The Pittsburgh Press (August 10, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Normandy, France – (by wireless)
With our own personal danger past our historic air bombardment of the German lines holding us in the Normandy beachhead again became a captivating spectacle to watch.
By now, it was definite that the great waves of four-motored planes were dropping their deadly loads exactly in the right place.
And by now two Mustang fighters flying like a pair of doves patrolled back and forth, back and forth, just in front of each oncoming wave of bombers, as if to shout to them by their mere presence that here was not the place to drop – wait a few seconds, wait a few more seconds.
And then we could see a flare come out of the belly of one plane in each flight, just after they had passed over our heads.
The flare shot forward, leaving smoke behind it in a vivid line, and then began a graceful, downward curve that was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
It was like an invisible crayon drawing a rapid line across the canvas of the sky, saying in a gesture for all to see: “Here! Here is where to drop. Follow me.”
And each succeeding flight of oncoming bombers obeyed, and in turn dropped its own hurtling marker across the illimitable heaven to guide those behind.
Long before now the German ack-ack guns had gone out of existence. We had counted three of our big planes down in spectacular flames, and I believe that was all. The German ack-ack gunners either took to their holes or were annihilated.
How many waves of heavy bombers we put over I have no idea. I had counted well beyond 400 planes when my personal distraction obliterated any capacity or desire to count.
I only know that 400 was just the beginning. There were supposed to be 1,800 planes that day, and I believe it was announced later that there were more than 3,000.
It seemed incredible to me that any German could come out of that bombardment with his sanity. When it was over, even I was grateful in a chastened way I had never experienced before, for just being alive.
I thought an attack by our troops was impossible now, for it was an unnerving thing to be bombed by your own planes.
During the bad part, a colonel I had known a long time was walking up and down behind the farmhouse, snapping his fingers and saying over and over to himself, “–dammit, –dammit!”
As he passed me once he stopped and started and said, “–dammit!”
And I said, “there can’t be any attack now, can there?” And he said “No,” and began walking again, snapping his fingers and tossing his arm as though he was throwing rocks at the ground.
The leading company of our battalion was to spearhead the attack 40 minutes after our heavy bombing ceased. The company had been hit directly by our bombs. Their casualties, including casualties in shock, were heavy. Men went to pieces and had to be sent back. The company was shattered and shaken.
And yet Company B attacked – and on time, to the minute! They attacked, and within an hour they sent word back that they had advanced 800 yards through German territory and were still going. Around our farmyard men with stars on their shoulders almost wept when the word came over the portable radio. The American soldier can be majestic when he needs to be.
There is one more thing I want to say before we follow the ground troops on deeper into France in the great push you’ve been reading about now for days.
I’m sure that back in England that night other men – bomber crews – almost wept, and maybe they did really, in the awful knowledge that they had killed our own American troops. But I want to say this to them. The chaos and the bitterness there in the orchards and between the hedgerows that afternoon have passed. After the bitterness came the sober remembrance that the Air Corps is the strong right arm in front of us. Not only at the beginning, but ceaselessly and everlastingly, every moment of the faintest daylight, the Air Corps is up there banging away ahead of us.
Anybody makes mistakes. The enemy makes them just the same as we do. The smoke and confusion of battle bewilder us all on the ground as well as in the air. And in this case the percentage of error was really very small compared with the colossal storm of bombs that fell upon the enemy. The Air Corps has been wonderful throughout this invasion, and the men on the ground appreciate it.
