The Pittsburgh Press (February 23, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Our company was alerted for its night march just before suppertime. We got the word about 4 in the afternoon, and we ate at 4:30. Word was passed around to collect 24 hours’ field rations at suppertime and a full supply of ammunition.
At chow time, the soldiers all held their tin hats crooked in their left arms while holding their mess kits in their right. At the end of the mess line, the soldiers out five “C” ration cans into each man’s hat and one bar of “D” ration.
After supper, the men rolled their one blanket inside their one shelter half while there was still light. It was chilly. A misty rain began to fall. The men just lay or sat in their foxholes under the doubtful shelter of the olive trees.
Darkness came over the olive grove, the artillery raged and flashed around half the horizon, and the concussion crashed and ran across the sky along the sounding board of the low clouds. We of our little company were swallowed in a great blackness.
We were connected to the war by one field telephone which ran to the battalion command post a quarter mile away. nobody knew when the marching order would come. We just had to sit there and wait.
There were only two places to get out of the rain. Both were pig sheds dug into the side of a bank by an Italian farmer and stacked over with straw.
Lt. Jack Sheehy, the company commander, and four enlisted men and I crawled into one and dragged the phone in after us. A few sergeants went into the other.
Huddle in pig shed
We lay down on the ground there in the pig shed. We had on our heavy coats but the chill came through. The lieutenant had an extra blanket which he carried unrolled when not actually in battle, so he spread it out and he and I both sat under it. We huddled against each other and became a little warmer.
The lieutenant said:
I used to read your column back home, and I never supposed we’d ever meet. Imagine us lying together here on the ground in Italy.
Then we talked a little while in low tones, but pretty soon somebody started to snore and before long all of us were asleep although it was still only 7 o’clock.
Every now and then, the lieutenant would phone battalion to see if any orders had come yet. Finally, he was told the line to regimental headquarters was out.
Linemen were out in the darkness feeling with their hands, tracing the entire length of the line trying to find the break. Around 9 o’clock, it was open again. Still no marching orders came.
A dark form appeared fairly silhouetted in the open end of the shed and asked if Lt. Sheehy was there. The lieutenant answered yes.
The form asked:
Can the men unroll their blankets? They’re wet and cold.
The lieutenant thought a moment and then he said, “No, better not. We should get the word to go any minute now, certainly within half an hour. They better keep them rolled.” The form said, “Yes, sir,” and merged back into the darkness.
Grove is deathly still
By 10, everybody in the shed had awakened from their nap. Our grove was deathly still, as though no one existed in it, for the night was full of distant warfare.
Now and then, we’d get clear under the blanket and light a cigarette and hide it under the blanker when we puffed it. Over on the far hillside where the Germans were, we could see a distant light. We finally decided it was probably a lamp in some unwitting Italian farmhouse.
For a little while, there was a sudden splurge of flares in the distance. The first was orange and then came some in green, and then a white and then some more orange ones. Our soldiers couldn’t tell whether they were German or ours.
Between flashes of artillery, we could hear quite loud blasts of machine guns. Even I can distinguish between a German machine gun and ours for theirs is much faster.
Machine guns are rarely fired except in flashes, so the barrel won’t get too hot, but once some jerry just held the trigger down and let her roll for about 15 seconds. A soldier said:
Boy, he’ll have to put on a new barrel after that one.
The time dragged on and we grew colder and stiffer. At last, nearly at midnight, the phone rang in the stillness of our pig shed. It was the order to go.
One of the boys said:
It’s going to be a hell of a thing to move. The ground is slick and you can’t see your hand in front of you.
One sergeant went out to start the word for the company to assemble. Another disconnected the field telephone and carried it under his arm. Everybody wrestled into the harness of his heavy packs.
The lieutenant told the first sergeant:
Assemble down by the kitchen tent. Platoons will form in this order – headquarters, third, first, second, and heavy weapons. Let’s go.
The first sergeant moved off. I moved after him. The first two steps were fine. On the third step, I went down into a ditch and said a bad word. That’s the way it was with everybody all the rest of the night.