Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Buck Eversole is a platoon sergeant in an infantry company. That means he has charge of about 40 frontline fighting men.
He has been at the front for more than a year. War is old to him and he has become almost the master of it. He is a senior partner now in the institution of death.
His platoon has turned over many times as battle whittles down the old ones and the replacement system brings up the new ones. Only a handful now are veterans.
In his slow, barely audible Western voice, so full of honesty and sincerity, Buck told me one night:
It gets so it kinda gets you, seein’ these new kids come up.
Some of them have just got fuzz on their faces, and don’t know what it’s all about, and they’re scared to death. No matter what, some of them are bound to get killed.
We talked about some of the other old-time noncoms who could take battle themselves, but had gradually grown morose under the responsibility of leading green boys to their slaughter. Buck spoke of one sergeant especially, a brave and hardened man, who went to his captain and asked him to be reduced to a private in the lines.
Buck finally said:
I know it ain’t my fault that they get killed. And I do the best I can for them, but I’ve got so I feel like a murder. I hate to look at them when the new ones come in.
Buck and Nazi play house
Buck himself has been fortunate. Once he was shot through the arm. His own skill and wisdom have saved him many times, but luck has saved him countless other times.
One night Buck and an officer took refuge from shelling in a two-room Italian stone house. As they sat there, a shall came through the wall of the far room, crossed the room and buried itself in the middle wall with its nose pointing upward. It didn’t go off.
Another time Buck was leading his platoon on a night attack. They were walking in Indian file. Suddenly a mine went off, and killed the entire squad following Buck. He himself had miraculously walked through the minefield without hitting a one.
One day Buck went stalking a German officer in close combat, and wound up with the German on one side of a farmhouse and Buck on the other. They kept throwing grenades over the house at each other without success.
Finally, Buck stepped around one corner of the house, and came face to face with the German, who’d had the same idea.
Buck was ready and pulled the trigger first. His slug hit the German just above the heart. The German had a wonderful pair of binoculars slung over his shoulders, and the bullet smashed them to bits. Buck had wanted some German binoculars for a long time.
Fraternity of peril
The ties that grow up between men who live savagely and die relentlessly together are ties of great strength. There is a sense of fidelity to each other among little corps of men who have endured so long and whose hope in the end can be but so small.
One afternoon while I was with the company Sgt. Buck Eversole’s turn came to go back to rest camp for five days. The company was due to attack that night.
Buck went to his company commander and said:
Lieutenant, I don’t think I better go. I’ll stay if you need me.
The lieutenant said:
Of course I need you, Buck, I always need you. But it’s your turn and I want you to go. In fact, you’re ordered to go.
The truck taking the few boys away to rest camp left just at dusk. It was drizzling and the valleys were swathed in a dismal mist. Artillery of both sides flashed and rumbled around the horizon. The encroaching darkness was heavy and foreboding.
Buck came to the little group of old-timers in the company with whom I was standing, to say goodbye. You’d have thought he was leaving forever. He shook hands all around, and his smile seemed sick and vulnerable. He was a man stalling off his departure.
He said, “Well, good luck to you all.” And then he said, “I’ll be back in just five days.”
I walked with him toward the truck in the dusk. He kept his eyes on the ground, and I think he would have cried if he knew how, and he said to me very quietly:
This is the first battle I’ve ever missed that this battalion has been in. even when I was in the hospital with my arm they were in bivouac. This will be the first one I’ve ever missed. I sure do hope they have good luck.
And then he said:
I feel like a deserter.
He climbed in, and the truck dissolved into the blackness. I went back and lay down on the ground among my other friends waiting for the night orders to march. I lay there in the darkness thinking – terribly touched by the great simple devotion of this soldier who was a cowboy – and thinking of the millions far away at home who must remain forever unaware of the powerful fraternalism in the ghastly brotherhood of war.