Although I will miss Ernie’s columns from the European War Theater, I recognize his strong desire to break from the war to rest and recuperate. He has been a valuable part of the war effort and I expect to hear from him again in the future. Thank You, Ernie.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 10, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
This is the first of a new series of columns by Ernie Pyle, in which the famous war reporter tells his impressions and experiences at home. Mr. Pyle is about to push off on a new assignment to the war zones.
They say that when people lie in hospitals for two or three months, they have to learn to walk all over again when they finally get out of bed.
That’s the way I feel about column-writing after being away from it for nearly eight weeks. I feel as though I should take a correspondence course in how to start the first sentence. Even more so, I feel how nice it would be never to write a column again at all.
It really is hard to start back to the old grind. It’s hard to regiment yourself to daily, consecutive toil. It’s hard to force yourself away from home, with all its close ties and warm routines. But in these times, a fellow can’t just sit forever.
So, there’ll be a few “home” columns, and then there may be some days’ lapse while this pale chronicler again is being wafted across the oceans. And then, if all goes well, the old war columns will start once more.
Ernie dreads going back again
It is one of our popular heroic myths that anybody who comes back from the combat zone begins to itch after a few weeks, and finally gets so homesick for the front he can hardly stand it. In the movies, he starts back before his furlough is up.
Pap! And also tish! I’ve never hated to do anything as badly in my life as I hate to go back to the front. I dread it, and I’m afraid of it. But what can a guy do? I know millions of others who are reluctant, too, and they can’t even get home. So here we go.
The decision, it’s true, is my own. Nobody is forcing me to go back. Probably that’s the reason I feel so glum about it. Going back is all my own fault. I could kick myself.
During my stay at home, I’ve met a good many men back from overseas, men who really had been through the mill. I could sense in them the beginning of restlessness. Some even admitted they would like to go back overseas. But – and this is my point – I never met a single one who would ever go back into actual combat again if he could help it.
What returned soldiers actually do feel, after a while, is a sort of guilt at being here so comfortable and nice, when the guys you went through so much with are still over there taking it. You feel like a deserter and a heel – not so much to the war effort, but to your friends who are still over there freezing and getting shot at.
Few are really touched here
People at home all ask you about the same questions:
-
When will the war end? One guess is as good as another, if not better.
-
What has become of the 7th Army? I don’t know, and couldn’t tell if I did know.
-
What do you think about the home front? Honestly, it’s hard for me to say. I don’t truly feel that we’re very much at war here at home, but for some reason I can’t seem to get very exercised about it.
In home spirit, we aren’t in the war as deeply as some other countries, but I don’t see how we could be. With us so big and scattered, and the enemy so far away, the war is bound to seem academic to most of us. Only those who have received the dreaded telegram from the War Department feel it really.
Materially, it seems to me we hardly have been touched by war here at home. Okay, it’s hard to buy liquor, and women’s socks are awful, and you have to ride the bus, but so what? Our little annoying restrictions and shortages are so puny compared to those of other countries. We are still so rich and so well-fed and so plentiful.
I can’t see that it’s anybody’s fault, or even that it’s shameful, especially. We haven’t had anything yet, on a national scale, to burn and crucify us into anything greater than we were to begin with.
To most of us, the war doesn’t really hurt. The war is only a sense of oppression that hangs above our hearts. It’s an insecurity that we sense, not a pain that we feel. And I don’t see how it could be otherwise, unless we were fighting on our own doorsteps, in our own cities.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 11, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
This is the second in a short series of columns by Ernie Pyle about his impressions and experiences while enjoying a brief rest at home. Mr. Pyle soon will be back on the wat fronts to resume his epic reporting about our fighting men.
This is certainly an immodest kind of column for a fellow to be writing, but then of course I am an immodest fellow.
Which is just a way of introducing our thesis for today, entitled “What Does It Feel Like to Be a Celebrity?” The subject being, of all people, me in person!
I wouldn’t be writing like this except that people – all the way from Washington bellhops clear up to my own Aunt Mary on the farm – tell me that I am now a celebrity. So, let’s assume for purposes of no-argument that it’s true, and get on with our business of “what does it feel like to be one?”
Well, it feels pretty good. It has its ups and its downs. Every now and then you get sort of panicky. Once in a while you get resentful. Most of the time you just feel too rushed and a little bewildered, and kinda pleased.
I suppose the main thing is that 99 out of 100 of us are born with a certain amount of vanity, or pride, or egotism or whatever you want to call it. And when you hit a point where you’re recognized every time you step out, you can’t help but feel short of sparkly inside.
Furthermore, you get a lot of things by being “known” that you’d never get otherwise. I mean stores will get “shortage” articles from under the counter and sell them to you; railroad and airline men will give you a reservation after turning other people away; the plumber and the typewriter repairman, who aren’t accepting calls before a week from Saturday, will come immediately when you phone. All that is wonderful.
‘Blooey’ goes your private life
On the deeper side, I think anybody who tries as hard as I do to write a good column would be dishonest if he said the compliments of thousands of people meant nothing to him. The compliments of just one person mean a lot to me. When you finally get enough compliments to make you a celebrity, you feel hugely rewarded.
Celebrity, though, has its drawbacks. Your private life vanishes. The most sincere plaudits of people, when multiplied and piled too high, can become something obsessing you, claiming your life away from you.
Since returning to America two months ago, we have had hundreds and hundreds of offers, requests, demands, and even time-taking favors bestowed upon us. We have declined nearly everything proposed, yet the mere act of saying “No,” if you have to say it enough times, eventually consumes much of your time and most of your mind.
Under normal conditions, a man gives most of his time to his job and his family. That’s the way it should be.
But when the bolt of fame strikes, a guy better be mighty careful or he’s going to wind up giving most of his time to his new career of being a celebrity, and practically no time at all to his family and real friends. And the job which gave him prominence in the first place will be done merely at odd moments, with his mind on something else.
Ernie kids his famous self
I want to avoid that, and believe I can, but I think it takes a little practice. I’m not concerned that my head will be turned by too much attention; but I am concerned that lack of experience may make me fumble considerably before I learn the right method of achieving a balanced life again. Apparently, you just have to enlarge yourself inside, to make room for a little more than you’ve bargained for. It’s a harder nut to crack than you might think.
Actually, we have a lot of fun, my friends and me, kidding ourselves about this new fame.
For example, the day our book came out. The New York Times Book Review Section gave it the entire front page, and a wonderful review it was, too. So, after reading it through elatedly a couple of times, I thumbed through the rest of the section, and then said to my friend Lee Miller:
Why, the dirty so-and-so’s, they’ve also reviewed some other people’s books in this issue!
I think that on the whole I’m fairly safe from the perils of celebrity. For one thing, it came a little too late. I’m 43, and it doesn’t matter so much anymore.
My life has been pretty full and pretty pleasant; I’ve got most everything I ever wanted, but I’ve had some blows, too; I’ve contributed a little and received a great deal. Through the years, I did my job the best I could, and this is what happened. I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t ask for this, I could have done without it, but now that it’s here, I’m pretty sure I can take it.
As I said in the beginning, this is all kind of immodest. But it’s all kind of true, too.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 12, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle, before he again takes off for the war fronts, is writing a short series of columns on what he has seen, heard and felt at home. This is the third.
Clinton, Indiana –
My father is in the hospital for the first time in his life. He celebrated his 76th birthday there the other day.
He has been in the hospital for six weeks now, and has a month to go. He enjoys it more than anything that’s happened to him in years.
My father stumbled and fell at the foot of some steps in the basement of Rhoades’ store in Dana, the last of September. He didn’t break anything, but he was so badly bruised and wrenched that he couldn’t move, and Mr. Lunger had to carry him upstairs in his arms. Mr. Lunger said my dad felt just like a feather, for he’s a little fellow like me.
They put him in an ambulance and brought him to the Clinton Hospital, eight miles from our home near Dana. He couldn’t move at all for several days, he was so sore.
Then he got to having nightmares and staggering around in his room at night, so the surgeon put a splint on his hip to keep him in bed.
Splint becomes ‘flint’
It’s merely a safety precaution, for the doc says he might break his already weakened hipbone just be wandering around the room. My dad gets mixed up and calls the splint a “flint” when he tells about it.
The nurses all adore my dad, because he is mild and undemanding and extremely grateful for everything they do. As a consequence, they do more for him than anybody else. They joke with him and poke fun at him, and he likes that.
The night my dad had his night-long nightmare was quite an occasion. Actually, he was delirious, for part of the time he thought he was in Rockville, 25 miles away, and part o the time out in a tent in the hospital grounds (he must have been reading too many of my war stories, for there isn’t any tent in the hospital grounds).
At any rate, it was while he was “in the tent” that he had to get up. He got out of bed and couldn’t find the door to the bathroom. He got completely lost there in the dark. Then he felt the foot of the bed, and since he figured he was in a tent with no floor but the ground, what difference did it make? The nurses caught him at that, and put him back in bed. I don’t believe I’ve heard my father get as tickled in 40 years as when he recounts the story.
After a while, the nurses found him wandering around the room again., they asked him what he thought he was doing. He said why, he was just trying to find his way back to the hospital. He thought he was up at Dana, and it was time for him to be getting back.
After that, they put sideboards on his bed, so he couldn’t get out. But he thought some strange men in the room were after him, and in trying to get away he worked his legs out through the spaces in the sideboard, and got caught and all tangled up, and was hanging practically upside down when the nurses found him. After that, they put the “flint” on his hip, to keep him in bed for sure. He hasn’t had any nightmares since.
Keeps score on new babies
My father really seems to relish being in the hospital. He has a nice corner room where he can look out at the front lawn and see people come in. His general health is good, and he looks fine. The nurses give him a bath every morning, and one of them shaves him.
He says the hospital food is wonderful. They’ve really converted him down here. He has never eaten butter nor drunk coffee in his life; now he’s consuming both and loving it. He has about 10 visitors a day, and he keeps his door open all the time for fear he’ll miss something going on out in the hall.
The Clinton Hospital, like hospitals all over the county I’m told, is producing more babies than at any time in history. As one of the nurses said:
The Army is sure shelling out the babies.
My dad is quite struck with this wholesale addition to the population, and every morning asks the nurses the score for the night. He and the nurses make jokes about it. My dad is scared to death they’ll get mixed up and take him to the delivery room someday.
My dad is neither blind nor deaf, but he is a little of each. His eyes are so bad people have to read his letters to him, and you have to speak rather loud to him. Which leads to a little story.
The night I arrived, several members of our family met the train and we drove right to the hospital. The folks hung back so I could go ahead into the room alone.
So, I went in and my father held out his hand, and we talked together for about a minute, and then the rest of them came in. He greeted them all, and then asked if they had been to the depot yet. They said yes, and then my dad said:
Did Ernest come?
So, they all howled and said:
Who do you think you’ve been talking to the last few minutes?
He said:
Why, I thought it was Clyde Howard.
Clyde is the barber up at Dana. My dad was very chagrined.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 13, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
While preparing to return to the wear zones for a new series of columns about U.S. fighting men, Ernie Pyle has written several columns about his visit home. This is the fourth.
Dana, Indiana –
My Aunt Mary Bales stays alone on the farm while my father is in the hospital. She goes to bed about 9, but doesn’t sleep very well because she’s scared.
She doesn’t know what she’s scared of, unless it’s just the dark, and strange noises outdoors. I know how it is, for I was always afraid of darkness on the farm too.
Betty the dog sleeps on the front porch, and Aunt Mary depends on her to keep the “buggers” away. That’s an old Midwest term I’d completely forgotten. It means “spooks.”
Betty is the dog we got for my mother when she was alive. My mother called her Snooky but Aunt Mary called her Betty. Now that my mother is gone, it has become permanently Betty. It has never sounded quite right to me.
The dog is older now, and not quite so frisky. But every now and then she’ll get a spell, and if you keep yelling at her to urge her on, she’ll circle the house about 10 times at a dead run, as though she were chasing a rabbit.
We haven’t any livestock left except chickens, so the work isn’t hard for my Aunt Mary. But she never stops for a second, and never runs out of something to do. In a couple of years, she’ll be 80. You’d have a hard time making anybody believe it.
‘Only’ the labor lost
About three years ago, my folks built an outside chimney on the west side of the house, so they could put an oil stove in the west room. But something was wrong with it, and the stove never worked very well. On days of west winds, the fire would blow clear out.
They decided it was because the chimney was hollow clear to the ground, thus making a suction or something. So, a few days before I got home, Aunt Mary decided to fix it.
She spent an entire day carrying bucketfuls of dirt and small rocks in from the gravel pit, then getting up on a chair and pouring the stuff with a little shovel down through the stovepipe hole. It took from early morning till suppertime to get the hollow chimney filled up almost level with the flue.
We haven’t tried the stove since then, but as Aunt Mary says:
Maybe it won’t work, but it didn’t work the other way either, so all I could lose was a day’s work.
We have a new baseburner in the front room. Rather it isn’t new, but a second-hand one a neighbor sold us. It’s a great big thing, but it doesn’t seem to heat as well as our old one did. They say that’s the way when you get awfully used to something. And we were certainly used to that old baseburner. I forget whether my Aunt Mary said we’d had it for 24 years or 40 years. Anyhow the grate inside it finally burned out, and since you can’t buy a new grate nowadays, we had to drum up a second-hand stove.
I’m crazy about baseburners. They heat so evenly, and never go out. And as somebody said, there’s nothing warmer or cozier than to come home at night and see the soft gentle glow of the baseburner shining through the front window out of the dark room.
Postcard from ‘somebody good’
I think I’ve told you in years past about my father’s weekly postcard from San Diego. It started four or five years ago, before my mother died. Once a week there’d come a postcard from San Diego addressed to “Ernie Pyle’s Mother.” It never said anything except some little cheery greeting, but it never failed to come. We didn’t know who sent them.
Then after my mother died in the spring of 1941, the cards came addressed to “Ernie Pyle’s Father.” They’d still coming, one every week. One arrived during my visit. We must have more than 200 of them by now. We still don’t know who sends them. Just somebody good, that’s all we know.
My Aunt Mary is an emotional woman, and sentimental too, and very expressive. She is terribly proud of the fame that has come to this column, and tells me so in every letter. And she often says:
Oh, if your mother could only be here to see this success.
But my Aunt Mary is wrong. My mother wouldn’t care much about all this. She would only care whether her son was genuine, and modest, and kind. It she thought he was that, nothing in the world could make her half as proud. On our visits home before she died, she hardly ever spoke of our travels or work or the outside world at all.
And my father feels pretty much the same way. It’s the little things that count. I do think he’s sort of pleased at the way things have gone, but he never mentions it.
I brought him one of my books when I came past, and a little ivory kangaroo I’d bought in Khartoum. They’re both on the table beside his hospital bed. I notice he shows visitors the kangaroo first, and says proudly:
See what Ernest brought me from Egypt.
The book is dedicated to my father on the flyleaf, but he hasn’t noticed it yet, and I haven’t said anything to him about it.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 15, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences at home, prior to showing off for another assignment to a war zone.
Dana, Indiana –
Mrs. Howard Goforth, one of our farm neighbors down the road, is recovering from an impact with a corncrib.
The other day she and Howard drove over to Nellie Hendricks’ after something. Howard doesn’t drive. Mrs. Goforth has been doing all the driving for 20 years and never had an accident.
But this day she swung around in the Hendricks’ barn lot, and then something unexplainable happened, and she couldn’t get the car stopped, and rammed head-on into the corncrib.
It smashed the front end of the car, shattered the windshield, broke the steering wheel into three pieces against Mrs. Goforth’s chest, and almost cut one of Howard’s fingers off.
And, incidentally, it moved the big corncrib nine inches off its concrete foundation.
Farmers do have the finniest auto accidents. Things like barns and corncribs and wagons are always getting in the way. And if nothing’s in the way, they have accidents anyhow.
Nary a tree nor a bush
I remember years ago when Bill Satterlee was trying to switch from a Model-T to a brand-new gearshift Ford. He took it out in a 20-acre open pasture with not a tree nor a bush in it, and without ever hitting a thing he wrecked that new Ford so badly they couldn’t even trade it in. It seems he just kept turning it over and over.
This country drivin’ ain’t safe.
They’re telling a joke around Dana in which my name figures.
Last spring, The Indianapolis Times had a big statewide collection going on, to raise money to send cigarettes to our troops throughout the world. The fund was promoted in my name, since I was overseas writing about the boys.
Newsdealers and drugstores all over the state put up collection boxes. In the drugstore at Dana, they had a mason jar on the glass counter, with a penciled pasteboard sign saying “Ernie Pyle’s Cigarette Fund.”
One day a woman came in, looked at it in astonishment for a long time, and finally said to the druggist:
Why, I always supposed he had enough money to buy his own cigarettes.
Iva Jordan, who was my first schoolteacher nearly 40 years ago, had a stroke while I was out west. Berthas and Iva Jordan live all alone on the farm, just a mile from us across the fields, but two miles if you go around the road.
Will Jordan, Bertha’s husband, died a long time ago, and Bertha and Iva have done it alone on the farm ever since then.
Iva’s left side is paralyzed. She can just wiggle the fingers on her hand, that’s all. They have a hospital bed for her in the west room, and she is quite comfortable.
They’ll manage somehow
All these years Bertha and Iva had a hired hand or two, but now they are in a predicament, because everybody has gone to the Army and they can’t get a man anywhere. Bertha has to do everything herself, as well as look after Iva. They don’t know how they’ll get through the winter, but I suppose they’ll manage somehow.
The stroke didn’t affect Iva’s face, nor her speech. She says maybe it would be a good thing if it had, for she just talks everybody to death. She says twice visitors have just got up and left after about ten minutes with her, because she wouldn’t let them get a word in. But, as she says, what’s the use of having visitors if they won’t listen to you?
I can’t see that the war has affected our farming neighborhood very much at all, except that none of the young men are left.
Farmers set groaning boards almost the way they used to, and I don’t know of any serious shortage of anything. In the country stores you can still find things that have long been extinct in the city. The crops are good, and nearly everybody is getting things fixed up around the farm and getting a little ahead.
Nobody from our neighborhood has been killed in action yet, although two have died in camp of ordinary illness. In a vacant lot on Main Street, where a store burned down nearly 30 years ago and nothing was ever built in its place, they have a huge signboard bearing and names of everybody in our township who is serving with the Armed Forces.
Oddly enough, my name is on it, although technically I’m not in the Armed Forces at all. But I’m proud that they waived the technicality and included me. And oddly enough again, although I’m a civilian and also older than all the others, I guess I’ve seen more action so far than anyone else on the list.
Here at home, I see the veterans of the last war, most of them my contemporaries, and for some strange reason I feel more easy and at home with the boys of this war than my old cronies.
I suppose that’s because some mysterious fate has merely delayed for a year or two the arrival of my inevitable rheumatics. But I carry my liniment all the time anyhow, just in case. Nobody’s pulling any of this youth-stuff wool over my eyes.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 16, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences and impressions at home while taking a rest from his arduous assignment in the war zones. He is about to shove off again for the battlefronts.
Washington –
Miss Malvina Thompson, who is Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal secretary, called up at 3:30 and said could I come over at 5 and have tea with Mrs. Roosevelt. Being a man of few words, I said, “Sure.”
I did add, however, that the only coat I had was an old gray one with the elbows out, and I mean out. Miss Thompson said they didn’t care, if I didn’t.
So, I washed my face and at 4:40 put on my Army mackinaw and walked around Lafayette Park for 20 minutes to get up my courage, and then plunged into the White House.
A butler took my coat, and an usher stood waiting to escort me into the waiting room. I shook hands with him out of excitement, which I suppose I shouldn’t have done.
I sat in a small red velvet room on the ground floor. Down the hall I could hear Mrs. Roosevelt laughing and talking with people, and then she was at my door, with the usher introducing us.
Mrs. Roosevelt is very, very happy-like. She said she wanted to see my coat because Miss Thompson had told her I would be ragged. So, I showed her my elbows and said I sure wasn’t fooling. I told her I thought it ridiculous to buy new clothes when I was out of uniform only a few weeks, and she said:
Perfectly ridiculous. I agree with you.
We went up to the second floor in an elevator which she operated herself, and into a pleasant west room which had bookcases and several small desk pictures of the President scattered around.
In a minute Miss Thompson joined us, and Mrs. Roosevelt very flatteringly quoted Miss Thompson as having said this was one tea she wanted to come to. I had supposed there was always a crowd at 5 o’clock tea at the White House, but there were only the three of us.
Ernie’s a little weakish
At first, I was a little weakish, and sweaty around the upper lip, and I kept wiping my face with a handkerchief. But Mrs. Roosevelt kept talking and I didn’t need to think much until after I had calmed down a little.
One of the first things she said was:
I wish you would do for the boys in the South Pacific what you’ve done for those in Africa.
I told her we had considered that as the next trip, but had finally come to the conclusion I had better stick to Europe awhile.
She said well maybe that was right, but she’d learned from her trip that the boys in the Pacific felt neglected. You have such a sense of Mrs. Roosevelt’s sincerity and genuine interest in people that I had to hold onto myself to keep from saying:
Okay, I’ve changed my plans. I’m going to the Pacific.
Mrs. Roosevelt spoke frequently of the President, either as Franklin, Mr. Roosevelt, or the President. I was amazed at the candid way in which she related what she had said to him about something, or what he had said to her.
A good part of her conversation was devoted to her feelings about preparing for the post-war period; how important it was that we have jobs all ready for the soldiers when they come back; how we must make factories more modern and homes more livable.
But the conversation wasn’t all on such matters. She spoke of Quent Reynolds and his broadcast, and of John Steinbeck, whom she has never met but admires.
In turn, I told her a couple of little war stories. Miss Thompson and I both smoked one cigarette after another. Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t smoke, but seemed to keep herself busy at the tea table. After it was over, I had the impression she had been pouring tea the whole hour, yet actually we only had one cup around.
Splutters into his tea
Finally, we got off onto column writing, and how long it takes each of us. Ordinarily Mrs. Roosevelt dictates hers at the end of the day, in about half an hour., I told her it took me half a day to write a column, and she said:
Yes, but you write a much better column than I do!
Since it is bad taste to dispute the opinion of the First Lady, I just spluttered into my tea.
I’d been worried about how I was to know when to leave. A couple of times I uncrossed my legs in small tentative rising gestures, but neither time did Mrs. Roosevelt or Miss Thompson respond to the cue, so I figured it was still all right.
Finally, I realized it was 10 minutes till 6, so I got up and said I must let them get to their other appointments. So, they got up, and Miss Thompson said goodbye, and Mrs. Roosevelt took me back down in the elevator.
She said this was the same elevator the Teddy Roosevelt kids used to ride their ponies up and down in, and that you could still see the hoof scars on it, and indeed it was very old and scuffed up.
We shook hands in the lobby, and I left with the feeling that I had been talking to a woman who is unique, who is remarkable, and who is all good. As a mutual friend said, you have a hard time to keep from loving her.
The colored butler held my old Army mackinaw, opened the door, and said a friendly goodbye. At the front gate, one of the policemen asked how soon I was going back overseas. After that, I walked off across Lafayette Park alone, in the chill dusk air, feeling light as a feather.
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 17, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences and impressions at home while taking a rest from his arduous assignment in the war zones. He is about to shove off again for the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
You don’t seem to feel the war so very much here in Albuquerque. There are plenty of reasons you should feel it; but I think maybe the bigness of the West, and the stoicism of the Indians, and the magnificence of the sky – somehow, it’s all so big it can sort of absorb tragedy, and tears, and sorrow.
Few communities have been harder hit by the war than Albuquerque. I mean really hit – in the heart. Nearly 400 Albuquerque boys vanished on Bataan. More than 1,300 from throughout this sparsely-populated state were lost with the Philippines.
News of the Albuquerque boys is scarce. Official death notices have been received on 113 of them. More than 300 are still listed as “missing.” Unquestionably many of the remainder are dead by now, from disease and starvation in the Jap prison camps.
The parents of these 1,300 boys feel that they were martyred but it’s too late to do anything about that now, so they don’t make an issue of it.
Form society to aid captives
Instead, they have formed an association, to do what they can – which isn’t much. It is called the Bataan Relief Organization. Their sole purpose is to try to get little relief shipments to their suffering children in the Jap camps.
It would, of course, please the families of this suffering group if our High Command were to direct the mass of American might immediately at the Philippines and at Japan’s heart. It is only human nature that they should feel that way.
Yet they realize the war is broader and greater than their own grief, so they do not attempt to lobby the War Department in any way. They do send an occasional delegate to Washington, but it’s to arrange for relief shipments to their boys, and nothing else.
The Spanish-American people of one community alone recently collected $38 in pennies, nickels and dimes to help send the organization’s president, Dr. V. H. Spensley, to Washington.
Around three-fourths of the 1,300 lost men are of Spanish or Indian blood. Many families have two sons gone with Bataan. The man who laid the brickwork for our house is among them. So is the boy called “Lightning” who used to deliver our groceries. Everywhere you go, you notice the inroads Bataan made upon Albuquerque.
The biggest shipment sent to the boys so far went on the Gripsholm in September. The first shipment of relief packages, sent more than a year ago, reached the prison camps in January, and unquestionably saved many lives.
The last shipment on the Gripsholm cost $27 a box. The contents were meticulously chosen. From $8 to $12 worth of every package was made up of vitamin and salt tablets. Each box also included 250 malted-milk tablets.
In addition to that went candy, antiseptic pencils, underwear, socks, sweaters, shoestrings, chewing gum and razors (they bought up every razor in Albuquerque). Everything that came in glass or tin cans was repacked. The state police helped pick up the packages from all over the state. At the last minute, some packages were specially flown to New York by TWA to catch the Gripsholm.
War bond goal doubled
The Relief Organization holds meetings, gives dances, and is very active. In January, it fostered a statewide “MacArthur Day.” It conducted a one-week war bond and stamp drive, with a quota of $300,000, and raised over $600,000.
The government gave it the right to name a Flying Fortress, so in July the Spirit of Bataan was christened at the Albuquerque Air Base.
The Bataan Relief Organization lists as its purpose:
To obtain immediate relief for all American soldiers held as Japanese prisoners of war, their release as quickly as possible, and their safe delivery home.
And as one of the officers adds:
…trying desperately to keep the heroic deeds of these almost forgotten heroes kindled in the hearts of their countrymen.
My old set in Albuquerque has ceased to exist. It wasn’t a set of young bucks either, but of mature, some of them middle-aged, men. The fun we used to have playing croquet, bowling, shooting at tin cans, and sometimes just going downtown and raising Cain – it will all have to wait for years now before it can ever be resumed. For there’s nobody around anymore.
Earl Mount, the big-hearted, hard-bitten contractor, is in the Aleutians; Arthur McCollum, always sad because he never got overseas in the last war, has made it in this one; Barney Livingstone, the newspaperman, is serving the Navy in Washington; Doc Connor has been freed from delivering babies and has gone into the Navy. There were five of us – and all five of us are gone. But when we all get back – Albuquerque, look out!
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Did someone say bowling?
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (November 18, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is writing a short series of columns on his experiences and impressions at home while taking a rest from his arduous assignment in the war zones. He is about to shove off again for the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
During a part of my vacation here in Albuquerque my old friend Paige Cavanaugh came over from Inglewood, California, and spent his vacation.
Cavanaugh is a farm boy from Salem, Indiana, who was on the Mexican border when he was 16, was in France throughout the last war, somehow made his way through Indiana University in the early ‘20s, and then went to California, where he has been fretting about the weather for the last two decades.
Cavanaugh says it took him two years to get from private to PFC in the last war, and he’s afraid he couldn’t equal such a meteoric rise in this one, so he’s decided to sit it out.
Cavanaugh and I both like to work (at certain times and at certain things). So, while he was here, we mowed the lawn twice, spread fertilizer and iron sulphate on it, cleaned and adjusted all the nozzles on the sprinkler system, poisoned several an-tholes, split and stacked in the shed a ton of fireplace wood, and washed the dishes every day.
In addition to that Cavanaugh all alone spaded up every foot of ground of the big south lot, just in order to get the stickers turned under so the dog could run around without getting them in her feet.
‘Wanton destruction’ begins
When all that was done, we went to work on the woodshed, which is the catchall. Every house has a catchall, in some form or other. The woodshed was so stacked with junk you could hardly get the door open. I said:
I’ll fix that. We will use the principle of wanton destruction. We will pillage and we will burn.
So, Cavanaugh dug a great hole in the backyard. You could have put half a jeep in it. And then we began carrying stuff out of the woodshed and throwing it in that hole. When it was full, we set a match to it.
All afternoon we carried stuff out of the woodshed and stacked onto the fire. People up in the Jemez Mountains thought we were Indians, trying to signal a message. I don’t know what our neighbors thought, and don’t want to know.
But one thing on our destruction list stumped us. That was a big old-fashioned radio that weighed about 60 pounds and hadn’t played a note for years.
I was going to burn it, but Cavanaugh said no, it was too good to destroy, let’s give it to somebody. So, we looked up several radio repair shops, and started out.
I said:
I’ll bet we have trouble. People will think there’s some catch to giving a radio away, and will be suspicious.
And I was right. I went into a radio shop and explained the circumstances. I said:
We haven’t got room for it at our house. It’s old, but it’s big and has lots of parts in it you could use. There’s no catch to it. We just want to give it away.
The woman behind the counter gave me the old don’t-you-try-to-cheat-me-young-man look and said condescendingly:
Well, bring it in, we’ll look at it.
So, Cavanaugh lugged the huge thing in, almost breaking his back. The woman gave him the cold eye, and never so much as said thank you.
After we left, we got mad. As the afternoon wore on, we got madder. I said:
That guy will spend $5 fixing that thing up, and sell it for $75.
Cavanaugh said:
Sure he will. And they didn’t even say thank you. Let’s go and take it away from them.
Stuck with it again
And by jimmy we did. We just went back and said we’d changed our minds, and lugged the thing back to the car. Now we were stuck with it again.
On the way home we stopped to see our friend Sister Margaret Jane, who is Mother Superior at St. Joseph’s Hospital. We told her what we’d done, and Sister almost died laughing at our audacity. Then she said:
Well, if you don’t know what to do with it, give it to me. One of the workmen can fix it up, and we can sure use it around here.
So, we lugged it into the ambulance entrance of the hospital, heaved a great sigh of relief, and went on home. After a while the phone rang. It was Sister Margaret Jane. She was laughing so hard she could barely talk.
We asked:
What’s the matter?
She said:
Why, we’ve just plugged the radio in and it started right off playing. There wasn’t anything the matter with it at all!
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The Pittsburgh Press (November 19, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In a short series of columns, Ernie Pyle is describing his experiences on the home front, before taking up soon another assignment to the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
When I get back to the front, nobody less than a brigadier general had better try to high-hat me. Not that anybody ever did, but I’m just issuing a warning.
For I am a colonel myself. Not just a colonel once; not just a colonel twice; but three times a colonel. Yep – a New Mexico colonel. Aide-de-camp on the staff of the Governor.
Governor Clyde Tingley started it, several years ago. Then along came Governor Johnny Miles, and he kept up the tradition by making me a colonel again. And now the newest Governor – Jack Dempsey – seeing no way out, has had to follow suit.
Personally, I like the idea. Maybe I wouldn’t like it if I weren’t a colonel, but since I am a colonel, I like it. You get special license plates saying “Staff Officer,” and the State Police leave you pretty much alone unless you kill somebody, and furthermore, the Governor takes you to lunch.
I was just getting onto the hang of how to use our ration points when my vacation was over, and now I have to leave. Rationing doesn’t seem to me so bad, once you get onto it.
Tea strainers and death
There are lots of little things you can’t buy, but honestly, I don’t see that anybody is in much pain from it, for example, it’s impossible to buy any kind of tea strainer in Albuquerque except a plastic one which soon goes to pieces. But then did you ever hear of anybody dying for lack of a tea strainer?
Our groceryman says that the point system, instead of running him out of business as he feared, has actually doubled his fruit and vegetable business.
The reason is that people buy fresh stuff all month and eat or can it, and then at the last of the coupon period, in order not to let coupons go unused, they come in and buy just as much canned stuff as they used to.
Which would seem to indicate that the theory behind rationing has slipped somewhere along the line.
One of the greatest pleasures of my vacation was to have a real auto again. After a year of jeep and truck riding, it was like a suburb of Heaven to get into our Pontiac convertible. I didn’t know whether it was going half the time or not, because you couldn’t hear the engine. And bumps, why, you’d think the country around Albuquerque was all made of velvet.
The car has to go back into storage, for unfortunately That Girl, being poetic rather than mechanical-minded, has never learned to drive. It’s a shame too, because now she either has to strike out across the mesa on foot, like a prospector, or else spend two-thirds of her not-too-lavish wages on taxicabs.
That Girl doesn’t like it
She doesn’t like this business of keeping the home fires burning while everybody else is away. But who does?
It is the ones who stay, like her, that really take the rap. For those behind life is lonely, routine, sometimes seemingly frustrated. But for us who go, new things always appear to be endured, there is excitement, and change, and misery to challenge you. There is so little time for mooning. I am glad that I can go instead of stay – if anybody has to go.
Our little house is still a gem. Now it has some Algerian rugs on the floor, Moroccan hassocks before the fireplace, Congo ivory on the mantle.
We can still see 80 miles from our front window, and the sunsets are still spellbinding. Quail still peck in our front yard. Roaming neighborhood dogs come and visit us. So do children. The postman always has something peasant to say.
We have two cups of hot tea very early in the morning, and we are sitting here drinking it when the first dawn comes over the Sandias. The sun soon warms the desert, and the day grows lazy for us who are home on furlough. Life seems too good here within these few square feet ever to bear going away.
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (November 20, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is describing his impressions of the home front in a short series of columns before shoving off again on assignment to the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
Charlie Binkley is the man who put up our house. He was boss carpenter of the construction crew when we built, here on the edge of the mesa, three years ago.
He is a middle-aged Midwesterner – religious, friendly, deeply conscientious about his work. He still drops in to chat once in a while. He came past one recent Sunday morning.
As he walked across the yard, That Girl said to me:
Oh, I forgot to tell you. Charlie has lost both of his boys since you were here.
We shook hands and I said I was sorry about the boys, Charlie sat down and said yes it was pretty tough, and left an awful void. Your only two children gone within a few months of each other – one from an operation, one in a crash in New Guinea. Charlie said:
The Missus is about to go crazy.
There isn’t any construction anymore, so Charlie works at the air base. He is still kind to people, and drives around dropping in here and there to see the friends who live in the scores of houses he built, checking up on little things they need done, making conversation and trying to keep from being too lonesome and blank.
There’s nothing else to do
Charlie Binkley is able to take his terrible double-blow – just as most of the rest of us would take it – because there’s nothing else you can do but take it.
Out meat-man at Campbell’s grocery for years was “Mr. Mac.” We were good friends and he was always pleasant and helpful. Yet during all those years I never knew what his name actually was.
Then one day while I was at home, the phone rang, and it was “Mr. Mac” on the wire. He said:
I’m in the Navy now, just home on a few days’ furlough. I’d like to come down and swap yarns with you.
Pretty soon he came walking down the street. He is nearly 50. He had on his shipboard working clothes of Navy dungaree and jacket. The little white hat cocked on the back of the head of a middle-aged man made him look odd. His name is Rupert H. McHarney.
He said:
I’m a watertender first class. That seems a funny thing for a butcher to be. But that’s what I was in the last war, and it all came back after a few weeks.
I asked:
How did you come to go in at your age?
He said:
Well, I was in the last war and just figured we started a job that we didn’t get finished. My boy is an ensign in naval aviation, and we were fixed so I could leave. My only worry was how my mother would take it. She’s pretty old and I was afraid she would object. But when I wrote her, she wrote back and said you do whatever you feel you have to do. So, I went in.
“Mr. Mac” has been at sea constantly for a year. He has seen action in the Pacific. He can have a shore job any time, but he likes it at sea, and he takes a certain pride in holding up his end of the work among younger men. He says the only trouble he’s had was a spell of swollen ankles from walking the hard decks.
The young and the old
We’ll be an odd mixture after the war when we come back to Albuquerque: Strange young men who have never been away; strange old men who dashed out and fought at the first alarm.
In Tunisia last winter, I met and wrote about a young lieutenant in the Paratroopers named Jack Pogue. He was adjutant to the famous Col. Edson Raff. He turned out to be a fellow Nex Mexican, from Estancia Valley just over the mountains from Albuquerque.
A few days after I got home, Jack’s mother called up, she said she was teaching school at Moriarty; teaching for the first time in 15 years. She called because she just wanted to talk to somebody who’d seen Jack, even though it had been a long time.
A month went by, and she was in the city and called again, just to tell me she’d had three letters from Jack and that he was fine.
Then that same evening the phone ring again. The person at the other end was sobbing violently. Through the chokes I made out the voice of Mrs. Pogue. I knew what would be coming next, as soon as she could speak. But it was a little different from what I thought.
She sobbed:
I’ve just got the word, and had to call you – Jack’s a German prisoner.
So, I began talking fast. I said:
Well, that’s okay, Mrs. Pogue. That means he’s all right. The Germans are ethical about prisoners. He’s safe, and out of danger now, and that means he’ll come back to you after the war.
The choked answer that came back was startling – and thrilling too.
Yes, but that isn’t what Jack wanted. He wanted to FIGHT!
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (November 22, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is describing his impressions of the home front is a short series of columns before shoving off again on assignment to the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
One of the few souvenirs I brought back from the Mediterranean was a snappy German infantry cap I’d picked up in Sicily. It just happened to fit me perfectly.
So, I took to wearing it when I drove That Girl to work every day at Kirtland Field, the big Army air base here, and thought it might cause some amusement by befuddling the sentries at the gate. But nobody paid any attention to it; in fact, I guess nobody knew what it was. I was disappointed.
That went on for a couple of weeks, and then one evening as I was on the way in, the sentry, instead of smiling and waving me through as usual, said very severely:
Pull over to the side and park, sir.
I protested I’d be late to pick up That Girl, but he repeated his order, and I’ve been around the Army enough to know an order when I hear one. He took my pass, went into the booth, and had a long conversation on the telephone. When he came out, he said, “Come with me, sir.” I knew the sentry and he’d always been friendly, but now he was so official and firm he had me scared stiff.
We started for the provost marshal’s office. I got so weak I could hardly walk. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done, but there was no doubt in my mind that whatever crime I’d committed was plenty bad.
Just getting acquainted
We went into the big provost marshal’s building and were ushered right on through to the provost’s office, in a manner which indicated that my execution was to be immediate. And there sat the provost, laughing fit to kill.
He said:
I understand you’ve been going in and out of here wearing a German cap.
I said:
I sure have, but it took somebody around here a hell of a long time to recognize it.
The provost had authorized my pass originally, but we had never met. This was just his way of getting acquainted.
So, we all laughed, the sentry gave my pass back, a little of my strength returned, and I got back in the car swearing to wear only caps made in America, preferably by Indians, after this.
Provosts are good guys
I like provost marshals. I don’t know whether it’s because they’re usually nice guys, or whether it’s just because it’s a good idea to know them. But I do think I’m friends with the provost of every division and corps I ever served with. And while in Washington I got invited to lunch one day with the chief provost of all provosts – Maj. Gen. Allen Gullion.
I’ve had some nice experiences with provosts. For example, in Tunisia and Sicily there was a regulation that everybody had to wear his steel helmet and leggings at all times.
Now the steel helmet makes me top-heavy, and hurts my neck, and the wind blows through it and I can’t hear, so I never wear mine unless actually under fire. As for the leggings, I can’t stand them except in very cold weather.
Faces fines of $120
Just before the end of Sicily, while I was riding along gaily in a jeep, I was stopped and ticketed three times in one day for not wearing my helmet and leggings. The MP’s ticket you just like traffic cops, and the tickets go through channels to headquarters, and you’re called up and fined. Each count against me called for a $40 fine, which would have socked me $120 for my day’s misdemeanors.
I didn’t think anything about it for a couple of days, and then one evening an Army messenger rode up to our little camp in the woods, handed me an official-looking envelope, and rode off. The envelope was from the provost marshal.
My heart sank. I could hardly bear to open the envelope. Of course, I knew the provost marshal, but you never can tell.
Inside the envelope were the official conviction papers. The charges were typed out, and the MP’s tickets were clipped to it. And then I saw the sentence, and almost fainted with relief. It said:
You are hereby sentenced to recite 10 times a night for the next 30 nights, as follows:
I am a good soldier, and will try to conduct myself as such by wearing my helmet and leggings at all times.
JOHN HURLEY
Major – Provost Marshal
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (November 23, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is describing his impressions of the home front in a short series of columns before shoving off again on assignment to the battlefronts.
Albuquerque, New Mexico –
I know another provost marshal story (or are you tired?). Just after Sicily was all over, we correspondents straggled back into Palermo. On the first night there, correspondent Chris Cunningham and photographer Chuck Corte parked their jeep on the street against regulations, and the MPs impounded it.
They spent all next day trying to get it back. They made innumerable phone calls, but the Military Police would have none of them. The only thing left to do was go plead with the provost marshal himself.
Several officers told them:
You’re just wasting your time. The colonel is a tough egg. You won’t get your jeep back, and he’ll probably throw you out of the office besides.
But they had to be have the jeep, so they decided to brave the colonel in his den. They asked if I would go along, just to bolster up their courage.
So, we marched around to the provost’s office. A long line of Army culprits was standing before the colonel’s desk, and it took about an hour for us to work up to him.
For once I had plenty of courage, as I wasn’t involved in any way, and was merely a spectator, you might say. But Chuck and Chris were having the shakes.
Finally, the colonel looked up at us, as if to say “Well, what, you swine?” And then he got up, came around the desk, and headed straight for me, with his hand out and a big smile on his face. He said:
Hello. Haven’t seen you since we met at Dakar last spring.
We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. “What trouble are you in?” he asked. I said:
Oh, I’m personally innocent of all things, but I’ve taken up associating with criminals.
I introduced the other boys and they explained their mess.
“What’s the number of your keep?” he asked. They told him.
The colonel said:
Sergeant, get this jeep out of the lot and bring it around.
And that was that. The provost in question was Claude O. Burch from Petersburg, Indiana, and it turned out he knew a Petersburg boy I used to go to school with named “Leaky” Harris. He’s been in the Army for 27 years, and he’s a nice guy despite the warnings we had. We all sat down on his desk and talked for 15 minutes.
Still wears G.I. socks
Most of the time here at home I have kept on wearing my heavy gray G.I. socks, because I’ve got used to them and they are comfortable. But they aren’t any bargain to look at.
Which takes us back to a remark a passenger made on the Clipper coming home a couple of months ago. My socks are always tumbled halfway down to my ankles, because they are too high and heavy to wear garters with, so I just let them sprawl.
A naval lieutenant had been sitting for three days across the aisle from me, where he couldn’t help but stare at my socks. Finally, on the third afternoon, when we’d all had time to get friendly and fresh with each other, he said:
You know, I’ve spent the whole trip trying to figure it out. Are those G.I. socks going up, or long underwear coming down?
A friend in the 1st Infantry Division has written to me of a post-war reunion plan that he and some of his fellow officers have. A code has been worked out, so they’ll all know when and where to meet.
Membership in the reunion group will be open only to men who have been officers in the 1st Quartermaster Company of the 1st Infantry Division at any time between March 17, 1942, and the end of the war.
The reunion is to be held on the first 17th of March after the war ends. It is to be at 1700 hours (5:00 p.m.) on the 17th floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, and headquarters will be in Room 1717.
Maj. Harlan W. Hendrick wrote me about it. A few people who have associated with the 1st Division have been invited as guests. I think the best plan would be for me to go up to Room 1717 right now, and just wait for them.
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (November 24, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle is on his way overseas again. His column will be resumed shortly after he arrives at an unannounced point somewhere in the Mediterranean Theater.
Washington –
When I came east from New Mexico, I thought it might be nice to ride the train for a change, since I’d traveled only by auto, air and water for the past six years.
When I went to the depot, I found that getting on a train these days is about as hard as getting on a plane. They had orders not to make any reservations out of Albuquerque for two months. But the agent did have one lone space which he’d been hoarding – it was for a bedroom on the Santa Fe Chief. I decided to take it.
In the first place, I’d never had anything so flossy on a train as a bedroom. That’s really getting classy, and I enjoy a shot of class once in a while to break the monotony. Further, I thought a private bedroom would be just the thing for me to do some writing during the 27-hour journey to Chicago.
The train was fine and the bedroom was fine. Nothing was the railroad’s fault. But the next time I take a trip, I’m going to ride the rods. I’m apparently just not the train-bedroom type. For at night, I couldn’t sleep because of the air-conditioning, and in the daytime, I got so lonesome, all shut in there by myself, that I sat in the club car all the time. On my next splurge of railroad class, I guess I’d better hire a whole car and ask a few friends to come along.
Barber’s last haircut is silent
I had one experience on the train I hadn’t counted on. I got a haircut. Yep, right on the train, while crossing Illinois at 70 miles an hour. The Chief has practically everything.
The barber was a sleight, grayish man of upper middle age. He never said a word during the whole operation. And then just as he finished, he said:
You’ve had the distinction, slight as it is, of getting my last haircut in 55 years of barbering!
Now that is a distinction, so I asked for the details. It seems he was retiring from the railroad forever when we hit Chicago a few minutes later. He was going to give away all his barber tools, keeping only one razor, a hone and a strop for himself.
The barber’s name is William F. Obermeyer, and his home is in Los Angeles. He is 69 and therefore has been barbering since he was 14. He has spent 41 of those 55 years on the railroad, 30 of them with the Santa Fe.
He didn’t seem excited about the impending end of such a long career, but I guess he was, for several other passengers said he told them about it, too.
Oregon man shows appreciation
This next item falls under the “virtue is its own reward” department.
Do you remember last fall in Sicily when I was writing about the 3rd Division’s engineers repairing the Point Calava demolition, and how two soldiers especially worked on and one with more fervor and sincerity than anybody need expect of them?
Well, now comes a letter from a man in Hillsboro, Oregon, wanting to know how he could get in touch with them so he could send them $100 apiece, just out of gratitude.
His letter says:
Such men are not common, and I want to show them that I appreciate such actions and perseverance.
I’m not giving the man’s name, because I haven’t time to write and fine out whether he would object to being named. Then the two boys were Cpls. Gordon Uttach of Merrill, Wisconsin, and Alvin Tolliver of Alamosa, Colorado. I hope the Samaritan finds them, and that they enjoy their $100.
Ernie expresses his thanks
We’ve had some amusing instances of how sketchily people read these days.
While I was on vacation, some of the papers reprinted old columns starting back as far as eight years ago. In one month, those reprint columns roamed all the way from Alaska to Argentina. Each one carried an editor’s note above it, and told what year the column was written.
Yet we’ve had dozens of remarks indicating that readers hadn’t read the editor’s noted at all, and thought I was literally jumping from Dutch Harbor to Pearl Harbor to French Guiana overnight. There was even one advertising agency man in New York who, after reading the reprint of a 1938 Guatemala column, called up Washington and wanted to know how soon I’d be back from Central America.
That’s all for now. There will be a pause in the columns while I get to where I’m going. Take care of yourselves here in America, and thanks for being so nice to me during my two-month respite from war.
1 Like
The Pittsburgh Press (December 4, 1943)
2 Likes
The Pittsburgh Press (December 6, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (Dec. 6, by wireless)
We flew two nights and three days and then we were here. It was my fourth flight across the Atlantic. I’ve got to the point where I imagine I can see tracks in the sky from my previous crossings.
My good luck held out for the whole trip and we never had a single air bump worth mentioning in 8,000 miles. We came in Army planes all the way – some of them big, comfortable stratoliners, some of them workhorse planes with tin bucket seats. Only three of us who left the original airports in the States came clear through together.
At various times during our trip, we had as fellow passengers an American general, a Chinese major, some French fliers, a Yugoslavian and a half-dozen American girls going to far-scattered places to work as government secretaries.
Everybody thought the girls were a show troupe, and at one stop the commanding colonel was going to take them off the plane and make them give a show for his troops.
Initiated by Chinese major
The girls were good travelers and didn’t seem to mind the discomforts of flying all day and all night without rest. As soon as the plane would get off the ground, they would take off their shoes. On one of the big planes, the pilots took them up one by one and gave them the thrill of sitting in the pilot’s seat.
When we crossed the equator, the Chinese major, who was quite a cutup, got a tumbler of water and sprinkled the heads of everybody who never crossed before. Also, first-timers got themselves initiated into the Shortsnorters and started collecting bills from every country.
There were some fantastic collections of Shortsnorter bills along the ferry route. I even saw one with both Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s names on it. People paste their bills together with Scotch tape and as the string gets longer and longer, they make a roll out of it. Last spring, I saw a role in Cairo 35 feet long, but they say Adolph Menjou on a recent African trip build up one to 52 feet. Being a non-hobbyist, I hardly ever ask anybody to sign mine, but on the way over I’m sure I must have signed 500 for other people.
The man from Nebraska
In the five-day trip, we spent three nights on the ground and flew all night on two nights. At one midnight stop, American Army hostesses met us, took us to their quarters for a 15-minute refresher and some Cuba libres. At another stop in the hot tropics we were given breakfast by Maj. Bill Marsh, who asked me to put in the paper that at last I’d met somebody in the Army from Nebraska, and not only from Nebraska but Tekamah, Nebraska.
Believe it or not, Maj. Marsh couldn’t produce any proof there really is such a place, but he did have an honest face.
At another field, the starter on one of our motors broke down so they just wrapped a rope tightly around the propeller hub, tied the loose end of the rope to a jeep and then started the jeep driving away at right angles to the plane thus spinning the motor. Just the old spool-and-string principle on a larger scale. Worked beautifully every time, too.
A day’s quota of bombers
The Army’s vast ferry route to Africa is now beautifully organized. It runs with almost the precision of commercial airlines. Much of the scheduled flying is actually done by airlines on contract to the government while flying along side by side is a great flow of combat planes being taken to the front by their youthful Air Corps crews.
For security reasons, I can’t tell you the route we took or name any of the places along the way although it is already fairly well known to the public. You’d be impressed if you could see the hordes of bombers along the way. At one tropical airdrome, the field was covered by big planes and I asked the commandant why they needed so many bombers stationed there.
He said:
Oh, they’re not stationed here. They just came in this morning and are about ready to leave. That’s just our daily quota going through the front.
He sleeps to Africa
Of my four ocean crossings, this last one was the simplest and quickest. We made the actual overwater hop in a converted bomber and in only 10 hours, crossing against headwinds.
We passengers sat in old-fashioned hard seats like the first airlines used to have. The plane was cold and draughty so we all wrapped up in blankets. The front cabin was stacked full of cargo. There was a small toilet in the tail, right out in the open. Since there were two girls aboard, nobody ever went to the toilet.
It was nighttime when we took off. The dispatcher gave us a lecture on what to do in case we crashed at sea and made us put on Mae West lifejackets which we had to wear for 10 minutes after the takeoff. As soon as the 10 minutes were up, I took off mine and went sound asleep. When I awakened, we were only half an hour from Africa. That’s the way to cross the ocean.
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The Pittsburgh Press (December 7, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (by wireless)
All along the endless American ferry network that stretches in a dozen entwining lines around the globe one main worry obsesses our troops. And that is they feel they are not doing enough to help win the war.
At these posts, so far from enemy action, life becomes pleasantly routine and monotonous, and finally a sense of frustration sets in. the men live in usually excellent permanent quarters. They have good food and all the physical comforts – and nothing ever happens. Gradually they get a feeling of backwash.
They’re ashamed of fighting the war so comfortably and so many thousands of miles from danger. they are worrying about facing the homefolks after the war, and saying they served throughout the war in a place where they bathed every day, slept on mattresses and never missed a meal.
It’s orders, sir!
There’s a saying all along the route of the Air Transport Command which expresses their feelings about being where they are.
The saying goes:
Take down your service flag, mother, your boy is in the ATC.
In one camp the boys felt this so keenly that the editor of the camp newspaper asked me if I could say something to sort of reassure them that they really were contributing their share. And I could say so honestly. Manning these fields that hand our flow of bombers and fighters on toward the combat zone is just as vital as manning a frontline field. Without it, the planes would never get there.
Soldiers are sent; they aren’t asked. It’s not these boys’ choice or fault they happen to be where they are. And as for what the people at home think, I’ve found they don’t really distinguish much between frontline and some remote area. I’ve known soldiers stationed for a year in Morocco, nearly a thousand miles from the fighting, whose parents and friends thought they were bleeding and dying.
A quick and sure cure
Just so long as you’re overseas the folks at home give you all the credit. Somebody has to man these remote outposts, and it’s just the fall of the cards that brought some soldiers there instead of into the frontlines. I see nothing shameful about living well as long as you’re not depriving somebody else. I see no virtue in suffering unless it helps somebody else.
Now and then you get a groucher who complains bitterly about the place he is, how tough life is there and how he’s like to be back home.
One officer along the way said when he got a fellow like that, he just assigned him a job unloading hospital planes bringing wounded back from Africa, and the fellow was soon cured.
Other boys themselves usually shut up a groucher pretty quickly for it is their consensus that fighting monotony and sometimes malaria is still better than fighting bullets and bombs. And that although they’d rather be at the front, they’re actually mighty lucky to be where they are and should be grateful even though a little ashamed.
The mere fact that this worry and sense of shame is so universal throughout the ferry fields seems to be unarguable proof that the average American soldier is still an alright guy.
A heritage of the war
Actually, in many parts of the world where our troops are stationed, malaria is almost as great an enemy as the Germans or Japs. The wounded will not be the only aftermath of the war.
Scores of thousands of our men will return home to be sick for years from disease picked up despite all medical precautions in these steaming, filthy corners of the globe.
On this trip we came into one field in the American tropics at the tail end of a malaria scourge. For some reason it has been much worse this fall than the previous year. Fifty-five percent of the personnel had been down with malaria. Tropical Africa is swarming with medical sanitary specialists sent over from America to see it doesn’t happen again next year.
They’d rather speed peace
On the Central African coast, soldiers who have been overseas a year are now getting 10-day furloughs. They are flown to rest camps in the north. It isn’t so much that they need rest as a change from the monotony. The rest camps are lovely places, but dull.
What the average American soldier wants on leave is female companionship and a little bottled stimulation, both of which are very limited in these parts. I’ve heard lots of soldiers overseas say they would rather not have a furlough or go to a rest camp if by not going they could get home that much sooner.
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The Pittsburgh Press (December 8, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (by wireless)
The government is scattering a lot of American girls out over the world now to work in government offices.
They are not WACs, but civilians. Their destinations read like an itinerary of Marco Polo. They wear civilian clothes, and everywhere they stop as they fly about the work they create a warmth and a glow among the women-starved men out in the outposts.
We had five girls with us a good part of the way from America to Africa. At all the stops the soldiers, and officers too, would stand and stare, and you could sense them sort of smiling to themselves. Often, they’d wave or whistle, not in a smart-alecky fashion, but just hungry and friendly-like. And the girls would wave back.
A time or two, when we went into Officers’ Clubs at the camps, the girls would be surrounded so quickly and deeply you completely lost sight of them.
Our men on foreign soil miss desperately the companionship of white women. The mere sight of one thrills them. One day in a small South American city I was walking along the crowded sidewalks with two of our female passengers when a couple of soldiers tagged along behind us for blocks and kept saying to me in a friendly fashion:
Congratulations, soldier, you lucky dog. How we envy you.
And at one field, I heard a young officer say to one passenger:
Lady, just stand still a minute and let me stare at you.
Yes, a man without a woman is a sorry spectacle.
Perfect partnership
All the way from America to Algiers I traveled with a young lady from Los Angeles named Mrs. Peggy Pollard. In addition to a pleasant traveling companionship, we both soon saw the advantage of forming ourselves into a sort of team, for we had the perfect combination. I had friends all along the route from previous trips, and Mrs. Pollard was beautiful.
Brother, between the two of us, there wasn’t anything we couldn’t get. If I got invited somewhere, I’d suggest Mrs. Pollard be invited, too. She worked the same principle in reverse. Thus, we traveled over three continents and one ocean like a pair of Oriental potentates. We bask in the rankest sort of special privilege.
We got better quarters than other passengers, we rode special cars instead of buses, we were taken on sightseeing trips and to cocktail parties. People paid us lavish and luxurious attention. I think it’s a great tribute to the tolerance of humankind that the other passengers didn’t get sore at us.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without Mrs. Pollard when I got on from Algiers. If I could only take her to the front with me the soldiers would undoubtedly lay a red carpet through the mud for us. But it’s all over now so goodbye, dear Mrs. Pollard.
Battle of the Hotels
At one big field in Northwest Africa, we fell into the hospitable hands of two very engaging officers – Maj. Charlie Moore of Inglewood, New Jersey, and Capt. David Miller of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. They room together in a hotel where many officers of the field are billeted and it is probably the finest hotel in Africa.
Living there is pretty close to what living would be like in a very fine resort hotel back home. Both these officers have lived in hotels ever since coming to Africa a year ago. They are both doing important vital work, yet they deride and bemoan themselves for the comfort in which they live although neither asked for it, nor was responsible for it.
They call their war, “The Battle of the Hotels.” Both would much rather be a thousand miles closer to the front, in a barn.
Capt. Miller is an unusual character. He is gray-haired, 52, and has a wife and three teenage children, yet when the war came along, he would up everything and went in – and has never been out of a hotel. In the last war, he was overseas 22 months and never once in a hotel. He said:
I liked the last one better.
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The Pittsburgh Press (December 9, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Allied HQ, Algiers, Algeria – (by wireless)
We flew again over the Sahara. The desert air for a thousand feet above the ground was thick with blowing sand and you could not see the earth from your plane window.
At one place, we came down through a veil of sand to land on the outpost of a field that was isolated, bare and remote from anything in the world.
The passengers said as we got out for a few minutes’ stretch:
What an awful place to have to serve.
On the field, I got to talking to one of the soldiers, Pvt. Bob Goldy of St. Albans, Long Island, and asked how long he’d been there. He said, “Five months.”
I said in astonishment:
Five months! Why, I thought they sent you to these places for just a few weeks and then relieved you.
He said:
They do. We are supposed to come for only six weeks, but everybody who comes asks for an extension. I’m on my third extension now. We all like it here. It’s healthy and we have good quarters, good food and movies, but the main thing is that it’s small and everybody is close together.
It’s informal here and we’ve got swell officers. There are only about three dozen of us and it’s sort of the same spirit as a submarine crew has. Everybody is for everybody else. No more big camps for me if I can help it.
Goldy was very proud of their recent Thanksgiving dinner. He said their menu that day had 29 items on it, including turkey. The turkey, incidentally, won him $10. He’d made several bets with other soldiers who didn’t think any turkey would ever arrive.
Goldy said:
But I had faith in the government, so that’s just $10 more to send home to buy bonds with.
Pilots killed in sandstorm
The boys may like the desert, but still, it is an insidious place. At one of these remote Sahara fields a few months ago, a flight of fighter planes came in during a 90-mile-an-hour sandstorm. Their leader found the field but, even at an altitude of just a few feet, he couldn’t see the runway so they went their own ways and landed all over the desert.
Two of the pilots were killed. Other straggled in days later. One was saved by an Arab who ran for help across the desert, 20 miles in four hours. There are many ways to die in wartime and they are all bad.
Couple of helpful hints, free
Among the odd items a professional traveler is likely to pick up on a trip like this are these two gems:
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At one stop in the tropics, I met an American civilian who said he always gave his chickens a spoonful of gin shortly before killing them. He said it relaxed their muscles and made them much more tender and succulent. It’s probably true, except that most of the chickens I’ve met over here would need half a pint, and gin is scarce in these parts.
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In hot tropics, postage stamps always glue themselves together. They even glue themselves to oiled paper. The way to prevent this is to rub stamps on your hair. The oil from the hair coats the stamps and they won’t melt into anything until licked. The trick actually works, except that I always have to hire somebody with hair to go along to the post office with me.
One morning in Northwest Africa, I was routed out of bed at 6:30 by a caller who turned out to be an old Army friend – Capt. Wayne Akers of Memphis, a pilot on the ferry line with whom I flew from the Gold coast to Cairo last spring.
Capt. Akers says that after he was mentioned in this column, he got more than 50 letters from people in the States. He has just been flying transports back and forth, back and forth, all the way from India to Italy. In one year overseas, he has put in 1,200 flying hours. He’s due to go home now. He says they’re given a choice between two weeks at home and then returning to Africa, or a 30-day furlough and then reassignment for at least six months in the States.
He says everybody is taking the latter. As who wouldn’t?
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