Rambling Reporter, Ernie Pyle (1941-42)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (August 31, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

DUBLIN – Eire is not in the war, and yet I believe the average Irishman is as much affected in his daily manner of living as the average American is. In ways, more so.

In these next few columns I’ll try to tell you the many ways in which Irish life has been changed by the war.

Recently a London paper carried a sensational series of articles intimating that the Irish were starving to death. That simply isn’t true. Ireland is probably the best-fed country in Europe today.

There are certain shortages, but nobody is going hungry. The direst shortage is tea – for apparently the Irishman is a worse tea fiend than the Englishman.

The tea ration is one-half ounce per person per week. That is one-fifth of what he ordinarily drinks. In hotels, they’ll serve you tea only once a day. Coffee is still plentiful.

The price of tea is fixed at four shillings (about 85 cents) a pound, but there is a black market. A friend of mine the other night was offered four ounces for five shillings, which is at the rate of $4.45 a pound.

White bread is illegal now. So the Irish eat whole-wheat bread that is both darker and soggier than ours at home. The Irish keep asking me how I like it. I tell them I hate it. They say they don’t think it’s bad.

There is plenty of meat, eggs and vegetables. Fruits are very short, and the Irish don’t seem to make much use of their own fruits. In grocery stores you see tiny, warty Spanish oranges at five cents apiece.

There is enough sugar, for Ireland raises sugar beets. In restaurants the sugar bowl is left on the table, and you take all you want. The sugar is course, like the salt you feed cattle, and sort of grayish, but it is sweet.

Clothing is now rationed, and you have to have a coupon before you can buy most wearing apparel. At least, theoretically. But Irishmen don’t like to do anything they’re ordered to do, so there has been much disobeying of the coupon system by country merchants.

The gasoline shortage in Ireland is serious. All private cars have been forbidden since May 1. You can stand on the street for an hour and never see an auto pass. Only taxis, and a few essential cars, such as for doctors, clergymen and midwives, are allowed.

The absence of auto traffic is so noticeable that when you walk along the Dublin streets you are acutely aware of the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, something you could not even hear before.

Even the “essential” cars are strictly controlled. A doctor here was telling me about the regulations. If he is called around lunchtime to make an emergency call on a sick patient who lives beyond his club, he cannot stop at the club for lunch on the way back. No, he has to drive straight home, non-stop, and then go back to his club by taxi or bus.

Dublin has excellent bus service. They are double-deckers, painted a fresh green and white, and they don’t groan and grind like most big busses.

I’ve taken several different bus routes and ridden to the end of the line and back, just to get acquainted with the city. Shops close at 5:30 here, and school hours are staggered, so there is never an overload on the bus system. All busses stop running at 10 p.m. Consequently theaters start their plays at 7 p.m., and the play is over by 9:30.

Because of the auto restriction, people have taken to bicycles. I remember once seeing a travel film of Denmark, where bicyclists were actually thicker than pedestrians. That’s the way it is here. Everybody rides, from old women to children. And bicycles can still be bought, although they are very high. A new one costs better than $50.

The Irish have never made any bones about being good wholesome lawbreakers. And right now there is a wave of bicycle stealing. Even locking your bike doesn’t always save it; somebody is apt to come along in a cart and just lift your cycle in and haul it away.

Since the first of the year, 3,000 bicycles have been reported stolen in Dublin. Recently the police had an idea, and dragged the River Liffey, which flows right through the center of Dublin. Forty bicycles were recovered. They had been stolen merely for the tires.

Probably the worst shortage in Ireland is in cigarettes and matches. It is practically impossible for a stranger to buy a pack of cigarettes in Dublin. If you are a regular customer at a tobacconist’s, he may let you have as many as 10 a day. You can buy American cigarettes, but they cost 55 cents a pack, which is a fine motive for quitting smoking.

Matches are even harder to get than cigarettes. My friends say that sometimes you’ll go two weeks without being able to buy a match. The result is two-fold – a great deal of bumming of lights, and a widespread use of lighters. Fluid for lighters is still available.

Fortunately I brought a carton of book matches and a good many cigarettes with me, and they should last until I get to England. Although that’s not such a rose outlook. English cigarettes! Ugh!

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 1, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

DUBLIN – There is an old saying in Ireland, originated by Jonathan Swift back around 1720: “Burn everything British, except their coal.” You still see it chalked on walls and sidewalks occasionally.

But right now the Irish would be mighty glad to have some British coal to burn. There is a grave shortage of fuel in Ireland. It is due to two things – Wales isn’t producing enough coal now to spare much for Ireland, and so many Irish workers have gone to take jobs in Britain that there aren’t enough peat-cutters left in the country.

Peat, as you may know, is simply decayed vegetable matter – grass and weeds and shrubs – that has lain in bogs for many centuries. If it lay long enough it would eventually become coal.

The Irish have burned peat for centuries, but there is still a large supply left. They say that at the highest rate of consumption there is enough for another 120 years. In the country, peat is burned almost exclusively. And several of Ireland’s newer industrial plants use peat.

In Ireland you never hear or see the word “peat.” Over here they call it turf. Ireland is also a great horse-racing country, you know, and the race track is also known as “the turf.” There are numerous state betting houses in Ireland, with “turf commissioner” painted on the window. It sometimes causes confusion. They tell of one old lady who went into a betting place and tried to buy a ton of “turf.”

The turf is cut in the spring, and stacked up alongside the bog to dry. It dries all summer, and is ready to burn in the fall. They cut it in slightly wedge-shaped pieces, about a foot long.

Before the war you could get turf for $6.50 a ton, but now it is $14. And there will be no more coal at all for the average man. This shortage of fuel has resulted in extreme shortages of cooking gas and electricity, both of which require fuel in the making.

Cooking gas these days is both so scarce and of such poor quality that it is a real ordeal to get a meal. The gas is on three times a day – 6 till 8 a.m., 11:30 a.m. till 1 p.m., and 6 to 7 at night.

If you’re cooking a roast you have to cook it in relays. The gas is so poor that one woman I know spent 40 minutes of her precious evening hour trying to get her stove lighted. And another one tells how the vibration caused by her cat jumping off a chair onto the floor shook out the flame in her stove, and she couldn’t get it started again.

Electricity too is short, and people are urged to burn their lights as little as possible. That doesn’t bother much right now, as the nights are so short. It isn’t really dark till 11, and it’s daylight again by 4. But lighting and heating will be serious tasks this winter.

Trains are suffering also from the fuel shortage. The northern trains between Dublin and Belfast seem to get along all right, but the southern trains are badly delayed. They say it is taking as high as 21 hours to make the 120-mile trip from Limerick to Dublin.

The locomotives simply run out of fuel and have to stand for hours getting up a new head of steam, produced by burning crates and boxes or anything the firemen can lay hands on.

Cross-country busses still run, but are both packed and delayed. I have recently traveled by bus between Dublin and Limerick, and the 120 miles took seven hours.

There are occasional local shortages of stout and ale, but there is plenty of whisky in Ireland, and it is all reasonably priced.

Incidentally, Irish whisky is not made from potatoes, as many Americans think. It is made of barley. But there is an Irish drink made of potatoes, which the boys have been telling me about. It is illegal, is made in the country, and is a sort of super white-mule. It is called “poteen,” is clear like gin, and is so powerful that they say frequently a man can just barely get the cork back in the bottom before passing out.

Poteen also has the facility, like champagne only more so, of making the drinker tipsy all over again if he drinks water the next morning. They say that with one good hefty slug of poteen and two gallons of water a man can stay dead to the world for a week. Happy days!

And while we’re on the subject, Americans who live here say the Irish aren’t such sorts as they’re cracked up to be. Pretty soon I’ll have no illusions left at all.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 2, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

DUBLIN – Although Ireland is uncomfortably close to the war zone, there is not a great deal of physical evidence of war’s nearness.

There are occasional concrete road blocks across the highways – but not frequent nor strong enough to be important if invasion came. There are soldiers on the streets, but not a drop in the bucket to what we see in our own cities at home.

There are rows and rows of concrete surface shelters in the streets of Dublin. And there are black and white signs, the same as in England, pointing to basement shelters. Dublin has had only one slight bombing, more than a year ago, and hasn’t yet figured out whether it was a mistake or not.

Irish soldiers wear an extremely heavy and baggy-looking uniform of light green. All Irish soldiers are supplied with green knit gloves, and they carry these buttoned under the epaulet on their shoulder, the fingers hanging down over their back.

There is no blackout in Ireland, but at night the cities are dimly lighted nevertheless, to conserve electricity. I have seen no guns anywhere.

The other day from my hotel window I saw one barrage balloon floating above the rooftops, and I supposed the Irish were just practicing with it. But later I learned it was flying from a ship which had just come into the harbor. British had just come into the harbor. British ships crossing the Irish channel fly barrage balloons above them to keep from being dive-bombed by Germans.

Because of the paper shortage, newspapers are down to four pages, and some have only two. There’s almost never any mention of the American troops in Northern Ireland.

There aren’t many Americans in Ireland these days. In a restaurant the other day I said to the waiter, “I’m one of these freak Americans who like their coffee with their meals,” and the waiter said, “Ah yes, and we miss you too, since the war. We used to depend on your tourists here, but now we hardly ever see an American.”

They say that both American and British army officers sometimes come here on leave, but they have to come in civilian clothes. Ireland being neutral, you know, anybody in a foreign uniform, whether he be German or American, is immediately interned.

In fact, the native Irish boys who have joined the British forces have to leave their uniforms at Holyhead when they come home on leave, or they would be interned too.

Ireland, like England, has never learned the fine art of keeping warm. There is practically no heat anywhere. And you need heat over here even in summer – at least I do.

Ireland’s climate was a surprise to me. I thought they had a lovely, soft, sunshiny summer, something say about like Virginia in springtime. But actually the summer is dark, grim and cutting. Sunshiny days are rare. And there is a piercing chill in the air. It makes nice healthy Irish cheeks, but personally I prefer to be sick and comfortable.

Fortunately I used up most of my baggage allowance bringing such utilitarian things as sweaters, heavy pajamas, galoshes and sheepskin-lined house-slippers. We were allowed 55 pounds, and by the time I got in my typewriter, all my Arctic apparel, a few gifts, and precautions against shortages over here, I had room left for just one sock and an old whiskbroom. But again, I’d rather be comfortable than well-dressed.

Incidentally, so many people are traveling over these days, you might like a suggestion or two on what to bring. So I’ll tell you what I brought, and what I forgot. This list is for England, not Ireland. You can get most things in Ireland, except cigarettes and matches.

I brought – A carton of cigarettes (that’s about all you can get by with); a carton of book matches; two extra tubes of shaving cream; four bars of soap; a flashlight with extra bulb and battery; two pounds of cube sugar; two dozen chocolate bars; and six pairs of silk stockings for the ladies.

I forgot to bring – two more pounds of sugar; a pound of tea; a cigarette lighter and fluid; and lipstick and hairpins for the feminine gender.

All travelers to England these days, if they are good planners, take along a handful of lipsticks to give away as presents, for lipsticks are practically extinct in England. It is even quite the thing nowadays for an American to give lipsticks to a man in England as a gift, for he in turn can give them to his girlfriends.

Since I forgot to bring lipsticks, I inquired for them here in Dublin, quite hopelessly. And it turned out the city was crawling with them. There is no cosmetic shortage whatever.

So I loaded up with lipsticks, and am now in a position to become the man of the hour when I set foot in Piccadilly. You too can be a man of the hour. Don’t wait. Rush out now, buy a box of hairpins, and then swim rapidly toward England.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 3, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

DUBLIN – The other day an Irish newspaper friend said to me, “I don’t know what it is, but anyplace in the world people would know you are an American, just by your looks.”

He said it wasn’t my clothes, nor my face, nor my walk – it was just something general that was American and couldn’t be anything else. And I know he’s right, for as I walk along the street I can sense that people know I am American.

And that seems very odd to me here, because actually I believe you could take 90 per cent of the people in Dublin and walk them along the sidewalks in New York or San Francisco, and nobody would know they weren’t born and raised in America.

Irishmen have been a big disappointment to me – in their looks. Just as most foreigners think all Americans are either cowboys or millionaires, so I thought all Irishmen had pug noses, chin whiskers, smoked clay pipes and kept saying “begorra.”

I have yet to see a chin whisker or a clay pipe in Ireland, and I’ve seen only a few pug noses. An Irish friend says he’s never in his life heard anybody say “begorra” or “bejabbers.” If I don’t at least see somebody carrying a hod before I leave here, I’m going to quit.

When you meet a new person here he usually asks right off, “What was your biggest surprise about us?” And I always say it was in finding the Irish so much like the English. Oddly enough, that doesn’t seem to make them mad.

I had never thought of it before, but the Irish couldn’t help but be somewhat like the English, having been ruled by them and mixed with their blood for a thousand years.

I can think of very few things that surround a city Irishman in his daily life that are distinctly Irish. Their houses, furniture, meals, clothes, taxis, busses, manners, all seem to me to be more European than either Irish or American.

The Irishman’s real distinctiveness lies in his inner character, certainly not in his appearance or way of life. The Irish admit they act and talk like the British, but they say the similarities end there. They say that in philosophy they are more like the French.

It is possible to notice a difference between the people of Dublin and those in the country. In the west, most people seem “jakey”-looking. In Dublin they are much trimmer. But you see the famous Irish ruddy cheeks everywhere. And I will admit the “colleens” have me groveling in the street. Oh to be in Ireland, if I were 21 again.

I had thought, before coming to Ireland, that I would have great difficulty understanding what anybody said. We’ve heard the thick Irish brogues at home, and I supposed they would be all the worse over here in the land of their nativity.

But strangely enough a real juicy brogue is rare. In Dublin people talk almost like the British. The only people I can’t understand are the newsboys on the street.

Even in the rural districts where I’ve traveled, you can understand people all right. They do say, however, that in the remote parts of Kerry and Galway I would have trouble understanding. Some day I’ll go there, and maybe I can hear somebody say “begorra.”

Everybody in Ireland can speak English. Some also speak Gaelic. The English government forbade the teaching of Gaelic more than 100 years ago, and only in the last two generations has Gaelic been taught again.

Now it is a matter of pride among the people to learn Gaelic. I have one friend here, a middle-aged man in a high government position who goes twice a week to a private tutor to learn Gaelic, his long-forgotten native tongue. Practically all public signs, and many advertisements, are in both English and Gaelic.

Since I’ve gone this far in a column of disillusionments, we might as well make it the subject for today. I’ve been badly letdown by finding the Irish outwardly so solemn.

After a lifetime of listening to Irish stories, I expected to find the streets packed with hilariously laughing people, and sidewalks knotted with little groups telling jokes.

But actually, I believe the crowds on the sidewalks of Ireland are more somber than in America. People seem to talk to each other less as they walk along. You hardly ever see anybody laughing. And it isn’t caused by war-worry, it’s simply that Irish people don’t go around howling over their jokes all the time.

As a result of intensive study of Irish humor, I have come to the conclusion that I myself am probably the funniest person in Ireland today. ‘Tis a sad ending to a column, bejabbers.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 4, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

DUBLIN – I have had a long chinfest with one of the Brooklyn boys who made good. It’s Mr. Eamon de Valera – usually called “Dev” – that I’m speaking of. He was born in Brooklyn, you know.

Mr. De Valera is the man who runs Ireland. He has been in the thick of Ireland’s tragic and bloody history since World War days. He has led an odd life for a schoolteacher. He has been sentenced to death, sentenced to life, and confined in jail for years at a time. But finally he saw Ireland get her independence, and for the last 10 years he has been nourishing and guiding that independence.

It is not difficult to see Mr. De Valera as it would be for a foreign newspaperman to see President Roosevelt these busy days. But unless it’s by special dispensation – which I had no reason to seek - you are not permitted to quote him.

An appointment was made, and I was taken to Mr. De Valera’s office by Frank Gallagher, head of the government news agency, who is an old friend and fellow-revolutionist of Mr. De Valera. (In fact Mr. De Valera said that if I were looking for the American’s idea of a typical Irishman, there stood Mr. Gallagher.)

As soon as we were introduced, Mr. Gallagher left, and I was alone with Mr. De Valera about half an hour. He did not give the impression, as many big men do, that he was squirming for you to shut up and get out.

He did not appear busy. There was not a paper on his desk. His whole office is very plain. It is fairly small, and has an Old-World strictness about it.

Mr. De Valera’s desk is half covered by an arrangement of automatic call boxes, into which he talks as though he were talking on the phone. He mentioned a book he thought I would enjoy reading – “The Republic of Ireland,” by Dorothy Macardle – and he reached in his desk, tore a corner off a blank sheet of paper, and wrote it down for me. He smiled at his parsimoniousness, and said we had to save paper nowadays.

Mr. De Valera is an immensely tall man, and I had to look way up to see him. They say he has been publicly photographed only once when he was smiling, and in his pictures he always looks so dour I was almost afraid to meet him.

But he smiled broadly as we shook hands, and I did not feel ill at ease with him. I told him I’d seen so few Irishmen laugh that if he didn’t tell me a joke or two I was going to feel very sad. He smiled and said he couldn’t think of any jokes, and then seriously went into the sonber side of the Irishman’s character. The Irishman, he feels, is really more somber than the American.

Mr. De Valera did most of the talking. He has a way of talking, in quite simple language yet on such broad scope and so unpausingly that afterward you have trouble remembering specifically anything he said.

He talked of American enthusiasms and British determination and Irish impulsiveness. Being myself a non-philosopher and a dope at international analysis, I finally got Mr. De Valera off onto his private life. He has to be a goldfish all the time, and set the perfect example. But he seems not to mind that.

When I felt I had been there long enough, Mr. De Valera phoned Mr. Gallagher to come and get me. As we walked down the hall Mr. Gallagher asked me how I liked him. I said I liked him fine, which was true.

I went that afternoon to a session of the Dail, which corresponds to our House of Representatives. Irish “congressmen” are called “deputies.” There are about 135 of them, but only 21 were in their seats that day. All the rest, I was told, were at home harvesting crops or attending to business.

The Dail chamber is much like our house at home, except smaller and darker. Members have to pause and bow to the chair both when entering and leaving. The deputies all looked to be about the same type and class of people as our own congressmen.

All afternoon they were giving the Minister of Supply hell. He was there in person, and would pipe up now and then and say “That isn’t so,” and give some figures to prove his point. The rest of the time he sat and took his lacing with a sort of resigned and sardonic smile. On the whole, they say he does a good job.

I had dinner with an Irish friend that evening, and asked him exactly how the word Dail was pronounced. The best I could get it, it sounded like “Doyle.”

“No, no,” he said, “not like Doyle, it’s like Doyle.”

“I’ve got it now,” I said. “It’s like Doyle.” Anything for a laugh.

It’s almost impossible for an American to pronounce some Gaelic words. On a second and final attempt my friend decided we should pronounce Dail just about like “dawl.”

I’ve about given up on Eire. I’ve tried everything from “Eire,” “Air,” and nobody knows what I’m talking about. If you say “Errah” you’ll be getting pretty close. But mostly I just shun it, and rely on the good old pronounceable name of “Ireland.” You can’t go wrong there.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 5, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

ADARE, near LIMERICK, Ireland – This is where the River Shannon flows. For me, it’s no longer a long way to Tipperary, but only about 20 miles. On beyond is the home of the Kilkenny Cats. In a few hours I could be in Killarney. The Blarney Stone is a half day’s drive. I feel like the words to an old Irish ballad.

Yet, looking out the back window of my inn I have to pinch myself to realize I’m not in Indiana. Except that the fields are smaller, the country within eyesight is a duplicate of the grassy pastures at the edge of any Hoosier town in springtime.

Cattle are grazing in their lots. People dressed much as we dress are walking across the meadows. The hills are gently rolling, like ours along the Wabash. The same kinds of birds are singing. The trees look exactly the same as ours. Only the vine-covered stone fences that separate the fields give the scene an Old-World touch.

But if you go across the hall and look out the front of the inn, then it is different. A long thatched-roof house is across the street. There is a constant stream of bicyclists pedaling slowly and silently along the narrow asphalt road. Through the trees you can catch glimpses of the crumbling walls of a baronial castle.

Every little while a farmer will pass, driving half a dozen cattle. His pants are tied with string at the bottom and he always carries a stick cut from a tree limb. He keeps grunting “hughy, hughy” at his cows, as I suppose farmers do in all languages.

Heavy two-wheeled carts pass by the score, carrying huge cone shaped milk cans on their flat beds. Dressed-up people pass in fancy “traps,” the two-wheeled cart with a door at the back. If an auto should pass, you know without looking it is a doctor or a priest.

The front lawn of the inn is grassy, and canvas deck chairs are stretched in a row for the guests. You can sit here for hours in the warm sun, watching the local parade. There is something soothing and unwarlike about it. You forget that you are sitting on the ground of nearly 2,000 years of brawling and slaughter, and that within a few hundred miles, even now, the world’s greatest killing is going on.

They say Adare is the prettiest village in all Ireland. The highway is its main street. The whole population is less than 500. Everything is quiet.

I am sorry I cannot stay longer in Western Ireland, for over here I have a feeling I might find the tongues-in-cheeks, the left-handed report, the flavor of the “Old Sod” that I sought and missed in Dublin.

Nothing has happened to verify the belief that I might find it, but somehow it seems to be in the air. A nearby creek has eels in it, and old ladies drive carts pulled by sardonic little donkeys, and you can smell the cut hay in the fields. If I were to find Ireland, I think it might be here.

I had hardly arrived when a friend came up to me and said, "Do you think it proper that we should now make our call upon Mr. Hogan?”

I said, “I have not met Mr. Hogan, indeed have never heard of him. But if Mr. Hogan is who I think he is, then by all means let us hasten to pay our respects.”

Mr. Hogan is who I thought he was. He is the publican. He also runs the butcher shop. It is a very convenient arrangement. For if it’s after 10 at night you enter the public house via the department of roasts and chops, seeking an imaginary piece of meat for your theoretically starving family. The Irish have a way around everything.

The city of Rathkeale is only a few miles from here, and they happened to be having their monthly cattle market. It is an old custom, and I might say a loathsome one.

Farmers for miles around drive their cattle into town that one day a month. They herd them into the main street. And there they stand all morning and well into the afternoon.

Mostly the farmers talk to each other, and try to keep their cattle from getting mixed up. We drove through the town, and it was like driving through a stockyard. Cattle and men were so thick we had to go in low gear. Cows blocked the street, consumed the sidewalks, took possession of the very doorways of stores. Shoppers were nonexistent, for it was indiscreet to walk upon the streets.

During the day buyers from the packing companies dicker individually with each cattle owner. A great many of the cattle are driven back home, awaiting a better price and to provide another excuse for coming to town for the next market.

When it is all over the farmers set their boys to watching the cattle, and adjourn for a nip or two before starting home. The main street is finally cleared of its bovine choker, and then the last rites are started – the storekeepers, with brooms and great buckets of water, begin the heroic task of restoring their village to a habitable form.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 7, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

ADARE, Ireland – On my first day in Adare a lady came along with two Shetland sheep dogs and sat down in one of the inn’s canvas chairs.

In case you have forgotten, a Shetland sheep dog is a toy Shepherd, and I happen to be the doting owner of one. They are magnificent little dogs, very rare in America, and these two here in Adare were the first I had ever seen at large outside our own.

They were to me like stick-candy to a child. I couldn’t resist them. And so, a stranger in a strange land, I girded my courage about me and boldly spoke to the lady.

Before she could strike me down, I whipped out a picture of our little dog, and presented it to her as though it were my card. The picture did the trick. In this world of big bad dogs the rare meeting of two Sheltie fans is an occasion indeed.

The lady was delighted to meet a dogman from across the sea. And it turned out that she was Lady Adare, the No. 1 woman of this part of Ireland. Her husband owns the town and practically everything around it.

I believe she is the first official “Lady” I’ve ever talked to, and I had considerable tongue trouble, but did manage to get through it without swearing in the wrong place.

Lady Adare says she has four Shelties, loves them like mad, and after the war she and Lord Somebody-or-Other down in Killarney are going into the business. They intend to advertise in American magazines and ship dogs to America. Maybe if I haven’t been eaten by a Schnauzer by then, I can become her American representative.

I didn’t meet Lord Adare, but I saw him. He is very horsey and he is in the height of his glory right now. He has just started a stage-coach line.

Transportation is getting so acute in Ireland that they are actually opening up horse-drawn stage lines again, and it isn’t just a stunt, either.

Lord Adare dug up a handsome old coach, and opened a route a few days ago between Rathkeale and Limerick. It is 18 miles each way, and they make one round trip a day.

The coach is a high-wheeled affair, without a top. In rainy weather people just have to sit and take it. You mount the stage by a circular stairway at the rear.

The driver, an aged man, sits on a high seat in front and the conductor, I suppose you call him, rides on the rear steps. Both are dressed in long, bright-red coats, with gray top hats. They look very medieval and historic. The coach holds about 25 people, and is always crowded. They made the 18-mile run in two hours.

The coach is pulled by four horses. Adare is about halfway, so they change teams here in front of the inn at 11 in the morning and 6 in the evening. Lord Adare is always on hand to supervise the changing. He is so proud of the whole thing he’s about to bust.

It takes about 10 minutes to change teams and get everything straightened away. Quite a little crowd gathers to watch the ceremony. Just after the coach starts, the conductor takes a trumpet from a hook on the back of the coach, and blows a long flourish.

The demand for coach seats is so great that Lord Adare has sent to England for another coach. He already has plenty of horses.

A similar stage line has opened in Dublin, and they will be springing up all over Ireland, people say. “We’re returning to medieval days,” a friend said to me only half-jokingly. “If you come back in five years we’ll all be living in thatched huts and wearing knee breeches.”

Incidentally, the lack of thatched roofs in Ireland was another surprise to me. It’s really very seldom that you see one. Most roofs, in both town and country, are either slate or galvanized iron.

Thatched roofs went out a long time ago when Ireland changed from a grain country to a grazing country, consequently doing away with the straw from which thatched roofs are made.

But now she is returning somewhat to grain again, so maybe the thatched roof will come back. I hope so, for there are few things prettier than a thick thatched roof on a white stone house, set against green fields, with flowers all around, and a donkey sticking its head out the front door.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 8, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

LONDON – And now the fortunes of war bring us once again to this powerful and bewitching city of London.

I never knew London in peacetime. I can’t even conceive of London in peacetime. Perhaps I shouldn’t like it so well. In fact I don’t like it so well now as I once did.

To me the real London must always be the one that endured through the winter of the blitz. Then all lives were adjusted to a fine tension; there was purpose and vitality in everything you did; the vast city of millions seemed to draw down into a tight little family of fellows under fire.

But the character of London has changed vastly since then. Bombings have been almost non-existent for more than a year. The stern expectancy of those days is gone. It was somehow a fair thing, and now it is gone. There has been a relaxation.

Today London is jammed. It actually seems more like Washington than like the London I knew. It’s hard to get a hotel room. You can hardly walk for the crowds. At noontime the throngs are crushing. Balloons don’t laze overhead constantly, as they once did.

Two years ago the blackout found most people at home. Tonight they roam the streets till long after midnight. There are 40 plays running in London. Night clubs are numerous, expensive, and packed. There are symphony concerts and greyhound racing.

There are twice as many taxis and busses as before. Store windows still have attractive displays. People stand in queues a block long for movies, for busses, for restaurants.

Prices have continued to skyrocket. The top-list hotels hand you bills that are shocking. Every night thousands pay $3 for dinner and think nothing of it, although you can get just as good a dinner at a chain restaurant for 60 cents.

The American impact is heavily felt already. One immense hotel is 75 per cent filled with American officers. Apartment buildings have been turned into barracks for the men, and of a morning you see blue-jeaned American privates sweeping off the London sidewalks.

One square has been nicknamed “American square.” Peeps and jeeps and American Army trucks are on the streets. Your best friend is likely to show up any evening, having left Washington yesterday. Americans on the street don’t bother to speak to each other now, as we did in that winter when there were so few of us.

One American over here – a magazine writer who has been here constantly for two years – is furious at the new London. He takes the invasion of the Americans as a personal affront. His nice exclusiveness is spoiled. For now you can’t distinguish the man who landed last night from the one who

Before reaching here from Ireland I was all night on a boat and seven tiring hours on the train. It was a long journey, and London at the end of it was like a rainbow.

That first afternoon was a Roman candle of emotions. It was an excited homecoming to a place I love, for I do love London.

Some of the old hotel attendants shook heads as though they were a reception committee appointed by the city. Others spoke as casually as though I’d just been out for a stroll. Even the odor of the hotel’s special soap brought back thrilling memories.

I walked around the neighborhood. From hundreds of old strolls I knew every building my heart. Some that I had known are no longer here. And those that still stand seem a little darker, a little shabbier. For London hasn’t wasted paint in prettying up.

That first afternoon was truly filled with exhilaration. But next day the excitement of homecoming was gone, and familiarity set in. And then gradually it sank into me that this was no longer the London I had known. The divine spark was gone.

Tension has slacked off. No longer do you see crowds at dusk scurrying for the shelters with their brown suitcases. There is no fresh damage to look for each morning. No longer do they paste printed casualty totals on building walls. People have no bomb stories to tell each other anymore. The whole atmosphere of emergency, of dire anticipation, of inspiring alertness, is gone.

Somehow I felt disillusioned and let down, as on meeting a dear friend after many years and finding him changed. Once the front line of this war was in the very streets of London; today the war seems faraway and the streets are like the streets of New York.

But no one in London doubts that the pendulum will swing again – and no one doubts that London once more can “take it” when the time comes. Only, this time, they’re calm in their confidence that most of the “taking it” will have to be done on the other side of the channel.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 9, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

LONDON – When France fell and England expected a German invasion at any moment, all road signs and railway station signs were taken down.

The road signs are still down, but some railway stations have put their names back up, so you can at least keep track of where you are. But the signs are very small ones and could be quickly destroyed if the Germans came.

There aren’t nearly enough porters at the railway stations, and haven’t been since the war started. Today about half the porters at the London stations are women. The only ones I’ve seen were tough-looking babes who always had cigarettes in their mouths.

Also, on the London busses a good many conductors are now women. They are usually fairly good-looking. They wear pants and gray knee-length smocks. Londoners find them more pleasant and patient than the men conductors.

The government has recently advised the public not to carry its gas masks, in order to conserve the rubber. Always before the government had harped away at the public – with very little effect, I might add – to carry its masks constantly. This new order is a complete reversal.

Personally, I’m all set in case anything happens. The Marine Corps gave me a brand-new gas mask, and the Army gave me a tin hat. All I need now is a fife and drum.

Speaking of gas masks, an American friend of mine is all mixed up. The British, you know, speak with very broad “a’s,” yet frequently when two words containing “a’s” come together, they’ll broad one and flat one.

My friend says that, following this line, he never can remember whether to say “gas mahsk” or gahs mask.” So he just skips it and calls it his “respirator.”

A few months back it was very different to buy cigarettes in London. You could get only a few at a time, and often none at all. In addition, the average price of English cigarettes has gone up to 40 cents a pack.

The shortage and high price together

Most Americans can’t stand English cigarettes. In Ireland the Army had plenty of American cigarettes, but in England the supply hasn’t been so plentiful. Up until recently a war correspondent or government employee couldn’t get American cigarettes at all, and the Army people only a few.

But now an Army post exchange has been opened and we can get five packs of cigarettes and two chocolate bars a week. Five packs aren’t enough for me, but there are lots of soldiers who don’t smoke at all, you know, and old Self-Preservation Ernest is learning the ways of the world, so don’t you worry about me.

I had expected to see the people of London looking pretty shabby by now, yet they don’t appear so to me. Clothing is all by coupon, and the coupon ration is small enough, goodness knows, yet people seem to me pretty normally dressed.

Lots of women are barelegged, but not the majority. Most wear cotton stockings, yet there are still plenty of silk-clad legs in London. At least that is what friends tell me. I wouldn’t know myself, as it’s only their beautiful minds I’m interested in.

From looking in store windows, I gather that the average price of women’s stockings, such as they are, is around 45 cents a pair. I’ve already disposed of the gift stockings I brought from America. Apparently it was all in vain, for I haven’t noticed any queue of fair ladies waiting outside my door to pay me homage.

Let’s change the subject. This year’s harvest is one of the biggest England has ever had. Before the war, England raised only 40 per cent of her own foodstuffs. All the rest was imported. Last year she had upped it to 60 per cent. And this year I understand she is producing 70 per cent of all her own food requirements.

The farm labor shortage was so acute this year that Home Guardsmen and regular soldiers went into the fields to help. They say 150,000 British soldiers worked in the fields last month. And I know of one case where a big farm, equipped with brand-new tractors and combines, sent out a frantic call for American soldiers with experience on this certain type.

The request arrived at American Army headquarters in England, was relayed to Northern Ireland by telephone, a quick search among our troops was made, and by next afternoon three Minnesota farm boys in the uniform of the United States Army were busy running combines on an English farm.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (September 10, 1942)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

LONDON – After an absence of a year and a half, I expected to find the food situation in Britain much tighter than when I left.

But actually, Britain seems to be eating as well as it was early in 1941. The only difference I can sense is an almost complete lack of eggs.

Choices are limited, but they give you huge portions of what you do select. Your average meal consists of soup, an entree of chicken, fish, roast beef or lamb, scads of potatoes and cabbage or spinach, and a dessert of berries or pudding.

It isn’t any lack of food, but the sameness of it, that sort of gets you. I’m eating more than I have in years, yet my stomach always has a sort of unsatisfied feeling.

Most of my friends over here have gained weight in the past year on their rationed diet. They attribute this to two things:

1. They have to eat more starches and fattening substitutes, and have little fruit.

2. Here in wartime you hate to send anything back uneaten and wasted, and consequently you stuff yourself fuller than you would ordinarily.

It’s even having its effect on me. The other night I stepped onto a penny weighing machine, and a little card popped out saying “eight stone and six.” Translated for you, that’s 118 pounds, which makes me practically obese.

Incidentally, on the back of the card it said, “You are naturally generous and affectionate.” Also brave and charming, it might have added.

England is full of jokes about its rationing restrictions and the sameness of its diet.

As you’ve no doubt heard, the English go in heavily for boiled potatoes. You finally get so the mere sight of a boiled potato enrages you. The English apparently feel the same way, and yet they just keep on boiling them. Recently the magazine Punch had the following quip:

“There are 101 ways of cooking potatoes, says a chef. The 102nd way is to fry them a golden brown and garnish with a large fillet steak!”

Oddly enough, the hated Brussels sprout has not reared its ugly head a single time since I arrived. Apparently they are saving them all to torture us with this winter.

There is a completely unexplainable difference – at least to me – in the quality and price of foods at various hotels. When I first came to London I went to my hotel. But I have moved to another one now, for the fantastic prices finally overcame me.

At the first hotel I got sugar for my oatmeal only twice in 16 days. And not once did I ever get even a powdered egg. Just sugarless oatmeal, sometimes prunes, two English sausages and tea. And the breakfast cost $1.30.

But where I am now, a modern but less flossy hotel, I get sugar every morning on my oatmeal, an extra lump for my coffee, and scrambled powdered eggs and sausages every day – and the cost is only 50 cents. The ways of innkeepers are too deep for me.

Some time ago the government set a 5-shilling limit on all meals, but put in a proviso allowing the restaurant or hotel to add a “house charge” up to 1 shilling sixpence.

The chain restaurants and the smaller hotels, many of them very good, do observe the rule. But lots of places get around it. For instance, I had a quite ordinary lunch the other day, and it cost 12 and 6 – or $2.50! On the bill it said “Luncheon – five shillings ($1). House charge – seven and six ($1.50).”

Being a meek man, I paid and slipped quietly out, instead of throwing off my coat and challenging the head waiter in person, as any legitimate hero should have done.

Yes, England still has plenty to eat, and the bombing lull has let a little relaxation into life, and yet living has steadily grown more complicated for Londoners.

My British friends say that one who lives in hotels as I do wouldn’t notice it so much, but that the average Englishman must ponder every little movement in his life.

They’ve grown to save every scrap of paper, every piece of string, to be on a constant alert against waste of the tiniest sort. Before buying a bite of food or a stitch of clothing you think and weigh and dole out your slim reservoir of coupons with the greatest reluctance. It’s hard to buy a comb, or cufflinks, or a hundred little things which don’t necessarily keep body and soul together but which seem important.

The same undoubtedly applies to all nations which have warred for three years, and will finally happen to us in America. Then maybe we lifelong string-savers will come into our own.