard, and so have the elements. A few men have borne a burden they felt should have been shared by many more.
There is little solace for those who have suffered, and none at all for those who have died.
Ernie will cable his dispatches from England for the present – and then watch for Pyle when the invasion hour strikes.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Naples, Italy –
Again the time has come for me to travel a long way. When you read this, I should be in England. (EDITOR’S NOTE: He is.)
Some people laugh and say, “Well, that’s the tipoff, when you leave for England, the invasion must be about ready.”
That, I assume, is a jibe at me for having dinner with generals and supposedly getting the inside dope.
They flatter me, for I don’t know a bit more about the invasion than you do. I’ve intended going to England all along, and the only reason I held off till now was to wait for warm weather up there. These old bones ain’t what they used to be – they never were, as far as I can remember – and spending a winter in sunny Italy (ha!) hasn’t helped them.
At any rate, I do hate to leave now that the time has come. I’ve been in this war theater so long that I think of myself as a part of it. I’m not in the Army, but I feel sort of like a deserter at leaving.
There is some exhilaration here and some fun, along with the misery and sadness; but on the whole it has been bitter. Few of us can ever conjure up any truly fond memories of the Italian campaign.
The enemy has been hard, and so have the elements. Men have had to stay too long in the lines. A few men have borne a burden they felt should have been shared by many more.
Little or no solace
There is little solace for those who have suffered, and none at all for those who have died, in trying to rationalize about why things in the past were as they were.
I look at it this way – if by having only a small army in Italy we have been able to build up more powerful forces in England, and if by sacrificing a few thousand lives here this winter we can save half a million lives in Europe this summer – if these things are true, then it was best as it was.
I’m not saying they are true. I’m only saying you’ve got to look at it that way or else you can’t bear to think of it at all. Personally, I think they are true.
Before going, I want to pay a kind of tribute to a little group pf people I’ve never mentioned before. They are the enlisted men of the various Army public-relations units who drive us correspondents around and feed us and look after us. They are in the Army and subject to ordinary discipline, yet they live and work with men who are free and undisciplined. It is hard for any man to adjust himself to such a paradoxical life. But our boys have done it, and retained both their capabilities and their dignity.
Can’t mention them all
I wish I could mention them all. The few I can mention will have to represent the whole crew of many dozens of them…
There are drivers such as Delmar Richardson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Paul Zimmer of Oakland, California, and Jerry Benane of Minneapolis. They take care of the bulk of the correspondents, and it is only a miracle none of them has been wounded. They remain courteous and willing, despite a pretty irritating sort of life.
Then there are such boys as Cpl. Thomas Castleman, of my own town of Albuquerque, who rides his motorcycle over unspeakable roads through punishing weather to carry our dispatches to some filing point.
And then there is Pvt. Don Jordan, probably the most remarkable of all the PRO men I know. Don is a New England blueblood from Welles, Missouri and Attleboro, Massachusetts. He is a Brown University man, a dealer in antiques, a writer. He talks with a Boston accent, speaks French, and is at home in conversations about art and literature.
And do you know what he does? He cooks. He not only cooks, but he cooks with a flash and an imagination that make eating at our place a privilege.
Works like a slave
And on top of that, he runs the place as bookkeeper, house mother, translator and fulfiller of all requests, working like a slave with an unending good nature.
And there are such men as Sgts. Art Everett of Bay City, Michigan, and Harry Cowe of Seattle, who missed being officers by the unfair fates of war, and who go on doing work of officer responsibility with an admirable acceptance.
To these few men, and to all the others like them who have made life at war possible for us correspondents – my salute.
To all the rest of you in this Mediterranean army of ours – it has been wonderful in a grim, homesick, miserable sort of way to have been with you.
In two years of living with the Army there has not been one single instance from private to general when you have not been good to me. I want to thank you for that.
I’ve hated the whole damn business just as much as you do who have suffered more. I often wonder why I’m here at all, since I don’t have to be, but I’ve found no answer anywhere short of insanity, so I’ve quit thinking about it. But I’m glad to have been here.
So, this is farewell, I guess, for me. I’ll probably spend the rest of the war in England and upper Europe. And then – maybe I’ll see you in India.
Until then, goodbye, good luck and – as the Scottish say – God bless.
