The Pittsburgh Press (May 25, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A B-26 base, England –
Sgt. Phil Scheier is a radio gunner. That is, he operates the radio of his B-26 bomber when it needs operating, and when over enemy territory he switches to one of the plane’s machine guns.
It’s hard to think of Sgt. Scheier as a tough gunner. In fact, it’s hard to think of him as an enlisted man. He is what you would call the “officer type” – he would seem more natural with a major’s leaves on his shoulders than a sergeant’s stripes on his arms. But he doesn’t feel that way about it.
He says:
I’m the only satisfied soldier in the Army. I’ve found a home in the Army. I like what I’m doing, and I wouldn’t trade my job for any other in the Army.
Not that he intends to stay in after the war. He’s 28, but he intends to go to college as soon as he gets out of uniform. He has been a radio scriptwriter for several years, but he wants to go to Columbia School of Journalism and learn how to be a big fascinating newspaperman like me.
Sgt. Scheier’s home is at Richmond, Staten Island. Like the others, he has a DFC and an Air Medal with clusters.
He says:
When I won a Boy Scout medal once, they got out the band and had a big celebration. But when you get the DFC, you just sign a paper and a guy hands it to you as though it was nothing.
Later, when I mentioned that I would like to put that remark in the column, Sgt. Scheler laughed and said: “Oh, I just made that up. I never was a Boy Scout.”
Sgt. Kenneth Brown of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, is one of two men in my barracks who have the Purple Heart. He was hit in the back and arm by flak several months ago. He is a good-natured guy, and he has the next war figured out.
He isn’t going to go hide in a cave or on a desert island, as so many jokingly threaten to do. He thinks he has a better way. The minute the war starts, he’s going to get a sand table and start making humps and valleys and drawing lines in the sand. He figures that will automatically makes him a general and then he’ll be all right.
Sgt. Kenneth Hackett used to work at the Martin plant near Baltimore, which makes these B-26 bombers. He is 34, and he had supposed that if he ever got into the Army, he would be put in some backwash job far removed from combat.
“I sure never figured when I was helping build these planes that someday I’d be flying over France in one of them as a radio gunner,” he says. But here he is, with half his allotted missions run off.
Sgt. Hackett’s home is at North Miami. In fact, his father is chief of police in that section. But the sergeant’s wife and daughter are in Baltimore.
Hackett showed me a snapshot of his daughter Theda sitting on the fender of their automobile. He said she was 12, and I thought he was kidding. She seemed so grownup that I thought she must be his sweetheart instead of his daughter. But I was convinced when the other boys chimed in and said, “Tell him about the lipstick.”
So here is the lipstick story. It seems Theda wrote her daddy that all the other girls her age were using rouge and lipstick and was it all right if she did too.
Well, it wasn’t all right. Sgt. Hackett says maybe he’s old-fashioned but he sent word back to Theda that if she started using lipstick now, he’d skin her alive when he got back, or words to that effect. And he didn’t take time to write it in a letter. He sent it by full-rate cablegram.
Sgt. Howard Hanson is acting first sergeant of this squadron. He’s the guy that runs the show and routs people out of bed and hands out demerits and bawls people out. In addition to that, he is an engineer-gunner. He has long ago flown his allotted number of combat missions, and he is still flying.
Sgt. Hanson is 37 and therefore is automatically known in the Army as Pappy. Any soldier over 35 is almost always called Pop or Pappy. Sgt. Hanson doesn’t care. He likes his work and has a job to do and wants to get it done.
“I know what I’m fighting for,” he says. “Here’s what.” And he hands you a snapshot of his family – wife, girl and boy. The girl is almost grown and the boy is in the uniform of a prep school. Hanson’s home is at Topeka, Kansas.
Pappy used to be in the motor freight business before the war. I suppose in a way you could say he’s still in the motor freight business. Kind of ticklish freight, though.
