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!