Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 17, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In North Africa –
The Arab kids that swarm the roads around the Army camps and nearby villages are a friendly bunch.

It takes them only a few hours to learn the worldwide habit of begging from Americans. I’ll bet our soldiers aren’t two days in a new place until every kid in town is able to say in English “chewing gum, chocolate, cigarette, goodbye, okay.” They pester you to death for these tidbits, and the soldiers keep giving them away as long as they have any.

The Arab kids seem to have more sense than the pestering child-natives of many countries. Instead of being dumb and surly, they have a nice spark of life about them. If you say you have no chewing gum and smile at them, they’ll smile back and then stand around good-naturedly just smiling at you. Their favorite word is “okay.” Even some of the grownups have adopted it. They yell it at every passing American. You can’t walk down the road nowadays without being walled in by a surging melody of hundreds of “okays” coming at you from all sides.

Once in a while you see a light-skinned, clean-gowned, almost sheik-like Arab. But mostly their clothes are unwashed, and their long gowns an unbelievable mass of patches.

At first the Arabs were allowed to roam the airdromes, and they helped the crews fill the planes’ big tanks from the countless five-gallon tins.

There are quite a few carriages for hire in the desert towns and soldiers take rides in lieu of anything better to do. If I were an Arab, I know how I’d make a small fortune.

Passing up easy money

I’d get about 10 camels, and rent them out to soldiers to take rides on. I’d also get a camera and take pictures of soldiers on camelback, and sell them for 100 francs apiece. Apparently, no Arab has thought of it, but somebody is passing up an opportunity of making about 10,000 bucks awfully easily.

The horse carriages are fancy. The driver sits on a high box up front and is often dressed in bright clothes. One of these carriages the other evening provided the funniest sight I’ve seen since leaving America. It was just before dusk and the air-raid signal swept across our airdrome by dinner bell and rifle shot. I was standing way out on the field, when suddenly there came dashing out from behind the palm trees one of these Arab carriages.

The driver had brought some soldiers to the field, had heard the alarm and being touchy about raids, as Arabs are, had decided to get the hell out of there in a hurry.

Currier & Ives touch

He was standing up in his box, coattails flying, whipping his horses for all he was worth. The team was in a dead run. The buggy was bouncing and swaying over the rough desert trail. The horses were going so hard their bodies were stretched out, their flying feet almost level with their noses, and one was a little ahead of the other, just as on the racetrack.

With the carriage’s red wheels and the driver’s red coat for color, the scene looked exactly like a Currier & Ives print. The poor, frightened man’s pathetic hurry was so comical that we all stopped and laughed till he was out of sight, still going like mad.

Queer little incidents happen in war. Mechanics on the Flying Fortresses kept discovering empty machine-gun shells in the engine nacelles. Where they came from was a mystery. Finally, it dawned on somebody. Planes were dumping the empties in midair after shooting them, and they were being carried back by the slipstream, right through the propellers of the following planes, and lodging in the nacelles. You’d think it would damage the propellers, but apparently it doesn’t.

Gunner ‘wounded’ in pants pocket

And speaking of freaks, a Fortress gunner came home the other day with the corner of his pants pocket torn, apparently by a piece of flak, although it must have been fairly spent, for he didn’t know when it hit. Later, he put his hand in his pocket and discovered the metal fragment nestling there right in his pocket.

Practically all of our soldiers in North Africa have slept on the ground ever since they got here. The other day, I overheard one boy tell about going to Algiers on leave, and sleeping all night in a hotel bed. He said:

I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning with a splitting headache, just because the damn bed was so soft and I never did get back to sleep.

[NormanStewart]

Great song too. If I were in a desert environment (I have, a few times), that’d be the first song I’d sing.

[Chewbacca]

Lol, I could sing. Today The Netherlands was hit by Sahara sand. The cars have yellow dust on them.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 18, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In North Africa –
The other night I met Lt. Col. William Clark, a great, tall, gaunt man from Princeton, New Jersey. Since the war started, he has been in Australia, Africa, and twice in England. He was in France in the last war, and personally I think he‘s having the time of his life in this one. Col. Clark is a bigshot back home. He’s judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. He’s the guy who declared the Prohibition Amendment unconstitutional. It’s beyond his powers, however, to create much drinkin’ likker in this part of the world.

Judge Clark is liaison officer with the British Army in Tunisia, right up where everything is hottest. He asked me if I’d put his name in the paper so his family would know he was all right. I said sure, and asked him what he wanted me to say about him.

He said:

Oh, just say you met the damned old fool.

The average American soldier has been without eggs for a long time, and I for one can testify that we miss them very much. The problem has been alleviated somewhat here on the desert. It seems the Arabs have eggs, so we go around and buy them up. We foolish Americans have already raised the price to five francs apiece (about seven cents), but what do we care? Everybody has too much money anyhow, and when you reach our state, an egg is practically golden.

Two egg orgies in a week

I’ve been on two egg orgies within a week. One night Maj. Austin Berry, of Belding, Michigan, bought 29 eggs from an Arab. Maj. Berry is a young squadron leader, and he has an appetite. We took the eggs to an Army kitchen and had them scrambled. Then Maj. Charles E. Coverley, Capt. Jack Traylor, Maj. Berry and myself ate all 29 eggs at one sitting, with nothing else whatever to go with them. That’s an average of better than seven eggs apiece. True, I woke up at 2 a.m. with a historic stomach-ache, but what of it?

Undeterred, I tried it again three days later. Two of my Flying Fortress friends came past about 11 in the morning, and we went to the village market and scoured around sort of speakeasy-like until we found a guy with some eggs. We bought two dozen.

My fellow gourmands were Lt. Bill Cody, of 1001 Oakwood Ave., Wilmette, Illinois, a bomber pilot, and Lt. Bob Wollard, of Clovis, New Mexico, a bombardier. We had the cook hard-boil them and then we went to my quarters and gorged ourselves. The three of us ate 24 eggs and 20 tangerines in half an hour flat. I’m getting this all down on paper quickly before the spasms set in.

Way back in Oran, a soldier was telling me a funny experience he had. He was WO Luke Corrigan, of 816 Hemlock St., Scranton, Pennsylvania. It seems that a large bunch of American nurses were headed for the front and had to be outfitted in short order.

He meets Scranton neighbor

Now Corrigan is in charge of one of the Army’s big warehouses, so it was his job to outfit the nurses. But Army warehouses, it seems, don’t carry such things as slips, step-ins, brassieres, and what not. So, Corrigan had to get himself an interpreter and go blushing all over Oran buying up dozens of those feminine items.

He completed his mission, and dashed to the train just before departure time. One nurse saw what he had, and grabbed at a box. Then others grabbed. The boxes flew open, and the first thing Corrigan knew he looked like a Christmas tree very much bedecked with panties, undies, and other pink unmentionables. He was very ill at ease. And just at that moment, he heard a familiar voice saying:

Well, Luke, I’ll have to write home and tell your mother how you’re fighting the war.

He turned around and it was a Scranton girl who lives just a few blocks from him at home. Her name was Helen Jeffers and she was a nurse too. Luke has been in the Army two years and in all that time Helen Jeffers is the only person from home he’s ever run into. And she had to find him like that.

All ain’t fair in peace or war.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 19, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

North Africa –
We had hardly got off the ground when a mechanic came back and said the pilot wanted me to come up front.

So, I crawled over a huge stack of boxes, bundles, spare tires and bedding rolls lashed to the floor of the plane, and worked any way up into the pilot’s compartment. The co-pilot’s seat was empty. The captain motioned me into it.

He said:

I thought you might like to see how it looks from up here.

And so, for the next hour and a half, I had the unusual privilege of seeing about 200 miles of Africa from the front of an airplane, up where the view is worth $8.80 a seat.

We were in what the Army calls a C-47, but which flying people at home know as the Douglas DC-3, which all laymen know as one of the great silver airliners that ply all the airlines of America in peacetime – and even today, I suppose. But over here they’re no longer silver; they’re a drab brown, and covered with mud at that. The soft easy seats are gone; on each side is just a long tin bench, with pan-like depressions for parachutists to sit on wearing their chutes.

No longer is there a carpet on the floor, and a hostess at the back. Now the bare floor is covered with mud, and the hostess becomes a sergeant who hasn’t shaved for two weeks.

Airliners absolutely wonderful

For today these once luxurious airliners are the workhorses of war. They are absolutely wonderful. They are making a saga for themselves over here. They are flying anywhere, at any time, doing impossible jobs under impossible conditions.

They run a daily schedule between all our big headquarters in North Africa. They run in big fleets carrying supplies and men right to the front. They carry everything from jeeps to generals. They pay little attention to danger, and little more to weather. They are doing in a way what the spectacular TACA airline did in the jungles of Central America.

These C-47s are over here by the hundred. Their pilots are sometimes looked upon patronizingly by the combat fliers, but it’s an unfair attitude and they sure have the acclaim of everybody else.

In the last few years, I had got to the point, after 15 years of flying, where I wouldn’t get into a plane unless it was on one of the regularly-scheduled airlines. Yet today I climb in with these fellows and flew around over the mountains and deserts of a strange continent with almost the same feeling of safety I used to have on the airlines.

My skipper on this special trip was Capt. Bill Lively, from Birmingham, Alabama. He already has 1,100 hours in the air, which is a lot for a young Army pilot. He says they used to fly real low over here, just for fun. But the Arabs got to throwing rocks and shooting at them, so now they keep at a respectable altitude.

Ours was the lead plane of a formation of three Douglases, with two Spitfires as escort. The Douglases flew very close together, and the Spitfires ranged above and to the side of us, sometimes crossing over and wandering around for good looks into the sky. Every now and then the pilot would look around to check on them.

Time to knock on wood

I asked Capt. Lively:

Have you ever been shot at?

He peered all around the cockpit. He asked:

Where’s some wood?

He finally found some back of his seat, and knocked on it. He said:

Never yet.

Some of the others have though. I asked:

This is one of the best airplanes in the world, isn’t it?

Capt. Lively said:

It’s got my money. You’ve got a big load with 26,000 pounds gross, but I’ve taken off 32,000 out of a field only about half as long as we’d look at back home. I don’t think there’s anything these planes won’t do. If a Civil Aeronautics inspector came over here, he’d go nuts.

We flew over bare, rugged mountains, through passes where the going was rough, out over the desert, over oases and lonely little adobe villages, over dry lakes and dust storms. We never saw anything more exciting than an occasional lone Arab working his fields.

When we finally got to where we were going, Capt. Lively asked me to have lunch with him and his crew. So, he dug underneath the benches where we’d been sitting, and got out about 15 cans of soup, beans, sausages, jam and pears. Next came two big loaves of bread, and then a little stove that sounds like a blowtorch when you light it. Within 15 minutes, we were dining in style out of mess kits, with sand blowing into our mouths, and a pet monkey some pilot had brought from Burma sitting and staring at us. That’s the way you live on the desert. As soon as we’d finished, they got back into the plane and flew off across the mountains.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 20, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African desert –
Most of the American fighting so far in North Africa has been in the mountains, and Americans have seen little of the real desert. But they will sooner or later, so I jumped at the chance to go along on a sortie far into the Sahara, just to see what it would be like.

There were 15 of us in two big ten-wheeled trucks. We took our bedding rolls and enough rations for five days. The purpose of the trip was to salvage the parts from some airplanes that had made crash landings in the desert. Our trip was to take us within 20 miles of German outposts. We weren’t much afraid of being captured, but we were afraid of being strafed by German planes.

We started one morning, and made a French desert garrison at lunchtime. We got out tins of corned beef, sweet potatoes, peas, orange marmalade and hardtack. The French soldiers built a fire out of twigs between two rocks for us to heat water for tea. They cleared off a table in one of their barracks rooms, and did every little thing for us they could.

Cigars bring smiles

For months I’ve been carrying around some cigars I got on the boat coming from England, waiting for a propitious moment to give them away. So, when we left, I gave some to the French soldiers, and you could see the delight on their faces. They all lit up right away, and puffed and held the cigars off and looked at them approvingly, as though they were diamonds.

After we left, our soldiers kept talking about how nice the French were to us, and how they didn’t have much but whatever they had they’d give the best to us. The Americans liked the French, and everywhere you go, the French are grand to Americans.

That French garrison gave us one of its Arab enlisted men as a guide. He was a picturesque figure, rather handsome in his white turban, blue sash and khaki smock. He carried a long knife and a long-barreled rifle. He spoke no English whatever, and no French that we could understand. He said “wah” to everything we asked him.

He knew the way all right, but the communication system between him and us needed some improvement. All we ever got out of him was “wah.” We finally nicknamed him “Wah,” and before the trip was over, we were all saying “wah” when we meant “yes.”

It’s not like the movies

What we saw of the Sahara wasn’t exactly like what we see in the movies, but that’s maybe because we didn’t go far enough into it. The Sahara, you know, is more than 1,000 miles wide, and we were into it no more than 200 miles.

We saw nothing more spectacular than what you’ll find in the more remote parts of our own Southwest. Certainly, it was beautiful. At one point it was so utterly flat and bare that you could have landed anywhere and said:

This is an airport.

At other places it had dry river beds, very wide, their bottoms strewn with rocks. This surprised us, for what is a river doing on a desert? Again, the country would be rolling, and covered with a scrub-like vegetation.

Scenes make Ernie homesick

Parts of it were so exactly like the valley around Palm Springs, California, even down to the delicate smoke-tree bush, that it made you homesick. And one bare, tortured mountain could have been the one behind El Paso. Only once did we see a place with no vegetation at all, where the yellow sand was drifted movielike in great rippled dunes.

At long intervals we would come to what is known locally as an oasis. I used to think an oasis was three palm trees with a ragged guy crawling toward them, his parched tongue hanging out. But in this part of the desert an oasis is a village or a city. It doesn’t have three palm trees; it has tens of thousands of them, forests of them, which make their owners rich from the bounteous crop of dates.

It has big adobe buildings like the Indian pueblos, and narrow streets and irrigation ditches, and hundreds of children running around. It is a big community, and getting to an oasis is like getting to Reno after Death Valley.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 22, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African desert –
During most of our 200-mile journey, the soil seemed to be dirt, rather than sand, and the trucks swirled up a cloud of dust that was truly suffocating. The trucks were open, and we sat in the back ends on bedding rolls and boxes. We all wore goggles or dust glasses. Most of us hadn’t shaved for days. Within half an hour everybody’s whiskers were so caked with dust that we looked like a new kind of fur-bearing animal. It took days to get the dust out of our eyes and noses.

During the trip we ate a two-gallon can of hard stick candy, which the Army issues in this war. We talked some, but it was too rough and dusty to talk much.

In midafternoon of the first day, four planes came into view. We couldn’t recognize them, so we got out and started looking for ditches. They went on over and paid no attention. And we realized they were British.

Ernie sees a mirage

Even though it was still wintertime, we can now say we’ve seen the famous Sahara mirages. Several times we all saw a long line of trees, straight and regular as though lining an avenue, about three miles away. Unfortunately, they were sitting on top of a lake, and since trees don’t grow on lakes and since there wasn’t any lake anyhow, we figured we must be seeing things.

We met a few small camel trains when we first started, and we thought that was big stuff, seeing real camels on the desert. But before the trip was over, we’d seen so many camels we didn’t even look. They’re as common as cattle are at home. The desert is full of them, grazing in herds. Always there is an Arab, often a child, tending them. The camels twist their necks and look as you go by. I’d never noticed it in circuses, but when you get close a camel, you see that its head and neck look just like a huge snake. And when a camel turns around and looks at you, it gives you the creeps. I don’t think I shall lay plans for running a camel ranch after the war.

Camel herders are friendly

Often the Arab shepherds would wave at us, and occasionally they gave us the V-sign. But they were too far in the desert to have heard of the American “okay.”

Once we saw a fox, or what looked like a fox, and one of the soldiers shot at it with his rifle. Again, just at dusk we saw another, and there was a mad scramble for all the rifles lying on the floor. The fox got away, and I was thankful I didn’t get shot myself, what with rifle barrels whisking past my nose in all directions.

In midafternoon of the first day, we went through a large village which was built for camel traffic, and camels only. It was so narrow the truck scraped on both sides.

Speak of the devil–

I remarked that I hoped we didn’t come to a right-angle turn in the street, and no sooner had I spoken than we did come to one. Well, not quite a right angle, or we couldn’t have made it, but it was a jog of about 20 feet. It took us a quarter of an hour of backing and filling to get the trucks into position to make the turn.

Hundreds of Arabs came pouring out of the mud buildings, and we had a large and appreciative audience. One black-bearded old Arab with a wooden leg took charge of the free-advice department, and told the drivers in language they didn’t understand just how to do it. They paid no attention.

No matter where or when you stop, an Arab will suddenly appear. He’ll stand around just looking unless you speak to him, and then he’ll smile and try to answer. Several times we were stopped way out in the desert by white-gowned Arabs with long rifles slung over their shoulders. Apparently, they were soldiers, although they looked and dressed like all the others.

Desert spooky at night

The first night we continued to drive after dark. The moon was brilliant, and it gave the whole vast desert and the hills that dotted it a kind of ghostliness.

Suddenly the truck stopped and there around us were five Arabs out of nowhere, all gowned in white, and riding five beautiful white horses. Over their shoulders were slung the longest rifles I’ve ever seen.

In the half-light they did indeed seem romantic and like men out of mystery. They rode far back on their horses, and they could ride like the wind. They spoke in low voices, almost in harmony with the spookiness of the desert moonlight.

I don’t know what they said, but it was obvious they were patrolling throughout the night in that special part of the world which is their own, and which only they can ever fully comprehend. If we had been Germans instead of Americans, I doubt that we would have gone any farther that night, or any other night.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 23, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African desert –
When finally, late at night, we arrived near where the wrecked American planes were supposed to be, our Arab friend “Wah” directed us over a multitude of tracks, winding around through bare wraithlike hills, to a little group of sand-colored buildings standing lonesomely in the moonlight. We stopped about 500 yards away, yelled, and waited. At last, there was a shout from far off. We shouted back, “*Les Americains,” and then we could see two figures start toward us. Two of us went out to meet them. You proceed cautiously in the desert at night when you’re within half an hour’s drive of the enemy.

The place turned out to be a French garrison, as we had thought. And they acted just as they had at the other French post – anything they had was ours. The commandant was a tall, thin fellow with long hair, who looked like a poet. We didn’t know for a long time that he was the commandant, because he wore a civilian topcoat.

He and the one American officer with us went off to another part of the garrison to see about our sleeping quarters, and the rest of us hung around a big mud-walled corral which turned out to be the stables of the Camel Corps.

Hobbled camel fools Ernie

The Arab cavalrymen, or whatever you call camelback soldiers, gathered around in the moonlight and smiled at us and tried to talk. An old camel hobbled past, and I said:

Look, there’s a three-legged camel. It must have lost a front leg in an accident.

It wasn’t until next day that we realized the Arabs had merely hobbled the camel by bending its leg and lashing one foot up to its foreleg.

The Arabs had a tiny black burro that was a pet. It wasn’t any bigger than a dog, and just stood around among us looking sadly at the ground, waiting to be scratched. The soldiers were astounded at such a tiny animal, and all of us took turns picking it up in our arms to see how light it was. The truck driver jumped into his cab and came out with some cube sugar, and from then on, he was the burro’s man.

After a while the French said everything was arranged, and we all walked to another building. They turned over one big empty room with a tile floor for the soldiers to sleep on, and then insisted that the one officer and myself have supper with them. It was late at night, but apparently, they eat late on the desert.

The American officer was the kind all the mechanics called by his first name, and he would have preferred to eat and sleep with them, and so would I. But we talked it over with the enlisted men and decided it would be a breach of etiquette if we didn’t accept the invitation.

French are fine hosts

There were eight French officers and we two Americans at dinner. The French were dressed in all sorts of half-military getup. Apparently, they’ve had no new supply issues since the fall of France, and they wore whatever they could get their hands on. They apologized for not having any wine with the meal. Hadn’t had any for months.

We ate at a long bare wooden table. The room was lighted by a dim bulb hooked to a battery they’d taken off one of the wrecked American planes. Candles were used in the other rooms. One of the officers spoke a few words of English, and that was our only avenue of contact with our hosts.

We had a delicious omelet for an appetizer, and then a stew of vegetables and what was either goat or camel meat. The French can make anything taste good.

Just as we were finishing, one of the Frenchmen said, ‘"Shhhh,” and cocked his ear. We all ran outside, and sure enough we could hear German planes high in the sky, bound for a night of bombing of some of our friends.

Some of the French officers slept in beds, some on the concrete floor. They made room for our two bedrolls on the floor, and the next thing we knew it was daylight.

Frenchmen don’t eat a regular breakfast, so next morning they came out and watched while we cooked our breakfast over small cans of burning gasoline.

Marksmanship is excellent

One of the soldiers let the French commandant shoot his rifle, and then all the Frenchmen took turns. Their skill amazed the soldiers. Even with a strange rifle they could hit a small rock 150 yards away at every shot.

The commandant had a car – a sort of delivery wagon – and said he’d lead us to the wrecked planes if we could give him some gasoline. No wine, no gasoline. These soldiers at these far outposts fight a lonely and bleak kind of war.

We gave him five gallons and off we went, with several Arabs hanging onto the truck. We had at last reached our pinpoint in the vast desert, and were ready to start to work.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 24, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African front – (March 23)
When our Sahara salvage expedition finally found the wrecked airplanes far out on the endless desert, the mechanics went to work taking off usable parts, and four others of us appointed ourselves the official ditchdiggers of the day.

We were all afraid of being strafed if the Germans came over and saw men working around the planes, and we wanted a nice ditch handy for diving into. The way to have a nice ditch is to dig one. We wasted no time.

Would that all slit trenches could be dug in soil like that. The sand was soft and moist; just the kind children like to play in. The four of us dug a winding ditch 40 feet long and three feet deep in about an hour and a half.

They dig, dig, dig all day long

The day got hot, and we took off our shirts. One sweating soldier said:

Five years ago, you couldn’t have got me to dig a ditch for $5 an hour. Now look at me.

You can’t stop me digging ditches. I don’t even want pay for it; I just dig for love. And I sure do hope this digging today is all wasted effort; I never wanted to do useless work so bad in my life.

Any time I get 50 feet from my home ditch you’ll find me digging a new ditch and, brother I ain’t joking. I love to dig ditches.

Digging out here in the soft desert sand was paradise compared with the claylike digging back at our base. The ditch went forward like a prairie fire. We measured it with our eyes to see if it would hold everybody.

Indicating a low spot in the bank on either side, one of the boys said:

Throw up some more right here. Do you think we’ve got it deep enough?

Another said:

It don’t have to be so deep. A bullet won’t go through more than three inches of sand. Sand is the best thing there is for stopping bullets.

Bush aids the imagination

A growth of sagebrush hung over the ditch on one side. One of the boys said:

Let’s leave it right there. It’s good for the imagination. Makes you think you’re covered up even when you ain’t.

That’s the new outlook, the new type of conversation, among thousands of American boys today. It’s hard for you to realize, but there are certain moments when a plain old ditch can be dearer to you than any possession on earth. For all bombs, no matter where they may land eventually, do all their falling right straight at your head. Only those of you who know about that can ever know all about ditches.

While we were digging, one of the boys brought up for the thousandth time the question of that letter in Time Magazine. What letter, you ask? Why, it’s a letter you probably don’t remember, but it has become famous around these parts.

It was in the November 23 issue, which eventually found its way over here. Somebody read it, spoke to a few friends, and pretty soon thousands of men were commenting on this letter in terms which the fire department won’t permit me to set to paper.

Campfire story irritates

To get to the point, it was written by a soldier, and it said:

The greatest Christmas present that can be given to us this year is not smoking jackets, ties, pipes or games. If people will only take the money and buy war bonds… they will be helping themselves and helping us to be home next Christmas. Being home next Christmas is something which would be appreciated by all of us boys in service!

The letter was all right with the soldiers over here until they got down to the address of the writer and discovered he was still in camp in the States. For a soldier back home to open his trap about anything concerning the war is like waving a red flag at the troops over here. They say they can do whatever talking is necessary.

What a chance to gripe

One of the ditchdiggers said with fine soldier sarcasm:

Them poor dogfaces back home, they’ve really got it rugged. Nothing to eat but them old greasy pork chops and them three-inch steaks all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have to eat eggs several times a week.

Another said:

And they’re so lonely. No entertainment except to rassle them old dames around the dance floor. The USO closes at ten o’clock and the night clubs at three. It’s mighty tough on them. No wonder they want to get home.

A third said:

And they probably don’t get no sleep, sleeping on them old cots with springs and everything, and scalding themselves in hot baths all the time.

A philosopher with a shovel chimed:

And nothing to drink but that nasty old 10¢ beer and that awful Canadian Club whisky.

And when they put a nickel in the box nothing comes out but Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and such trash as that. My heart just bleeds for them poor guys.

Another asked:

And did you see where he was? At the Albuquerque Air Base. And he wants to be home by next Christmas. Hell, if I could just see the Albuquerque Air Base again, I’d think I was in Heaven.

That’s the way it goes. The boys feel a soldier isn’t qualified to comment unless he’s on the wrong side of the ocean. They’re gay and full of their own wit when they get started that way, but just the same they mean it. It’s a new form of the age-old soldier pastime of grousing. It helps take your mind off things.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 25, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African desert –
While the rest of the men were working on the planes, I spent the day wandering around the desert talking to nomadic Arab shepherds. I’d walk up to one, say “Bonjour,” and shake hands. The French and the Arabs are great handshakers. The first one I hit was a young fellow, handsome in a way but badly pockmarked.

I was looking for a long-bladed Arabian knife for one of the officers back at our airdrome. So, after shaking hands and giving my new friend a cigarette, I started asking him if he had a knife with a long blade, sharp on both edges, and with a wire-wrapped handle. I may as well have saved the description, for he never even got it through his head I was asking for a knife.

He didn’t speak French, which left us no common ground, particularly since I don’t speak it either. But I got out my own pocketknife, and then went through all the motions which, in almost any other country, would have conveyed to him that I was engaged in some sort of general discussion about a cutting implement. But not this baby.

‘No comprez’ Ernie’s signs

Arabs aren’t dumb, but somehow, they just don’t seem to understand our brand of sign language. That Arab boy and I would talk our heads off, and not understand a word, and then he’s giggle and shake his head as if to say:

This is silly but it’s fun, isn’t it?

The Arabs are all very friendly and they smile easily. It makes you feel nice and kindly toward them, even if you can’t talk with them.

This fellow was herding about 50 camels, grazing, just like cattle, on little clumps of sagebrush. I made signs that I wanted to see his camels close up, so we walked over. On the way over, I did find that the Arab word for camel is something like “zu-mel.”

He had his eye on a certain one he wanted to show me. It was old and shaggy, and was hobbled by having its right legs tied together with rags. I asked why, and the best I could make out was that it was a bad camel. As we came near, the camel rolled its tongue out one side of its mouth and gave forth a series of the most repulsive belching noises I’ve ever heard. At this, the Arab looked at me and laughed and then started imitating the camel.

Arab boy and his dog

This went on and on. Every time the camel would belch, the Arab would mimic him and laugh derisively at the silly old camel. Finally, he had to go round up some of the herd that was getting too far away, so we shook hands and off he went across the desert.

Late that afternoon, I was sitting near one of the planes when an Arab boy and his little sister, on a donkey, came past. Their white dog was running ahead of them, and we called to the dog. One of the soldiers had the dog coaxed up almost to him when the Arab boy got there and started throwing rocks at the dog to drive it away. We all frowned and said, '‘No, no, no,’’ and indicated to the boy that we wanted him to call the dog back so we could pet it. He nodded his understanding, then picked up another rock and threw it at the dog. I tell you, they just don’t understand sign language.

The boy himself was perfectly friendly. He sat down beside me and I gave him a cigarette. From the way he choked I guess he wasn’t a smoker, and was smoking just to be polite. He sat around about 15 minutes watching us and smiling. After a while, I tried the dog business again, pointing at the dog and making motions for him to call it over. He smiled and nodded, then got up and threw another rock at the dog.

The Arabs, incidentally, have beautiful dogs, as well as horses. Some of them look like small collies, but most of them, strangely, seem to have a strain of the Arctic husky in them. Usually, they are white with just a touch of cream.

Lots of Missouri mules

The goat and sheep flocks are large. Once we saw a flock of sheep that were all black. Of course, we made wisecracks about there being enough black sheep to furnish one for every family back home. It isn’t unusual to see a sheep spotted black and white like a dog.

The desert is literally alive with shepherds. You can see their tents in the distance – dark brown with wide dark stripes. The average Arab had camels, goats, sheep, horses, burros and dogs. And it seems a little incongruous somehow, but we saw lots of plain old Missouri mules on the desert.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 26, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

North Africa –
We finished the salvage work on the wrecked planes and cooked our supper on the ground. As we ate, the soldier-mechanics got to talking about the trip, and our presence so close to enemy territory. One of the truck drivers said:

Back in the States, the commanding officer made us a speech one day. He told us we were lucky to be driving trucks. Almost made us feel like slackers. Said we’d go through the whole war and never be within 500 miles of the enemy. I’d like to get hold of that guy now. He’s still back there.

One boy said:

And here we are within 30 miles of the Germans.

The officer said:

Thirty miles? It’s only 20 miles.

I chimed in:

I’m going to make it 10 miles in the column. We’ve got to be heroes, haven’t we?

That set the boys off. They told me how to write the story about our trip.

They joke, in all seriousness

They said:

Write about digging the ditch. Tell them how we dug our heads off and got finished just as a German plane came over. You don’t have to say it was 30,000 feet high and couldn’t have seen us with bifocals.

That’s the way they joke about it, but they’re only half-joking all the time. The boys were really afraid of strafing. They held a consultation about going home. One soldier and myself wanted to spend the night there, and then make the long journey home next day. But the mechanics and truck drivers didn’t relish driving in daytime so near the enemy lines. They voted to leave that night. And leave we did. We finished our supper, gave what rations were left to the French, rounded up our Arab guide, and pulled out just at dusk.

We drove all night, without lights. It was easy to follow the tracks. Yet we had to cross rocky river beds with steep banks, and dodge countless holes, and thread our way over drifted sand dunes, and pick the right trail where tracks branched out in all directions.

It was a touchingly beautiful night. The sky was cloudless and the moon so bright that it dimmed out all but a few of the most lustrous stars. And it was warm when we started. We all felt relieved, somehow, and in high spirits. But we had forgotten the chill that comes with night on the desert. By 8 o’clock, we were getting cold. By 9, we were scrunched on the floor and wrapped in blankets. From 10 on, we were in an agony of cold. Nothing could keep it out. Finally, it became an intense pain, and we suffered a sleepy horror from it all night.

Arab grapevine is uncanny

The slow dusty miles dribbled away behind us in the moonlight. Far off, little red fires dotted the desert where the shepherds camped. Dark forms of grazing camels passed in the weird light. Once we stopped and turned off the motors, and could hear a German plane very high in the night sky. And once our Arab friend “Wah,” apparently unaccustomed to motoring, got carsick and we had to stop and let him out for a while.

We went through little towns, and awakened the dogs. At 2 a.m., we came back past our first French garrison, where guards stood watch on the high walls, day and night. Their grapevine signal system is uncanny. For, when we pulled up, the commandant was out of bed, with an overcoat over his pajamas, waiting for us.

I’ve heard tales of the Arab grapevine. They tell of one case where it carried the news of a crashed German plane 150 miles, and faster than the French Army’s wireless system.

We said goodbye to “Wah” and shook hands with the commandant and barged on into the night. The miles and hours grew longer as we neared home. The last 20 miles seemed to take weeks. Once the driver stopped for our routine stretch, and the rigidly cold soldiers growled at him to keep going.

Something to tell grandchildren

Finally, we came home, an hour before daylight, and just as the moon played out on us. We hadn’t seen any war, but we had seen the Sahara by day and by night. One of the soldiers said:

I’ll be telling my grandchildren someday about the time I crossed the Sahara Desert.

Another one said:

You didn’t cross it.

Oh, well, what the hell, I crossed part of it. Let’s get to bed and stay there all day.

And that’s what we did.

[adamsano]

Ernie is able to effectively capture the trials and tribulations of regular men and women on the front lines of war. He literally puts himself in their shoes.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 27, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Algeria –
Before leaving this special vicinity, I want to tell you about a couple of friends of mine. They are Military Police. I like them as much as anybody I know in the whole Army.

They’ve been coming to see me so long now that I’ve actually forgotten how we first got acquainted. I know an officer who was in my room one day when they were there, and after they left, he said to me:

You’re the damnedest guy I ever saw. I’ve been in the Army three years and you’re the first guy I ever heard of who knew an MP personally. Nobody knows any MPs.

Maybe not, but if so they’re ignorant of one of the finest groups in the Army. The Military Police don’t have the taint to them that they had in the last war. This time they are a specially picked, highly trained, permanent organization. An MP serves throughout the war as an MP, he is proud of his organization, and he is respected by his fellow soldiers.

One day an officer and I were talking about a barroom brawl the night before in which a drunk had tried to stab an MP, and the officer said:

Anybody who starts anything with an MP is insane. They’ve picked men, and their training starts where Commandos leave off. They know every method of fighting in the world.

MPs get tough training

And from the MPs that I’ve seen, from their demeanor and their conduct, I believe that next to Rangers and Paratroopers they are really the pick of the Army.

But to get around to my two friends. They are: Cpl. Freeland L. Riles Jr., of 601 Broad St., Darlington, South Carolina, and Pvt. Thomas Stewart, of Scurry, Texas. Riles goes by the nickname “Snip,” and Stewart goes by “Tom.” They both wear white leggings, and brass whistle-and-chain over their shoulders, and Sam Browne belts, and carry a big .45, and believe me they both know how to shoot it too.

They never knew each other before the Army, of course, but they’re the same age to the day. Both born on July 7, 1919. “Snip” went only through the eighth grade, Tom through the ninth. Then they both started to work. Both of them talk low and slow and drag out their words as if they had all day to say a sentence. Snip’s is the soft easy drawl of the Deep South, while Tom’s was the wide, frank drawl of the open spaces. They were as different as day and night.

Tom says:

Give me open country. I like big country where if you want to holler you can get out and holler.

Tom’s face is windy-red, and he is land and jointy. In the respectful fashion of his part of the country, he still refers to his mother as “Mama.” Neither he not Snip is making any headway at all trying to learn French.

Tom was a carpenter

Tom used to be a carpenter. He likes best to do the interior cabinetwork when a house is about finished. He says his specialty is making tables. He made a beauty for the general when he was at Camp Bowie in Texas.

Snip was a traveling route-agent for a bakery. He used to drive his bread truck 180 miles a day and make as high as $60 a week during tobacco season when people had money. He is a handsome youngster, black-haired and spic-and-span, but very quiet and serious. He was a star athlete in school. He says he was never homesick at all in England, but down here he thinks about home a lot.

He knows jujitsu and all the other methods of fighting, but he says he’ll never use his jujitsu, for it’s too easy to cripple somebody permanently. Both boys say they have very little trouble. Most soldiers who get to whooping it up in the backroom quiet down like mice and walk along peacefully the moment an MP shows up.

Post-war trips arranged

My friendship with these two fighters has struck me as odd, for I’m nearly old enough to be their father, and there’s little in companionship I can contribute to them. Yet they come daily and sit and chat; they say if I ever need an escort anywhere just to holler and they’ll take me; they insist on running errands for me; they bought a special bottle of champagne and brought it to my room on Christmas Eve for us three.

We’ve arranged to take trips together after the war. Snip insists on taking me on a South Carolina deer hunt, a famous institution where the man who misses his first deer gets his shirttail cut off.

And Tom has a two-week catfishing and cougar-hunting trip down the Nueces River all planned. I’ve agreed to go on these trips although I don’t know why, for I’ve never shot anything bigger than a rabbit in my life, and never intend to.

Tom wants to get into the border immigration service after the war. Snip thinks maybe his MP experience would qualify him for some kind of police work, although he’s really undecided what he wants to do.

I’ve noticed that both boys almost always preface their after-war plans by saying “If I live through it…” Nobody talks a great deal about that, but it’s in the back of everybody’s mind. It’s even in mine sometimes, despite the nice safety of my non-combatancy. Even a deer hunt looks beautiful way off there in the future.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 29, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Oran, Algeria –
It’s strange, but for some reason or other things seem to get damaged in wartime. So, less than two weeks after we landed in Africa, an Army Claim Commission had set itself up in each of the big occupied cities and was doling out money to aggrieved citizens whose persons or property had been damaged by our forces. There are 12 officers and 13 enlisted men in the Oran claims section. They handled 165 cases in the first two weeks. They paid off the first complainant three days after arriving.

Most of the claims are minor ones. A good many are for damage to crops where soldiers marched across fields or camped for the night. The commission brought along an American farmer in order to be able to handle such cases intelligently. He is Maj. William Johnson, who lives on a 200-acre farm six miles outside of Duluth, Minnesota. Ironically, he has been so busy in the office handling claims that he hasn’t had time to get outside of Oran and see any farms.

There have been a number of traffic accidents. In the first three weeks five people were killed by trucks, and eight or 10 mules have been killed. The commission pays $200 for a good work mule. That’s more than they’d pay at home, but good mules are harder to get over here. The price for a horse is about the same.

Commission pays ‘right’

One tough problem the commission faces is how much to pay for destroyed articles that are irreplaceable. One woman, for instance, filed a claim for 375 francs for a radio the Army had commandeered. She said she paid 250 francs for it, but was asking 375 because she simply couldn’t get another one. The commission agreed with her reasoning and paid her 375 francs.

The head of the commission is Lt. Col. George T. Madison, a tall, gangling, slow-talking lawyer from Bastrop, Louisiana. I can never forget Col. Madison because he led our little detachment off the boat months ago, and I marched into Oran for the first time behind him. Another friend of mine on the commission is Capt. John M. Smith of West Memphis, Arkansas. He knows a lot of my friends in Memphis, and relays news of them that comes in his letters.

Don Coe, United Press correspondent, arrived in North Africa a while back from the gold Coast, way down below. He had been sitting for six months in Liberia, not permitted to write a line. He says he didn’t mind it a bit.

He and three other correspondents went to Liberia last June. They lived throughout the tropical rainy season in tents, and here in Oran, Don slept in a real bed and under blankets for the first time in six months.

Bed traded for smokes

Don doesn’t smoke himself, but he left his bedroll and gas mask behind in order to bring scads of cigarettes to give away up here, which is the most thoughtful thing I’ve heard of in years. He says they were well fixed down there – but then we are up here too.

Don says he and other correspondents, to kill time during the long half year of doing nothing, thought of writing a book entitled I Found No War. But it’s hot down there, and all they did was think about it.

An Army friend of mine, Cpl. Jimmy Edwards from Tyler, Texas, used to be a cavalryman before the war, so consequently he goes nuts about the Arabian horses he sees here. Being an old horse-hater from way back I refuse to look at the beasts, so Jimmy has described them to me in his own words. He says:

I can’t help but notice how beautiful they are. They’ve got little feet, slim bodies, well-shaped heads and small ears. You see them hitched to these two-wheeled hacks in the city streets. One owner said you could buy one for about $200. That isn’t cheap but I’d sure like to have some to put in my pasture back home.

Burro delights

There is one animal here that delights both Jimmy and me, and that’s the local burro, or donkey. They’re only about two-thirds as big as our Southwestern burro, and their hair is slicker, giving them a much neater appearance, but they’re still just as droll-looking. Jimmy went up and measure one the other day. It was only 35 inches high, and its funny head was half as long as the burro was high. I asked the burro if he knew the Americans were here, and he shook his head and said he didn’t care who was in charge as long as he got fed. He ain’t the only one, either.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 30, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With U.S. forces in Algeria –
Every Army headquarters anywhere in the world has what is called a “Message Center.” It is run by the Signal Corps, and through it goes all the vast flow of communications necessary to keep an Army running.

Where I am, the Message Center handles my columns after they leave the censor. Some columns go home by wireless, some go part way by air and the rest by wireless, some go all the way home by air. I have to trust blindly to the boys in the Message Center to get my columns headed in the right direction and by the right means, and especially trust them to get them started somewhere immediately, and not let them lie around for days under a stack of papers. I understand there were several lapses in this column at home a while back, due to its getting bottlenecked somewhere along the route. But I’m sure the delay hasn’t been at the fountainhead of literature. For the boys at the Message Center and I have a system.

Now Ernie’s paying off

I’ll put their names in the paper if they treat me nice and handle my copy well; they’ll treat me nice and handle my copy well if I’ll put their names in the paper. It sounds like collusion, and undoubtedly is. At any rate, the boys have done their part, so now I’ll pay off. If any of their parents should read this, they may know their boys are living under cover, eating well, are in no personal danger, and that they are gay and have fun at their work. Here they are:

Lt. Gordon Carlisle, of 14 Cass St., Exeter, New Hampshire, was still in college when he joined the Army. They call him the boy from “Cow College,” the nickname for the University of New Hampshire. Coming from up north, he’s a fresh-air fiend, and keeps the boys frozen stiff by having the windows open all the time.

Erie private misses bowling

Pvt. Frank T. Borczon, of 631 Payne Ave., Erie, Pennsylvania, says the worst part of being in Africa is that he can’t find a bowling alley. He was a champion back home.

Pvt. Julius Novak, of 1613 Ave. V, Brooklyn, New York, is so quiet the boys can’t tell me a thing about him to put in the paper.

Pfc. George Doomchin, of 1944 Unionport Rd., the Bronx, said the great mystery of the war is how the Saturday Evening Post gets along without him. He used to sell it at home.

Pvt. Gerald Kelly, of 22 Central St., Elkins, West Virginia, is a cheerful, good-looking young fellow who used to be an athletic director for the YMCA.

Cpl. A. C. Moore, of Mobile, Alabama. His mother always called him “A.C.,” which has been slurred into “Ace” in the Army. In the slack hours late at night, the boys pass the time by drawing up court-martial charges against “Ace.” He is a printer by trade. His wife is waiting for him out in Lufkin, Texas.

Fill-‘er-up Phil Harrington

Pvt. William J. Harrington of 908 Greenfield Ave., Pittsburgh, is jovially known in these parts as “Fill-'er-up Phil.” Seems as though his glass is always getting empty.

Pvt. Jacob L. Seiler, of Covington, Louisiana, or “Jake the Fake,” as the boys call him, says to put down that he was a “mixologist” before the war. In other words, a bartender. I assume he carries on in the Army by getting the messages all mixed up.

Pvt. George Murphy, of 172 Grand St., Lowell, Massachusetts, spent years as a textile mill’s traveling salesman, and can’t seem to stop traveling.

Sgt. John D. Taylor, of Temple, Texas, is a big husky who was a football and baseball letter-man at the University of Alabama.

Cpl. Jack Price, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, says he grew up in a poolroom. His father owned one. Jack speaks only about twice a day, and then it’s always something that rolls the other boys in the aisles. That old dry wit, you know.

Beer salesman from Steubenville

Pvt. Ed Sailor, of 2542 North 31st St., Philadelphia, said to put down that he is a former postal clerk and well-known Strawberry Mansion pinball player. I asked him what Strawberry Mansion was. He said anybody in Philadelphia would know.

Pfc. Thomas C. Buckley, of New Hebron, Mississippi. They call him the “Mississippi Mud Hen.” He used to jerk sodas way down South. He celebrated Christmas and his first wedding anniversary the same day.

Cpl. Russell W. Harrell, of 902 East Burlington St., Fairfield, Iowa, has been everything – farmer, building constructor, hardware salesman – so nothing surprised him anymore.

Pvt. Primo de Carlo, lived at 255 North 7th St., Steubenville, Ohio. The boys give him more Italian nicknames than Musso himself, the main one being Signor Vaselino. The Signor just grins. Primo was once an opera singer. He went to school for three years in Milan. And then wound up selling beer in Steubenville. He wonders if he won’t eventually get back to Milan, after all.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 31, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With U.S. forces in Algeria –
Everybody who comes in North Africa with the Army is issued a special desert-kit. The main item in our kit is a dust mask. It is a frightful-looking contraption. It consists of a big black rubber schnozzle that covers your nose and half your face. To this are attached two circular devices, about saucer size, which look like wheels and which hang over each jaw. Apparently, the theory is to scare the dust away.

We are also given a pair of old-fashioned racetrack goggles, the kind that strap around your head and have fuzz around the edges of the eyepieces. They’re tinted slightly brown to act as sunglasses. Further than that, each of us is given a dozen isinglass eyeshields, to be used largely for gas attack, but which can also be used for dust.

On the day when we have to put on our gas masks, dust masks, gas eyeshields, dust goggles, and steel helmet all at once, they’ve promised to give a medal to the last man to choke to death.

Dust gives ‘em ‘sundown throat’

Actually, nobody uses or needs his dust equipment at this season. It is raining a good part of the time, and some kind of duckfoot attachment for your shoes would be much more appropriate than a dust mask.

This country along the coast is not truly desert. It is without trees or much natura; vegetation, but it is all farming country, covered with vineyards and olive groves and grain fields. The soil is a sort of red clay.

But soon it will blow, and from what the people say, it will blow until we almost go insane. Even now, after a few rainless days, you can notice a thin film of dust on your table. You really can’t sense dust in the air, but some is there.

The doctors say this invisible dust, plus the rapid drop in temperature at sundown, is responsible for what we call, or at least I call, ‘‘sundown throat." Almost everybody I know gets a sore throat just about sundown. It’s a strange, seemingly unaccountable thing. It comes on just after the sun gets behind the hills and the evening chill starts coming down. Your throat gets so sore you can hardly swallow. It is gone next morning. If your general health is good, nothing comes of this “sundown throat.” But if you are run down, one of those African flu bugs may come along, and then your sore throat turns into the African flu, as happened to me.

Pill No. 2 kills Pill No. 1

Also in the desert kit are two little bottles of pills for purifying drinking water when you’re in the country. You put one pill in your canteen, let it sit half an hour, put in the other pill and wait a few minutes, then drink the water. Pill No. 1 kills all the germs in the water, and Pill No. 2 kills the nasty taste left by Pill No, 1. In addition, we have a can of mosquito paste, and pills to take for malaria. In this area, and at this season, there isn’t much need for those. I’ve yet to see a mosquito, although once in a while a malaria case turns up at one of the Army hospitals.

The local people consider December, January, and February their winter. They say they stop taking quinine Dec. 1, and start again in March. Right now, this seems the last place on earth where you’d get malaria – it simply doesn’t look like malaria country. For although this is Africa, it’s still as far north as Norfolk, and it’s not the steaming jungle you’re thinking of, a thousand miles south.

Our malaria pills are not quinine, but a substitute known as atabrin. We are warned not to take them without doctor’s instructions. Personally, I’m never going to take mine. I talked to one doctor from the South, a malaria specialist, who took his and thought he was going to die. He says he’d rather have malaria and get it over with.

‘Puny Pyle’s Perpetual Pains’

Africa is not clean, and we can expect a good bit of disease before we finally get out of here. Our sore throats and flu are known to the doctors as “winter respiratory diseases.” The malaria, dysentery, and stuff we’ll have this spring will be known as “summer intestinal disturbances.”

The large and small diseases that infect the ragged carcass of this sad correspondent at all seasons and in all climes are known medically as “Puny Pyle’s Perpetual Pains.”

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 1, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

North Africa –
One day Mrs. Sara Harvey of 227 Natchez Place, Nashville, Tennessee, wrote a letter to me, and it finally found its way over here. Mrs. Harvey asked me to look up her husband in England, and tell him to hurry up and get the war won and get back home to her.

Lots of people write me letters like that. Unfortunately, the world is a big place and our troops are scattered. Only once in a blue moon do I happen to be in the vicinity of the husband or sweetheart asked for. But the Harvey case turned out just right. When Mrs. Harvey wrote, both her husband and I were in England. When the letter arrived, we were both in Africa, and Mrs. Harvey’s ever-loving was right under my nose. All I had to do was walk through a bunch of palm trees and across a little sand, and there he was.

He is Sgt. Benson Harvey, radioman with a fighter squadron. He was playing catch with a baseball right after supper when I found him. Harvey and another fellow lived in a pup tent just big enough to hold their blankets. Their private slit trench is just a jump away. A small tinted picture in a glass frame hangs on the tiny pole at the back of the tent. The picture is of Mrs. Harvey.

Four brothers in service

Sgt. Harvey is a young fellow. Back in Nashville he used to be janitor, phone operator and all-round worker at an apartment house. He is quiet, friendly, sincere, slow-speaking – you’d almost know he was from Tennessee. His captain thinks a lot of him. He is one of four brothers scattered all over the world. Maj. Robert Harvey is a doctor now on his way overseas, probably to Africa. James is a chief petty officer in the Navy. He was through Pearl Harbor and the Solomons battles, and is somewhere at sea. His wife was once notified that he was dead – but he wasn’t. The fourth brother is Frank, an aviation machinist’s mate, who was on the Wasp when she was sunk.

Sgt. Harvey says it’ll be tough when they get home, for they’ll all want to tell their lies at the same time. Harvey has been in the Army two and a half years already. He has things pretty nice, as things go over here. I’m glad Mrs. Harvey wrote me about him.

While we were roaming around. Sgt. Harvey took me into the squadron’s little dispensary and hospital. It’s a big hole in the ground, about four feet deep – all tented over. It’s about the nicest improvised operating room around here. We got to talking with Sgt. Burt Thompson of 3660 East 151st St., Cleveland, Ohio. He used to be a production clerk in a hydraulic-equipment factory in Cleveland, but now he’s in the medical section and has hung around doctors so long, he’s started inventing things.

The Air Forces make up a medical kit for pilots to take with them on their missions. It’s in a canvas case with a zipper, and is placed behind the pilot’s seat. It’s all right if you can get to it, but a wounded fighter pilot can’t always reach it.

Smaller kits will be issued

So, Sgt. Thompson has assembled a smaller kit, which a pilot can carry right in the map pocket on his trousers leg. It is packed in the little tin box our dust goggles came in – about the size of a Nabisco wafer box. It has everything in it from bandages to a half gram of morphine which you can inject yourself. It even has a tourniquet, wrapped around the outside. Sgt. Thompson gave me one of them.

I asked:

Are you going to issue these to pilots?

He said:

We’d like to, but some new regulation has to come from headquarters first.

I said:

That’ll take months. Why don’t you just issue them?

Sgt. Thompson with a little grin said:

That’s what we intend to do.

There is now starting to grow up among the soldiers over here, I’ve noticed, a little feeling of resentment at, and superiority over, the soldiers back in the States. I’m sorry to see this, for I think it’s unfair. Few soldiers have the slightest control over whether they’re to be in Africa or in Florida. Soldiers don’t choose; they’re sent. The ones back home aren’t cowards, and are no doubt itching to get over here.

There is one tiling concerning home life that soldiers are absolutely rabid on: that is strikes. You just mention a strike at home to either soldier or officer, living on monotonous rations in the mud under frequent bombing, and you’ve got a raving maniac on your hands.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 2, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

North Africa –
The Americans’ love for pets never ceases to delight me. We are a people who are fundamentally kind to animals. You’d be surprised at how many nationalities aren’t. Our soldiers over here are shocked – I’ve heard them remark on it a hundred times – at the way the Arabs mistreat their dogs and burros.

You’d laugh if you could see the collection of pets at one camp I visited recently. There were countless dogs, several cats, one gazelle, one monkey, two or three rabbits, a burro, and, believe it or not, half a dozen chickens.

A gazelle, as somebody said, is a cross between a jackrabbit and a moose. Actually, it’s a tiny, doll-like deer, delicate and dainty, and stands no higher than a big dog. You’ve heard of the gazelle’s speed. They say they’ve been clocked at 60 miles an hour. They run wild in the mountains near here, and the French hunt them with shotguns. Many of our officers have gone on gazelle-hunting trips. Personally, I could no more shoot one of them than I could a friendly dog.

Bob says ‘no’ to glamor girl

About the cutest dog on the post is a fuzzy little mongrel called “Ziggie,” which belongs to Cpl. Robert Pond, of 2147 Marion St., Denver. He paid 500 francs for it. When the American actresses were in Africa, Carole Landis took Bob’s dog in her arms and asked if she could take it home with her. Seems she has two Great Danes and wanted a little dog to go with them. Bob, coolly superior to glamor, said “No.”

I happened to fall in with four young lieutenants of a bomber crew who had recently arrived from America. They had been on three missions in their first ten days, and had got shot up every time. Not shot down – just shot up.

The third time one engine was knocked out, and one rudder fell clear off just as they landed at the home airdrome. They really started getting their thrills in a hurry. I asked them whether this sudden taste of violent adventure pepped them up, or whether they were beginning to wonder. They laughed and said their only feeling was one of regret and annoyance that their plane would be out of commission for a few days.

Soldiers grow crop of beards

The four were Pilot Ralph Keele, a Salt Lake City Mormon, Co-pilot William Allbright, of Western Springs, Illinois, Navigator Robert Radcliff of Richland Center, Wisconsin, and Bombardier Eugene Platek, of Antigo, Wisconsin.

The soldiers have grown such a crop of beards that you think you’ve driven into one of our Western towns just the week before the annual Pioneer Days celebration. Over here Hollywood could find every type of beard that ever existed. Some are big and fierce, some blond and curly, some wispy and foppish, some of the sourdough kind, others as prim and sharp as a boulevardier’s. You’ll even find the old Irish type of jaw-whiskers. I let mine grow for two weeks but nobody noticed it, so I gave up.

In all this area near the front there is no such thing as a Post Exchange. The Army instead issues free such necessities as cigarettes, soap, razor blades, and so on.

‘Not in combat zone! Nuts!’

But at a forward post one day I tried to get some tooth powder, and was told disgustedly by the sergeant that there wasn’t any, because we weren’t in the combat zone.

I said with astonishment:

Not in the combat zone? Who says we’re not?

He said:

Some guy at some desk far, far away. I don’t know where he expects us to get in, in the first place, and in the second place, I wish he was here a few nights when the bombs start whistling. I’ll bet you couldn’t get him out of a slit trench all night. Not in the combat zone! Nuts!

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 3, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
Here is the home of the renowned French Foreign Legion, probably, over the years, the most famous fighting unit in the world.

The Legion comprises the only true mercenaries left in existence. They’ll fight whomever their leaders tell them to; on either side, with the same emotions.

A Legionnaire lives with but one high goal – death on the battlefield. On the walls of one of the barracks is inscribed this message from a former commander:

You, Legionnaires, are soldiers made to die. I send you where you die.

The message is looked upon with reverence, almost as holy.

Like a good many things in this world, the Legion isn’t as romantic when you get close to as it is from a distance. It does have a fine fighting history, no question of that. And life in the Legion is much more modern than most of us have thought. And yet it is an empty life, by most standards. It is a bleak life. Men with fine minds, who for obscure reasons go into the ranks of the Legion, find that after a few years their minds have dwindled to a common denominator of mere existence.

They say that most Americans who have joined the Legion can’t stick out their five-year enlistments. Before the war Americans and British could get out of the Legion with a little diplomatic pressure. When a German enlisted, he was stuck for five years, no matter how he hated it. But Germans don’t hate it the way Americans and Englishmen do.

Glad to be beaten

The Legion consists of about 10,000 men. In this war, it fought the Germans in France and in Norway. Its record, as usual, was superb. After the fall of France, it withdrew to Algeria, its lifelong home. Last year, it fought against the British in Syria – it doesn’t make any difference to the Legion whom it fights.

Today, the Legion is scattered. Some of its units are bottled up by the Japanese in French Indochina. A few are fighting the Germans in Tunisia. The rest are spotted over North Africa, preparing for future battles. Fewer than 2,000 men are here at headquarters.

The morning the Americans landed in North Africa, the Legion started north on the 50-mile run to Oran to join the fighting. But they never arrived. Allied airplanes bombed and machine-gunned them along the highways, and they had to turn back. Their burned-out trucks still lie along the roadside. Fortunately, there were almost no casualties. The Legionnaires felt badly that they didn’t get to Oran in time. Not because they dislike Americans, but simply because they missed a fight.

Now the Legion is hand-in-glove with the Americans, and readying itself to join in the great fight on our side. The soldiers are impatient and itching to get going.

Discipline is absolute

Sidi Bel Abbès has become practically a shrine for Americans over here. More than 400 American officers go through the Legion’s home quarters every week. The Legion puts on parades for visiting American generals. American doughboys and Foreign Legion privates walk the streets together and sit in cafés, trying their best to talk to each other.

Discipline in the Legion is probably the strictest in the world. It isn’t just a brutal discipline; it is what professional soldiers point to admiringly as the absolute ideal in military precision of conduct. There is no sloppiness of dress, no relaxing of respect. Soldiers salute an officer clear across the street. They salute officers sitting at tables 50 yards away. Neglect to salute costs a Legionnaire eight days in jail. They salute me too. They would even if they knew I was only a correspondent, for I’m in uniform and it’s the uniform they salute.

‘French is spoken here’

There are still rough, murderous men in the Legion, but today many of them are high-type persons who left their home countries for political reasons. Fifty-five nationalities are represented. There are only three Americans and they are not here.

A large percentage of the Legion is now Spanish and German. Once we took over here, the question arose what to do with the German Legionnaires. That has been solved by sending them far to the south, with a detachment that will never come into contact with Axis troops and will fight no World War battles.

The Germans have made excellent Legionnaires, but they became so numerous there has been some resentment against them among the French. In one kitchen I noticed a sign in French saying “French is spoken here.” I asked the cook the significance of it. He said it got so that German was the predominant language around the kitchen, so he put up the sign to show there were some Frenchmen left.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 5, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
The home of the Legion was a great and pleasant surprise to me. I expected it to be a slovenly tent-camp out in an almost unbelievable desert, with dirty cutthroat troops and brutal-looking officers.

Everything is just the opposite. The headquarters is in a city of 60,000 people, with fine sidewalk cafés and paved streets and modern apartment houses. It is not in the desert at all, but in rich farming country.

The Legion buildings form a sort of academy, right in the heart of the city. There are four-storied permanent barracks, and fine parks inside the walls, with many flowers and extraordinarily clean grounds and buildings. There are museums, and beautiful statues and monuments about the grounds. There are nice homes for officers and noncoms and their families.

Officers are uniformed as though by Bond St., and most of them might be American businessmen or professors as far as their looks are concerned. At Saint-Cyr, the West Point of France, the top man in each class has the privilege of choosing where he shall serve. And it is a tradition that he always chooses the Foreign Legion. So, the Legion is led by career men.

Wooden hand is prize memento

Legionnaires tell me that many of the officers, though strict, are almost fatherly in their attitude toward the soldiers. And certainly, the ones I met are, without exception, gentlemen in anybody’s country.

The French Foreign Legion was created in 1831. So, it has more than a century of tradition behind it. The Legion is extremely proud of the two museums here in headquarters which depict its history. On the museum’s tiled floors there are beautiful brown-and-white Algerian rugs, somewhat similar to our own Navajo Indian rugs. Around the walls are case after case of Legion mementos – old swords, flags, pieces of uniform, guns, bullets, decorations.

The walls are hung with hundreds of pictures of Legion members who have died gloriously. Life-sized wax figures standing around the walls of one room show the dozen or so types of uniform worn by the Legion over the years.

The Legion’s most prized memento is, of all things, a wooden hand. In 1854, the Legion fought in the Russian Crimea, and in that campaign a Capt. Danjou had one hand shot off. So, he had a wooden hand made to replace it. The hand is of fine workmanship, the fingers are all jointed, and the thing looks almost lifelike.

Legion abandoning its cavalry

Well, the Legion went to Mexico during Maximilian’s reign, and there was fought the most memorable battle in its history. A tiny party of 115 Legionnaires barricaded themselves in a hacienda at the town of Camerone, and battled 4,000 Mexicans. All but three of the Legionnaires were killed. It was much like our own Alamo. Capt. Danjou with the wooden hand was killed in this battle. Later his hand was found, and sent back to Sidi Bel Abbès.

The battle was fought April 30, 1863. The Legion observes April 30 each year with great parades and reviews. Capt. Danjou’s hand is brought out in its glass case and stands there as a symbol of what the Legion means.

It all seems a little gruesome, but the Legion feels deeply about it.

The Legion, though hard, is just as sentimental as any other organization. You can see it especially right now among their cavalrymen. As we came unexpectedly into the stables, we caught a glimpse of one young soldier kissing his horse’s forehead as he finished currying it. He was a tough-looking boy who didn’t seem capable of tenderness or sentiment. Something will be lost when the Legion’s cavalrymen start riding iron horses.