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?