The Pittsburgh Press (December 22, 1942)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
WITH U.S. FORCES IN ALGERIA – Our ship had two tunnels, or smokestacks. The forward one was a dummy – empty inside. About three feet from its top a steel platform had been built. It was reached by a steel ladder. The Army kept a lieutenant and three enlisted men up there all the time, on lookout with binoculars for it was indeed a grandstand seat.
I used to go up every afternoon and suit with the lookouts. The sun was bright, the funnel sides cut off the wind, they had deck chairs, and it was really like a few square feet of Miami Beach.
We could get a perfect view of our zigzagging maneuvers. Once we saw three rainbows at once, one of them making a horseshoe right over our ship.
Lt. Winfield Channing, who had charge of an anti-aircraft battery, usually had the afternoon watch up there, and we’d chat for hours about his job before the war, and of our chances for the future, and of what we’d do when it was over.
They had an empty barrel up there, to which was tied about 200 feet of heavy rope, for escape in case the ship was hit. The enlisted men on lookout had made bets among themselves as to which side of the ship the first torpedo would hit. Fortunately, nobody collected. We called our little post “The Funnel Club.”
Gunners on duty at all times
We correspondents and a few Army officers made up a pool on when we would arrive at our destination. The various arrival dates we chose covered more than a week. The pool of about $8 was finally won by Bill Lang, of TIME and LIFE.
American gunners manned all the ship’s guns, but they never had to fire a serious shot.
Once underway, two canteens were opened for the troops. One sold cigarettes, chocolates and so forth; the other, called a “west canteen,” sold hot tea. There was a constant long queue at each one. Soldiers often had to stand in line for three hours.
My special hangout down below was in a section where I ran onto a bunch of soldiers from New Mexico. One of them was Sgt. Cheedle Caviness, a nephew of Senator Hatch. Sgt. Cheedle has grown a blond mustache and goatee, and looks like a duke.
There was no trouble at all among the troops during the voyage. But we did have a couple of small “incidents” in the officers’ section of the ship. One officer, monkeying with his revolver in his cabin, “didn’t know it was loaded” and shot a nice hole through the wardrobe, thoughtfully missing his cabinmates. Another officer was arrested for taking pictures of the convoy out of his porthole.
No movies shown during trip
No movies were shown during the trip. The troop commander issued orders that electric razors were not to be used, for fear the enemy could pick up our position from the current, but we found out later this wasn’t necessary.
We got radio news broadcasts twice a day from BBC. It was rumored they would be discontinued after we were a couple of days at sea, but they weren’t. They were piped over the ship by loudspeakers so the troops could hear the news.
Chaplains aboard ship said that church attendance among the troops went up noticeably after we sailed, and continued to rise as we approached submarine waters.
The nurses and doctors aboard were mainly from Roosevelt Hospital in New York. There were two other detachments of nurses on other ships in the convoy, we learned later. The nurses teamed up with the officers, played cards, walked the decks, sat in the lounge. That moonlight was pretty enchanting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some romances got started.
As time wore on, acquaintanceships grew broader and broader, just as they do on a peacetime cruise. The days were purposeless and without duties, yet they seemed to speed by. For many of us the trip was a grand rest. Toward the end some of us even hated to have it over – we felt the sad sense of parting from new friends and of returning to old toils, and we were reluctant. But the war doesn’t humor such whims.