Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 6, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
The French Foreign Legion has changed greatly from the dregs-of-humanity catchall that it once was. But it is still wholly a fighting outfit, and anything that exists solely to fight is bound to be tough. As a result, the Legionnaire lives in a mental environment that is deadly. There is little reason or inclination for high thinking.

Legionnaires are lonely. There is little outside their military life for them. They can sit in the cafés and drink, and that’s about all. Many of them carry on regular correspondence with women all over the world whom they’ve never seen, even with Americans. They say it isn’t unusual to see among the want ads in the Paris papers a plea from a Foreign Legionnaire for a pen-pal.

The loneliness and longing for other days is proved, it seems to me, by one little vital statistic. Every year around Christmas, five or six Legionnaires commit suicide.

Russian gets drunk on payday

The Legion is full of “characters.” There is one Russian, a carpenter, who has been indulging in a peculiar routine as long as Legionnaires can remember.

On every payday, which is twice a month, he buys himself a large bucket of wine. He puts it on the floor beside his cot, gets plenty of cigarettes, then lies down and starts drinking and smoking. He’ll drink himself into a stupor, sleep a few hours, then wake up and start drinking again. He never gets out of bed, makes any noise, or causes any trouble. His jag lasts two days. It’s been going on so long that the officers just accept it.

But just let a Legionnaire get out of control on the street or on duty, and the penalties are severe. For extreme drunkenness, a Legionnaire can get nine months in the Disciplinary Regiment – which means nine months far away on the desert, working from dawn till dusk, with poor food, no cigarettes, no wine, no mail.

Penalties are severe

Even for slight infractions he gets eight days in jail, with his head shaved. They say any man who goes through a five-year enlistment without getting his head shaved is either an angel or extremely lucky.

At the end of a five-year enlistment the Legion gives a “Good Conduct Certificate.” The Legionnaires are so tough that only half of them get the certificate. Those who don’t get it have only two choices: re-enlistment for another five years or lifetime expulsion from the entire French Empire (so the bad ones sign up again).

The Legion does do many things for its men. Here at Sidi Bel Abbès, the Legion has built a huge modern theater, where movies are shown and band concerts given. The men even put on their own theatricals, and the Legion has a 350-piece band.

Nearby is a new concrete swimming pool, the largest in North Africa. I’ve never seen anything in Hollywood to beat it. It is surrounded by tiled terraces, with tables and chairs and cabanas, and with green trees and a riot of flowers.

Sergeant paid only $10 monthly

Officers and noncoms are provided with houses, and may have their families with them. A sergeant gets only $10 a month, but this is increased if he has a family. A sergeant in the Legion rates salutes the same as a commissioned officer.

The Legion had shops where its men could study trades during spare hours after supper. After the Americans arrived they put in a voluntary English course.

The Legionnaires here at home base sleep in concrete-floored barracks much like our own. They have iron cots and their stuff is packed to move at a moment’s notice.

Every barracks and recreation hall has cartoons drawn all over the walls – well-done cartoons making jokes about Legion life. This is another Legion tradition. Whenever a new company moves in, it has the right to erase all cartoons and draw its own.

Tradition is admirable, but–

It has been a marvelous experience to visit, after all these years and in this remote part of the world, the men about whom Beau Geste was written. You can’t help admiring the Legion’s pride in itself, its fastidious discipline, its cleanliness, its whole tradition.

But beyond that, life in the Foreign Legion seems to be horrible. Living to fight merely for the fight’s sake is something I cannot understand.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 7, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
Our visit to the French Foreign Legion was made particularly pleasant by a Legionnaire who is an Englishman – Sgt. John Whiteway. Whiteway is not an adventurer at all; he is a normal kind of businessman.

Just after the last war, he went to Paris to live. For 20 years he was the Paris representative for American refrigerator and radio companies. He married a French girl, and they have three handsome children, the youngest of whom he has never seen although the child is now nearly three.

When war seemed imminent in 1939, Whiteway felt he should fight for the country that had supported him for 20 years. He couldn’t join the regular French Army, so he joined the Foreign Legion. They fought through the fall of France, and then were shipped back to Algeria. And here Whiteway has been ever since.

It was tough going, the first few months for a man of his maturity and intellect. But his business ability and office experience made him invaluable to the Legion, and he was soon put into administrative work at headquarters. Thus, he has escaped most of the rigors and the deadly barracks life of the Legion.

When the Americans came, Whiteway was one of the few English-speaking men in the Legion. So, he was immediately attached to American headquarters as a liaison man. He wears civilian clothes now, and it was he who brought us to Sidi Bel Abbès.

Royal homecoming for sergeant

Although Whiteway had been away only a month, his return was like a royal homecoming. Everywhere we went, both soldiers and officers of the Legion saluted and stopped and shook hands and jabbered as if he’d been gone for years. Little French girls, whom he had been teaching English, came running down the street to kiss him. He seems to be one Englishman who has made the French like him.

We were a happy party who visited the Legion. In addition to Sgt. Whiteway and myself, there were five American Army officers – Lt. Col. Egbert W. Cowan, who has served all over the world in the Regular Army and whose daughter Shirley is about to become a ferry pilot at home; Capt. Art Nillen, a boisterous dentist from Dallas, whose motto is “See your dentist every day and brush your teeth twice a year;” Lt. Albert Deschenes, a young Boston doctor who speaks French, and well he might with a name like that; Lt. Max Kuehnert of Chicago, who was America’s best brick salesman before the war, and who still carried around his sales booklets of model brick homes; and Lt. Leonard Bessman, a likable Milwaukee lawyer who doesn’t speak French, but who has the virtue of continually trying to speak it.

Foreign language gabfest

Lenny and Max are enthusiasts. Everything they see is wonderful. Lenny has been a Foreign Legion fan ever since he was a child, and we almost had to hold him to keep him from signing up right on the spot.

It was Lenny’s efforts at French which endeared him to a Romanian cavalry sergeant named Paul Baron Ecsedy de Csapo, who hung around with us all day and wound up by almost tearfully pinning his most prized medal on Lenny’s blouse, as a token of his esteem.

Max hit his stride when we dropped into a little bar patronized almost exclusively by the Legion. It is run by a man named Lucett Paume, a Swiss who spent 20 years in the Legion and is now retired. His wife and two children help him run the bar.

Max speaks German, and this is how it wound up – Max and the Swiss in one huddle talking German; Lt. Deschenes and the proprietor’s daughters in another huddle speaking real French; Col. Cowan with a little group around him telling about hunting elephants in Indochina; Art Nillen standing in the doorway shouting “Zid, yalla, you little…” at all the passing Arab kids; Lenny and the sergeant in another huddle speaking pidgin and making motions, and me sitting all alone in a corner ordering my breakfast in Spanish over and over to myself.

Breakfast words happen to be the only Spanish I know, and damned if I wasn’t going to talk some kind of foreign language amid all that international sewing circle, even if I had to keep ordering hypothetical breakfasts all afternoon. Thus, the day passed. Vive la Légion Étrangère!

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 8, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
The war correspondents over here seldom write about themselves, as it may be interesting if I try to tell you how we live.

There are more than 75 American and British correspondents and photographers in North Africa. Since Allied Headquarters is in a big city to the rear, that’s where most of the correspondents stay. The number actually in Tunisia at any one time fluctuates between half a dozen and two dozen. Each of the three big press associations has a five-man staff – usually three men back at headquarters and two at the front. They rotate every few weeks.

The correspondents in the city live a life that is pretty close to normal. They live in hotels or apartments, eat at restaurants or officers’ messes, work regular hours, get laundry done, dress in regulation uniforms, keep themselves clean, and get their news from communiqués and by talking to staff officers at headquarters.

Heebie-jeebies in the city

Since their lives are closely akin to the lives of newspapermen at home, we’ll deal here only with the correspondents as they live at the front.

Some of us have spent as much as two months in Tunisia without ever returning to the city. When we do, it is a great thrill to come back to civilization – for the first day.

But then a reaction sets in. Almost invariably we get the heebie-jeebies and find ourselves nervous and impatient with all the confusion and regimentation of city life, and wish ourselves at the front again.

The outstanding thing about life at the front is its magnificent simplicity. It is a life consisting only of the essentials – food, sleep, transportation, and what little warmth and safety you can manage to wangle out of it by personal ingenuity. Ordinarily, when life is stripped to the bare necessities, it is an empty and boring life. But not at the front. Time for me has never passed so rapidly. You’re never aware of the day of the week, and a whole month is gone before you know it.

Up here, the usual responsibilities and obligations are gone. You don’t have appointments to keep. Nobody cares how you look. Red tape is at a minimum. You have no desk, no designated hours. You don’t wash hands before you eat, nor afterwards either. It would be a heaven for small boys with dirty faces.

And it was a healthy life. During the winter months I was constantly miserable from the cold, yet paradoxically I never felt better in my life. The cold wind burned my face to a deep tan, and my whole system became toughened. I ate twice as much as usual. I hadn’t been hungry for nigh onto forty years, but in Tunisia I ate like a horse and was so constantly hungry it got to be a joke.

You do everything for yourself

It was a life that gave a new sense of accomplishment. In normal life, all the little things were done for us. I made my money by writing, and then used that money to hire people to wash my clothes, shine my shoes, make my bed, clean the bathtub, fill my gas tank, serve my meals, carry my bags, build my fires.

But not in Africa. We did everything ourselves. We were suddenly conscious again that we could do things. The fact that another guy could write a better story than I could was counterbalanced by the fact that I could roll a better bedroll than he could.

Last, and probably most important of all, was the feeling of vitality, of being in the heart of everything, of being a part of it – no mere onlooker, but a member of the team. I got into the race, and I resented dropping out even long enough to do what I was there to do – which was write. I would rather have just kept going all day, every day.

I’ve written that war is not romantic when a person is in the midst of it. Nothing happened to change my feeling about that. But I will have to admit there was an exhilaration in it; an inner excitement that built up into a buoyant tenseness seldom achieved in peacetime.

Just part of Army family

Up here, the Army accepts us correspondents as a part of the family. We knew and were friends with hundreds of individual soldiers. And we knew, and. were known by, every American general in Tunisia. There was no hedging at the front. I’ve never known an instance where correspondents were not told, with complete frankness, what was going on.

In the beginning, no restrictions were put on us; we could go anywhere we pleased at any time. But things gradually changed, as the established machinery of war caught up with us. Then there was a rule that correspondents couldn’t go into the frontlines unless accompanied by an officer. Maybe that was a good rule. I don’t know. But there were about two dozen of us who felt ourselves in an odd position, as if we were being conducted through our own house.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 9, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
When correspondents first came to the Tunisian front last fall, there were no special facilities for them and every man was on his own. Some got around by hitchhiking on Army vehicles. Some bought French sedans. They wrote wherever we could; sitting in their cars or in some bleak country hotel. They got their copy back to the city by many methods, including the one of walking up to anybody about to get on a plane and saying:

Hey, Joe, would you mind taking this in for me?

Things are different now. The Army Public Relations Office has set up an advanced post well back of the lines. They look after a regular aerial courier service back to headquarters and send out our mail to us. They have a few jeeps to dole out to correspondents, and for a while they had a house where meals were served and correspondents could throw their bedrolls on cots when they came back from the lines. The PRO hopes eventually to acquire tents and tables and cots and a regular kitchen crew, so that it can move right along with the advancing troops, just like a circus. We’ll be covering the war in style.

Jeep from Ford City man

When I was first in Tunisia, I traveled by hanging around some headquarters until I hit somebody who was going my way by truck or jeep, then threw my stuff on and set out. A little later, I was lucky enough to get a jeep. The man responsible for that was Capt. Ed Atkins, of Ford City, Pennsylvania, who controlled a certain motor pool. He and Lt. Max Kuehnert did so much for me in the way of little things all through the campaign that it will take me 10 years to repay them.

Only two or three of us had jeeps at first, so we always tried to double up. I shared mine for some time with Don Coe of the United Press. Will Lang of Time-LIFE and I made a couple of trips together. And some of the time I wandered around alone, although that isn’t wise anymore, for you need one man to watch the rear for strafing planes.

On the jeep, we carried everything we had – bedroll, typewriter, musette bag, tent. We also carried extra cans of gasoline, a camouflage net, and a box of canned rations, in case we got stuck somewhere away from an Army kitchen.

We knew where all the gasoline dumps were throughout the 100 miles or so of American front. We’d simply drive up to one, tell the soldier in charge we needed some gas, get out our pliers, tap a couple of five-gallon cans, and pour it in. He’d say, “Who’s this to be charged to?" And we’d tell him any outfit number that popped into our heads, or even some mythical unit such as “the Sahara Task Force.” He’d seldom put it down anyway, for obviously it was Army gas going into an Army vehicle.

Stalled British trucker stands popeyed

I remember once a stalled British truck flagged us down, and the kid driver said he was out of gas. Much to his astonishment, we said we’d give him five gallons. And when he asked if we had a form for him to sign and we said, “Hell no, just pour it in,” his amazement was complete. These crazy Americans, they make things so simple.

Correspondents on the prowl sleep wherever they stop. Usually, you can find a bare tile floor in some old farmhouse being used as a headquarters. We’ve discovered that after a few nights on the floor or on the ground it doesn’t seem hard. I believe I’m about the only correspondent who frequently pitches his pup tent. Some correspondents carry folding camp cots, but I don’t because I haven’t got one, and secondly, it’s much warmer sleeping right on the ground.

Our main difficulty has been in keeping warm. I have my bedroll cover and two blankets under me, then three blankets over me, plus mackinaw and sometimes the canvas top to the jeep. You always sleep with your clothes on, taking off only your mackinaw and shoes.

The greatest mistake I made in this campaign was in not bringing a sleeping bag and rubber mattress from home. They’re just as light to carry as a bedroll, twice as comfortable, and three times as warm. I think about half our line officers did bring sleeping bags. But now that spring is here, it isn’t so important.

Just one bath in 5 weeks

Oddly enough, you don’t get up terribly early at the front. Breakfast at a field headquarters usually runs till 8:30 a.m., so you can sleep till around 8. If it’s a semi-permanent headquarters, you eat at tables in a tent. If it’s a field kitchen, you’ve served on trays from the back end of a truck, and you eat standing up.

Most officers manage to wash once a day, but I personally go more on the enlisted man’s psychology and just skip it. Between Dec. 28 and March 1, I had just one bath. When I finally went into the city and had my first bath in five weeks, it was too much for me. I came down with a seven-day cold.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 10, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
The American war correspondents in Tunisia work hard and conscientiously; they get frightened and exhilarated; and frequently they are depressed by the tragedies around them. They’re doing a job which most of them find extremely interesting, but they all wish it were over.

The most picturesque of the correspondents is Jack Thompson of The Chicago Tribune. He is a husky fellow, and has grown a terrific black beard. He looks ferocious, but he is gentle-mannered and considerate, and always willing to help a newcomer get onto the ropes. He has been in Tunisia from the beginning, and has spent more time here than any other correspondent.

The only other bewhiskered member of the corps is Eliot Elisofon, photographer for LIFE. He has grown a Continental goatee which makes him look like a magician. Elisofon is afraid, like the rest of us, yet he makes himself go right up into the teeth of danger. I’ve never known a more intense and enthusiastic worker than Elisofon.

I like practically all the correspondents, but one of my favorites is Graham Hovey of International News Service. I like him because he is quiet and undemanding, and because he is sensitive to the beauties as well as the horrors of war.

Hovey had an unusual baptism. He had been in the headquarters office for some time, pestering his boss to get to the front. Finally, he went, and on the first day almost got killed.

The very first bomb he ever saw fall, the very first one he ever heard explode, was a 500-pounder that hit within 50 feet of him and killed three men. He and Boots Norgaard of the Associated Press, a veteran at these things, escaped only by the freakish luck of finding a ready-made slit trench just where they stopped. Hovey was shaken by the experience, yet now, after a few weeks he feels that same fascination for the front that I do.

Most of the correspondents keep themselves pretty presentable at the front. I think it is not going too far to say that I am the worst-looking one of the lot.

Correspondents have officer status, you know, and wear regular officers’ uniform without insignia. But in order to keep warm, I dress like a cross between Coxey’s Army and the Ski Patrol. I wear Army coveralls, enlisted men’s mackinaw, knit cap, goggles and overshoes. The only way you can tell me from a private is that I’m too old.

The two oldest correspondents here are Gault MacGowan, of The New York Sun and myself. Gault is in his late 40s, and was wounded in the last war. He always has his pad and pencil out, and is a fiend for writing down names and addresses of New York soldiers. The other day we saw him right up among the men who were firing, writing down names. It was almost like a cartoon. He told one soldier:

I do on the battlefield what Winchell does at home.

Bill White of The New York Herald-Tribune was in Tunisia for two months before returning to the city. When he came back, he was tanned completely black, was so pure and healthy from rough living that he wouldn’t even smoke a cigarette, and insisted on sleeping on the hotel-room floor in his bedroll the first night.

Bill Stoneman of The Chicago Daily News was the first correspondent to be wounded in Tunisia. He was furious about it. In the first place, he got shot in his behind; secondly, when the surgeons dug out the bullet, it turned out to be only .22 caliber. Bill felt that the whole thing was ignominious.

Stoneman is one of the few professional foreign correspondents here. He has been in Europe for 15 years, knows all the capitals intimately, has a colossal diplomatic acquaintance throughout Europe, and speaks many languages, including some Russian. While convalescing from his wound, he decided to learn Arabic. So, he called up an agency and told them to send him an instructor, preferably a luscious Arab girl. But just as Bill expected, the teacher turns out to be a bedraggled male pedagogue who works him to death. The last I heard he was rapidly packing his bags for the front again.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 12, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
Down in central Tunisia, in the village of Fériana, there is a little country hotel where four or five of us correspondents used to drop in now and then for a day or two to sleep under a roof and eat some of Papa’s meals.

The hotel is run by a French family. Papa is big and mustached, and always wears a cap and a dirty apron and always has a burned-up cigarette in his mouth. He takes an instant like or dislike to newcomers, and the ones he doesn’t like get short shrift.

Mama is plain and gray and sweet, and although she can’t speak a word of English, paradoxically she can understand it. She never does a bit of the cooking; that is Papa’s job and privilege. She sits at the kitchen table and sews and knits.

There are three boys in the vicinity of 15, all handsome and superior boys. Roget is our favorite, because he studied English in his school and we can converse with him. The three boys serve the meals. They also act as chambermaids.

Once when I was trying to write in the hotel, Roget came in to clean up. Immediately he called his two brothers, and for half an hour they all stood in a circle looking over my shoulder admiringly – not at the magic of my wonderful words, but at how fast my fingers worked the keyboard.

The hotel had one very dirty toilet, and in the rooms were merely washbowls and kerosene lamps. French soldiers slept on straw in the little lobby. There were always at least 10 people in the kitchen, including a few neighbors, some stray French privates helping wash the dishes, and a French officer or two trying to learn English from Roget.

Jack could do no wrong

Jack Thompson of The Chicago Tribune found this place way back in November. As far as I know, it was the only operating hotel in all of central Tunisia. Jack kept two rooms there all winter, and they were like a headquarters. Jack himself might not be there one night a week, but if any other correspondents blew in, we’d just walk in and settle down as though the rooms belonged to us.

Jack could do no wrong in Papa’s eyes. Papa was so prejudiced in Jack’s favor that he would never serve breakfast to anybody else until Jack came down for his.

Frank Kluckhohn of The New York Times used to get up early, hoping to get breakfast and get started out; and after a while he’d come back upstairs alternately cussing and laughing at the incongruity of being refused breakfast until Monsieur Thompson also got ready to eat.

Papa just sort of tolerated me. He didn’t detest me as he did some of the others; it was just that I hardly existed in his eyes. But I was one of Mama’s favorites. She always got out her private homemade confiture (in this case, marvelous peach jam) for me when I ate alone with the family in the kitchen.

I remember one morning when four of us correspondents were eating breakfast in the kitchen, and Mama got out the jam and made it quite plain it was for me alone. But Frank Kluckhohn didn’t follow her reasoning, and helped himself to some of my jam. Fortunately, he didn’t see the daggers Mama was looking at him. Poor Frank, he had a tough time eating in that place.

Then the Germans came

The little hotel was a peaceful place for many weeks. Not much of the American Army knew about it. We correspondents and a few fliers from a near-by airdrome, who came in once a week for dinner, were the only Americans around.

And then all of a sudden, everything changed. The battle lines drew near. Within an hour one day the village was deluged with American troops. Trucks with Negro drivers filled the olive grove across the street. The grove on the other side was pitted deep with sudden slit trenches and great holes where tanks and half-tracks were nearly hidden in the ground.

Soldiers flowed in and out of the hotel like water. The Germans were coming nearer. A couple of us correspondents sped in from another front, packed a few things into our jeep, and Papa and Mama and the boys stood waving at us as we dashed off again.

The next thing we knew, Fériana was gone. The end came suddenly, and Papa and Mama and the boys had to get out in the middle of the night. Some of us saw them next day – nearly 30 miles away – trudging uphill behind a mule cart with a few of their things on it.

The German tide that washed over Fériana was brief, but the town was shelled by both sides. Maybe Papa and Mama and the boys will have things fixed up again by the time we get back there. No doubt the Germans cleaned out Papa’s meager wine cellar. I don’t care about that, but I hope they didn’t find Mama’s peach jam.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 13, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
Maj. Gen. Terry Allen is one of my favorite people. Partly because he doesn’t give a damn for hell nor high water; partly because he’s more colorful than most; and partly because he’s the only general outside the Air Forces I can call by his first name.

If there’s one thing in the world Allen lives and breathes for, it’s to fight. He was all shot up in the last war, and he seems not the least averse to getting shot up again. This is no intellectual war with him. He hates Germans and Italians like vermin, and his pattern for victory is simple – just wade in and murder the hell out of the lowdown, good-for-nothing so-and-so’s. Allen’s speech is picturesque. No writer can fully capture him on paper, because his talk is so wonderfully profane it can’t be put down in black and white.

Allen was shot through the jaws in the last war. This wound causes him to make an odd hissing noise when he is intense. He breathes by sucking the air in between his teeth, and it sounds like a leak in a tire. This reverse hissing will doubtless confuse the Japs when he gets around to that part of the world.

It was Gen. Allen’s outfit that took Oran, in the original landings. Then it was necessary to hold his troops there, and for a couple of months Allen not-so-quietly went nuts sitting back in an Oran olive grove watching the war from a distance.

‘Can anybody get in this war?’

Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he went to the High Command and said:

Is this a private war, or can anybody get in?

At least that’s the way the legend goes, and it sounds like him. At any rate, Allen got in, and now he’s as happy as a lark.

After they came to the front, I drove over to visit him. When I finally found Allen, he said:

Don’t bother to pitch your tent. You sleep in my tent tonight.

An invitation from a general was an order, so I carried my bedroll up to the general’s tent and looked in. There was one bedroll on the ground. That took up half the tent. The other half was occupied by a five-gallon tin of water sitting on some rocks over a gasoline flame on the ground, and by a rough, unpainted folding table.

I couldn’t figure out where he expected me to sleep. But it was all solved that evening by the general’s orderly, who simply carried out the water can, smothered the fire with sand, moved the table, and unrolled my bedroll on the ground beside the general’s.

As far as I know, Terry Allen is the only general in Tunisia who sleeps on the ground. All the others carry folding cots. Gen. Allen won’t allow any of his staff to sleep on a cot. He said if everybody in his headquarters had a cot it would take several extra trucks to carry them, and he can use the trucks to better purpose. He likes to fight rough anyway.

General wears cavalry boots

Allen is an old cavalryman. He still wears his high-laced cavalry boots when he dresses up. He married an El Paso girl, and calls El Paso home. He carries pictures of his wife and 15-year-old son in a leather pocket case, and is tremendously proud of them.

He has been known as one of the best polo players in the Army. He hasn’t any horse to ride now, but he keeps in shape by doing a three-mile after-breakfast jog on foot through the hills several times a week. He smokes incessantly.

I went out on a shooting expedition that night with some of Allen’s men, and it was midnight when I got back. He had left the light on for me, and the wind was making the tent heave and groan, but Allen was sleeping like a child.

Dirt blew in and filtered over us. My bedroll was right over where the fire had been, and I slept warmly for the first time in weeks. Toughly trained sentries with itchy fingers stood at the front and rear of our tent. Boy, did I feel well protected!

At 7 next morning one of the sentries came in and awakened Gen. Allen. He grunted and went back to sleep. Five minutes later, another sentry came in and knelt over him and kept saying, “General, sir, general, sir,” till Allen responded and started getting up.

I had slept in all my clothes; the general in his long underwear. We were both covered with sifted dirt from the windstorm. It took us about 30 seconds to dress, and then we just walked out of the tent and went to breakfast, without washing or anything.

That’s how life is for one general at the front.

[dan.harnden]

Marvelous writing. Leaves you wanting more.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 14, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
The central part of Tunisia is a sandy-colored, desert-like country. It is made up of mountain ridges with wide, flat, fertile valleys between them. The ridges have fir trees high up, but the valleys are without vegetation except for the crops and a knee-high growth of bush. Consequently, the valleys are poor places for hiding big motorized troop concentrations. About the only thing that affords any natural cover is an olive grove or a cactus patch.

Some of these cactus patches grow wild, and others are planted in rows just like any other crop. The plants are shoulder-high, and have big thick leaves of the prickly-pear type. They have thorns an inch long, vicious and cruel. The cactus is grown for camel feed, and camels actually come up and eat them off the bush. How they do it I don’t know, for the stickers are as hard as steel needles, and they don’t bend. But the camels don’t seem to mind.

Danger in cactus patch

Every soldier over here has learned to tread cautiously through a cactus patch, for these stickers can cause you grave trouble. They frequently start bad infections. I saw a soldier one day being taken to the rear with his arm swollen so badly he had to carry it on a sort of rack. And I myself had a small experience with them. I’d noticed for several days that my right knee was so sore I could hardly put any weight on it when I got down to roll up my bedroll. But I supposed I’d just bruised it on a rock, and didn’t pay much attention.

It wasn’t until I returned to the city and took off my clothes for the first time in weeks that I saw an angry-looking lump on my knee. So, like a country boy, I squeezed it and out popped a cactus thorn half an inch long.

In a day or two the soreness was gone. Anybody else would probably have lost his leg, but you see I lead such a pure life that my blood was clear and strong and noble and all that stuff, period.

Goes to battle with shovel

The soldiers all laughed when I started out to battle armed only with a shovel. That does seem a ridiculous instrument to carry to the wars, but I’m a pretty smart guy, you know, and I’d figured the thing all out ahead of time. My calculations were verified when I got up front where the boys actually know what the zing of a bullet sounds like. None of them laughed. Because, brother, when you’re up there where the dive bombers play, digging becomes instinctive.

I’ve heard of dive-bombings so severe that soldiers lying in shallow trenches would try to dig deeper with their fingernails. And I know of many a man who is alive today because he happened to be near an empty foxhole some previous warrior had dug. Long live the shovel!

There seems to be a sort of unwritten law that full colonels and generals always act nonchalant when in danger. Most colonels and generals don’t wear their steel helmets in battle. I thought for a while it was an unbreakable tradition, but I have seen a few colonels and generals wearing them.

I lost my steel helmet

I don’t wear mine, incidentally. But that’s not because I’m nonchalant. It’s because I got rattled and forgot and left it lying under as truck one night when we were retreating.

When you drive over a Tunisian road the morning after a big night convoy has passed, you see occasional trucks and tanks that have run off the road in the blackout.

I remember one morning counting two trucks and three tanks hanging over the edge in a distance of 45 miles. Nothing seemed to be damaged, and wreckers would soon have them out. One tank had run off a concrete bridge and dropped about 10 feet into the dry steam-bed below.

It was just after daylight, and we stopped to see if anybody were hurt. Everything was still and quiet around the tank. And then we saw, about 50 feet away, the whole crew stretched out on the sand, covered with their blankets, sound asleep while the morning sun beamed down on them. As peaceful a picture as you ever saw.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 15, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
You run onto some unusual people in the American Army. For instance, I know a corporal who can recite the Versailles Treaty by heart, and who can quote from memory every important military treaty since the Franco-Prussian War. This man is Cpl. William Nikolin, of 1105 West New York St., Indianapolis. You call him Nick. He is 28 and has a gold tooth. He has lived 14 years in America and 14 years in Europe, and he can speak in almost every language there is in Europe. Although born in America, he speaks English with quite an accent.

Nick studied journalism at Butler College and Columbia University. Then he went on to Europe, and took an M.A. degree in political history at Belgrade University. For six years he worked on various European newspapers. He knows the Balkans intimately, and his manner of thinking is really more Balkan than American.

Nick saw the war ahead

In 1939, Nick returned to America, because he saw the war coming and he wanted no part of it. He was disillusioned and sad over the state of things. He resolved he would never return to Europe under any circumstances. He turned his back. And then he was drafted, and here he is headed right back for the old stamping grounds. But he is glad now. He’s an excellent soldier, and outstandingly conscientious. He will be of great value when our armies get onto the Continent. But Nick sees further than that. He wants to be a part of the peace building. He wants to get his discharge over here, and stay on to cover the peace conferences. He feels himself especially equipped for the job.

Nick, in addition to his other duties, is a sort of personal assistant for two officers – Maj. Charles Miller of Detroit and Capt. Tony Lumpkin of Mexico, Missouri. Nick looks after them as though they were babies. They have a tent buried in the ground with a kerosene stove in it, and every night just before bedtime they heat up some beans and make some chocolate and call Nick in, and then they all sit there and eat and drink and discuss the world.

We correspondents have many little memories of the Central Valley in Tunisia; little things we never had time to write. I remember one night, for instance, when four of us were eating supper with Col. Edson Raff, the famous paratroop leader, and his young adjutant. Lt. Jack Pogue. It was my first meeting with Raff, and I felt some awe of him, but he was so attentive that I soon got over that.

Ernie meets a neighbor

Raff and Pogue were both dressed in the paratroop uniform and carried their Tommy guns with them. Tanks clanked and rumbled by constantly outside the door, shaking the ground and the building itself, and making the candles dance on the table.

Lt. Pogue and I got to talking, and it turned out he lives just over the hill from me in New Mexico. He’s from Estancia, in the valley behind Albuquerque, only about 40 miles away. So there in the Tunisian desert we did a couple of hours’ reminiscing about our own special desert back home.

The very first time I ever pitched my pup tent I had to have help, of course, for I didn’t even know how to button the thing together. My assistant on that first venture was Sgt. Walter Hickey, of 401 76th St., Brooklyn. He was a clerk before the war. Sgt. Hickey and I picked out a fairly level spot on a sloping mountainside and put up the tent under a fir tree, after pulling out a few shrubs to make a clear space. When we had the tent finished and staked down, I noticed the ground was crawling with ants. We had unwittingly opened up an enormous ant nest in the loose soil when we pulled up the shrubs. So, we had to take the whole tent down and pitch it under another tree.

By now, I can put up my tent all by myself, in the dark, with a strong wind blowing and both hands tied behind my back. I can too.

Horses outpull truck

You see little things in wartime that make you laugh, they are so incongruous.

I remember the forenoon our troops were evacuating Sbeitla. The roads were lined with our convoys. Mixed in with them was the French artillery, withdrawing along with us.

The sight that struck me so funny – a caterpillar tractor was laboring up a slight grade in the gravel road, pulling a French 75 behind it. And as we watched, here came another 75, pulled by six straining horses, and sped right around the motorized gun as though it were standing still.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 16, 1943)

Roving Reporter

In Tunisia –
Little items – Petty’s drawing of his famous girl stretched out on her stomach musing about something is tacked up in hundreds of soldiers’ billets in North Africa.

The German photographic plane that covers every important sector in Tunisia daily is known in the trade as “Photo Freddie” …On days when more than one comes over, the second is called “Freddie Junior.” …Once in a while you can make out the plane as it flashes in the sun, but usually it’s so high you can’t see it at all, you just hear it…

I heard a funny story about a road-strafing the other day. Three soldiers were riding in a jeep when strafers came diving. The soldier in the back seat was riding backwards so he could keep a watch to the rear. The jeep took off across the fields, with the strafers after it. The rear guard kept calling “Right” or “Left” to indicate which way the driver should turn to dodge. But finally, it got too hot for the boys up front, and they just bailed out and left the jeep running. That left our hero alone, riding backwards in a driverless jeep, yelling “Right-Left” to nobody, while the bullets splattered around. Finally, he looked around to see why the driver wasn’t obeying. Then he too hit the dust.

Two smother in sand

In some parts of Tunisia, the sand is soft yellow and moist, and it’s almost a pleasure to dig slit trenches in it, the digging is so easy. But it does save its drawbacks.

I know of two cases where soldiers were sleeping in narrow slit trenches and the loose sand slid in on them without waking them. They were smothered to death.

Our tank warfare has shown two things – that many of our tanks catch fire when badly hit, and that, although the fire is all over the place in a few seconds, the majority of the crews are able to get out safely and struggle back to camp.

In wartime living, you relearn little things you had forgotten years ago. Such things, for example, ass lighting a cigarette simply by putting it over the chimney of a coal-oil lamp and puffing.

Italians are Eyeties, wops, guineas

One day I was up on a mountainside with troops holding a forward outpost. They were in such an inaccessible and perilous place that they were getting just one meal a day, and artillery fire was whining over their heads constantly. Yet, right in the midst of that, a truck arrived at the foot of the mountain, and here came soldiers lugging up sacks of mail. The boys were getting their letters right on the firing line.

You hardly ever hear Italian soldiers referred to as Italians. It’s either “Eyeties” or “Wops” or “Guineas.” In one case, the reason for abandoning “Italian” was a concrete one. In this case, a mountain lookout reported that “three Italians” were coming up the hill. The officer who heard it thought he said “three battalions,” and ordered a heavy barrage dropped in that area.

When the lookout called back to ask why such heavy shooting, the misunderstanding was straightened out. From then on, all men in that outfit were instructed to refer to Italians as “Guineas.”

Bomb blast vulcanizes bills

I saw the tragic remnants of a jeep that got a direct hit from a 500-pound German bomb. Three soldiers in it were blown to disintegration. Nothing was found of them to bury. But searchers did find scattered coins, knives, and bits of clothing. One soldier had a pocket Bible, and about half of its sheets were found.

Another had a large pad of currency – bills just folded over once. And the reason I’m telling this story – those bills were blown together with such force that it was impossible to get them apart. We couldn’t even strip off one bill with a pocketknife. The blast had vulcanized them together without tearing any holes in them.

[adamsano]

Although some of Ernie’s descriptions may seem insensitive to families back home, he is giving a first-hand account of war and how the men and women cope under these conditions.

[dan.harnden]

I think Ernie was loved precisely because of those descriptions. People were desperate for knowing how their sons were coping and he let them know.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 17, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
Little cameos – Late one night I was bedding down as a transient visitor in a frontline American hospital. Just before bedtime, a soldier came past and introduced himself and asked if I would like some fruit-cake. I didn’t especially care for any fruitcake but up here you never refuse anything so I went along with him and ate three pieces of fruitcake and half a pound of chocolate candy before going to bed.

The soldier was Cpl. Lester Gray, of 2443 Farwell Ave., Chicago. He has been married two years. The fruitcake we ate was made by his wife. It was, incidentally, the first one she ever made. Her success with it apparently went to her head, for Cpl. Gray said five more like it were on the way.

Gray is a laboratory technician with the hospital. Before the war, he was a salesman for a wholesale jewelry concern. Ever since he has been in Africa, he has kept a steady flow of letters going back to every one of his old customers. How’s that for salesmanship?

Army dog fears gunfire

One day in an olive grove where some troops were camped, I saw a beautiful German shepherd dog nosing around. It turned out that the soldiers had brought her all the way from America. Soldiers over here picked up literally thousands and thousands of dogs as pets, but this is the first one I’ve heard of that came all the way from home.

She originally belonged to Sgt. Edward Moody of Minneapolis, who was killed in an accident. After his death, the whole battery adopted her as a mascot. She has been on two long convoy trips, has served in Ireland and England, and been in several battles on the Tunisian front. She had eight pups on the way down from England.

Her name is “Lady.” She was only three weeks old when the soldiers got her, so her entire life has been spent with men in uniform. She is suspicious of civilians, and a person in civilian clothes cannot make up to her. Despite her martial career, “Lady” is afraid of gunfire. She gets the trembles when the big guns begin to thunder. Eventually they hope she’ll get over it and go charging right along with them into battle.

Another night, I was eating dinner with eight Air Force officers in the little hotel at Fériana. At the only other table in the dining room were a bunch of French officers. We ate and made a lot of noise, and they ate and made a lot of noise, and neither table paid any attention to the other.

Then when we were about through, some of the Americans started singing. I will have to say they were probably the worst singers I’d ever heard. They were so bad they finally just sort of bogged down, and we all laughed at ourselves in confusion.

The French can fight and sing

Seeing that, the French raised their glasses to us in toast – a tribute for a good try, I suppose. Then we toasted back, and they stood up, and we stood up, and we toasted each other back and forth till everybody was embarrassed. And finally, the French relieved the tension by saying they’d like to sing a song for us. And could they sing! It was like a professional glee club. Three of them were wounded veterans of the last war, covered with medals. One looked like an escapee from Devil’s Island. One was a chaplain, and he was just a youth but had a ferocious long beard and a bass voice like Singin’ Sam of the radio.

Those Frenchmen sang for an hour. Not ordinary songs that you’d heard before, but fighting regimental songs and catchy tunes with an almost jungle-like rhythm. The coal-oil lamp threw shadows on their faces, and it was truly an Old-World scene out of a book.

The touching part was just at the last, when the officer who looked like Devil’s Island came over and told us what the dinner was for. Their outfit had gone into the lines two weeks before. Today they had come out. Tonight those who survived were having a reunion, eating and drinking and singing for the ones who did not come back. Twenty-five had gone into the lines. Eleven were at the dinner.

[adamsano]

I see that you live in Cincinnati. That’s my home town.

[dan.harnden]

Yes sir. Lived within 100 miles of Cincinnati for 53 years or so

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 19, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
The men who interrogate captured prisoners have interesting jobs. In addition to being linguists, they have to be good psychologists to wheedle information out of reluctant German soldiers.

They never have any trouble getting the Italians to talk, but unfortunately, the Italians don’t know anything. According to interrogators, they are a pretty sorry lot. Some didn’t even know they were fighting against Americans till they were captured.

One batch I know of thought we would execute them, and were pathetically happy when they discovered they would live. The first thing they usually ask is to be allowed to write their families that they’re all right, and, of course, permission is granted.

Most of them keep diaries. All of them, Italians and Germans like, seem to have plenty of money in their pockets. The Italians all carry Catholic medals and crosses, and are grateful on learning they can keep these. Nearly everybody has a picture of a wife or sweetheart or children, and these, too, they are allowed to keep.

A few of the captured Germans and Italians up north had on thin clothing, and no underwear at all. But most of them are warmly dressed and well-equipped. The first thing our soldiers take away from a German is his mess kit. It is superior in quality and design to ours; is made of steel, easy to keep clean, more compact, and even has a can opener with it.

The Italians have a shovel that is quite a gadget. It is small, sort of like a fireplace coal shovel. The shovel part is swiveled onto the handle, so you can turn it down, lock it, and the shovel then becomes a pick.

Captured Nazis can’t be trusted

Italian enlisted men wear as lapel insignia a tin star, exactly like the stars an American general wears. I know at least two generals now wearing these Italian stars on their shoulders. And I heard of a private who pinned one on his cap unthinkingly, and went around for an hour wondering why everybody in the Army was suddenly saluting him.

The Italians are almost unanimously happy to be captured, but you can never tell what a German’s attitude will be. Some are friendly and glad to be out of it. Others are arrogant. They tell of one wounded German who came to in the operating room of one of our hospitals, and instantly came off the table swinging with both fists. Nurses say the wounded Germans are usually sullen and autocratic.

There is one conscripted German regiment made up of people rejected earlier in the war – men with one eye or one finger missing, older people, men from occupied countries. But mostly, the Germans and Italians are in excellent physical condition.

The Germans get paid every 10 days, and nearly half their money is automatically sent home. They are usually short on cigarettes. Often, you’ll see Americans going past a batch of newly-captured prisoners and stopping to give them cigarettes.

Stories differ as to how the Axis treats our prisoners. Some who have escaped say the Italians are worse than the Germans. I know Americans who say they were treated courteously and considerately, and others who say they’ll commit suicide before they’ll be captured again. I guess it depends on the individual who gets his hands on you.

Villainous Pyle makes bum guess

During the February fighting in Tunisia, I unwittingly played the most villainous role it has ever been my misfortune to perform.

Will Lang of Time-LIFE and I had been traveling together. I left him way up in Ousseltia Valley, and drove back to the southern front. On the way, I ducked into a certain headquarters where mail is occasionally sent out to us from the city.

There I found about 15 letters and three cablegrams for Will and Eliot Elisofon, the LIFE photographer. So, I stuck them in my pocket, then headed for Sbeitla.

On the way, I stopped in Fériana to pick up some stuff we had left at the little hotel there. Lang and Elisofon kept a room at this hotel, to which they returned occasionally.

At first, I thought I’d better keep their mail with me. And then I thought no, there’ll be hard fighting around Sbeitla, and if anything should happen to me, their mail will be gone forever. So, I finally dumped it all on their beds in Fériana.

And I’ll be damned if the Germans didn’t push through that very night and take Fériana, and along with it the Lang and Elisofon mail. I could have cried for remorse. And, to top it off, I hadn’t even read their cablegrams, so couldn’t tell them what they said.

But two guys have never made it easier for a culprit then they did for me. They just laughed it off as if they were accustomed to getting 100 letters a day, and what difference did another 15 make?

[1nt17cs152.ritvik]

@NormanStewart

He married a French girl, and they have three handsome children, the youngest of whom he has never seen although the child is now nearly three.

How hasn’t he seen his youngest child? Did he just abandon the child?

[dan.harnden]

Maybe with the war he hadn’t been home in three years?

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 20, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Tunisia –
American tent hospitals in the battle area seem to be favorite hangouts for correspondents. The presence of American nurses is alleged to have nothing whatever to do with it.

At one hospital, three correspondents just moved in and made it their headquarters for a couple of weeks. They’d roam the country in their jeeps during the day, then return to the hospital at night just as though it were a hotel.

There are two favorite hospitals where I drop in now and then for a meal or a night. One is an evacuation hospital – the same one where the other boys stay – which is always kept some 80 miles or more back of the fighting. That is the one staffed largely from Roosevelt Hospital in New York. The other is a mobile surgical hospital, which is usually only about an hour’s drive back of the fighting. This is the hospital that landed at Arzew on the day of the North African occupation, and whose nurses were the first ashore in North Africa.

Just like soldiers at front

This gang is kept pretty much on the move. They don’t dare be too close to the lines, and yet they can’t be very far away. So as the war swings back and forth, they swing with it. The nurses of this outfit are the most veteran of any in Africa.

There are nearly 60 of them, and they’re living just like the soldiers at the front. They have run out of nearly everything feminine. They wear heavy issue shoes, and even men’s GI underwear. Most of the time, they wear Army coveralls instead of dresses.

I asked them what to put in the column that they’d like sent from home, and here is what they want – cleansing creams and tissues, fountain pens, shampoos and underwear. That’s all they ask. They don’t want slips, for they don’t wear them.

These girls can really take it. They eat out of mess kits when they’re on the move. They do their own washing. They stand regular duty hours all the time, and in emergencies they work without thought of the hours.

During battles, they are swamped. Then between battles they have little to do, for a frontline hospital must always be kept pretty free of patients to make room for a sudden influx. A surgical hospital seldom keeps a patient more than three days.

Life is a social blank

During these lax periods, the nurses fill in their time by rolling bandages, sewing sheets and generally getting everything ready for the next storm.

They had a miserably blank social life. There is absolutely no town life in central Tunisia, even if they could get to a town. Occasionally an officer will take them for a jeep ride, but usually they’re not even permitted to walk up and down the road. They just work, and sleep, and sit, and write letters. War is no fun for them.

They make $186 a month, and pay $21 of it for mess. There’s nothing to buy over here, so nearly all of them send money home.

Like the soldiers, they have learned what a valuable implement the steel helmet is. They use it as a foot bath, as a wastebasket, as a dirty-clothes hamper, to carry water in, as a cooking utensil, as a chair, as a candle-holder, as a rain-hat, and for all sorts of other emergencies.

Being nurses and accustomed to physical misery, they have not been shocked or upset by the badly wounded men they care for. The thing that has impressed them most is the way the wounded men act. They say they’ve worked with wounded men lying knee-deep outside the operating rooms, and never does one whimper or complain. They say it’s remarkable.

The girls sleep on cots, under Army blankets. Very few have sleeping bags. They use outdoor toilets. At one place, they’ve rigged up canvas walls for taking sunbaths.

They wouldn’t go home if they could

Mary Ann Sullivan, of Boston, whom I wrote about last winter, is in this outfit. Some of the other girls I know are Mildred Keelin, of 929 Ellison Ave., Louisville, Kentucky; Amy Nichols, of Blythe, Georgia; Mary Francis of Waynesville, North Carolina; Eva Sacks, of 1821 North 33rd St., Philadelphia; Kate Rodgers, of 2932 Wroxton Ave., Houston, Texas.

Like the soldiers, they think and talk constantly of home, and would like to be home. Yet it’s just as Amy Nichols says – she wouldn’t go home if they told her she could. All the others feel the same way, practically 100%.

They’re terrifically proud of having been the first nurses to land in Africa, and of being continually the closest ones to the fighting lines, and they intend to stay. They are actually in little danger, except from deliberate or accidental bombing. They haven’t had any yet.