The Pittsburgh Press (April 29, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Northern Tunisia – (by wireless)
One night at Kairouan, three of us correspondents, finding the newly-taken town filled wirth newly-arrived British and American troops, just drove out of town into the country and camped for the night. We didn’t put up a tent. We just slept in the open.
The mosquitoes were fierce, and we draped netting over our hands. We were in a sort of big ditch right alongside an Arab graveyard. But neither the graves nor the mosquitoes bothered us that night, for we were tired and windburned, and before we knew it, morning had come and a hot sun was beaming down into our squinting eyes.
And what should those sleepy eyes behold but two Arab boys standing right over our bedrolls, holding out eggs. It was practically like a New Yorker cartoon. For all I know they may have been standing there all night.
At any rate, they had come to the right place, for we were definitely in the market for eggs. They wouldn’t sell for money, so we dug into our larger box and got four eggs in trade for three little cellophane packets of hard candy. Then we started all over again and got four more eggs for a pack of cigarettes.
Americans run everything
We thought it a good trade, but found later that the trading ratio which the Germans had set up ahead of us was one cigarette for one egg. We Americans have to ruin everything, of course, but as one tough-looking soldier said:
If I want to give $50 for an egg it’s my business and my $50. And from all I’ve seen of Arabs an extra franc or two ain’t gonna hurt them any.
All this happened before wee had got out of our bedrolls. But the youthful traders didn’t leave. As we were putting on our pants, each boy whisked a shoe-shining box from under his burnoose and went after our shoes. Then when we started a fire and were feeding it with sticks, one of the boys got down and blew on the flame to make it burn better. It was easy to see that we had acquired a couple of body servants.
The boys were herding about two dozen goats in some nearby center. Now and then, one of them would run over and chase the goats back nearer to our camp. We called one boy Mohammed and the other Abdullah, which seemed to tickle them. They were good-natured, happy boys of about 15.
One of them tried on my goggles. He seemed to imagine that he looked wonderful in them, and giggled and made poses. He didn’t know the goggles were upside down. Also, he didn’t know that I was hoping fervently his eyes weren’t as diseased as they looked.
Paid in worthless money
The boys told us in French that the Germans had made them work at an airport, opening gas cans and doing genera flunky work. They said the Germans paid them 20 francs a day, which is above the local scale, but it turned out they were German-printed francs, which of course are now absolutely worthless.
Our self-appointed helpers hunted sticks for us, poured water out of our big can and helped us wash our mess kits. They kept blowing in the fire, they cleaned up all the scraps around our bivouac, they lifted our heavy bedrolls into the jeep for us, and just as we were ready to leave, they gave our shoes a final brushing.
We paid them with three cigarettes and two sticks of gum each, and they were delighted.
Wants goat food
When we were ready to go, we shook hands all around, au-revoired, smiled and saluted. And then one of the boys asked apologetically if we could give them one more thing maybe. We asked what it was they wanted. You’d never guess. He wanted an empty tin can for his goats to chew on. We gave him one.
Hadji is the Arab word used in place of “Sir” before the name of anybody who has journeyed to Mecca and become holy. Seven journeys to Kairouan equal one to Mecca, so we correspondents now go around calling each other Hadji, since most of us have crossed the city line more than seven times.
Another word we’ve adopted is djebel. It’s Arabic for hill or mountain. On the maps every knob you see is Djebel This or Djebel That. So, we also call each other Djebel, and if you think that’s silly, well, we have to have something to laugh at.