The Pittsburgh Press (February 26, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Sometimes a person says the silliest things without being able to account for them.
For example, one night our command post made a move of about five miles. I went in a jeep, perched high atop a lot of bedrolls.
The night was pure black and the road was vicious. We were in low gear all the time, and even that was too fast. Many times we completely lost the trail, and would wander off and bump into trees or fall into deep ditches.
It was one of those sudden nosedives that my story is about. We were far off the trail, but didn’t know it. Suddenly the front end of the jeep dropped about three feet and everything stopped right there. That is, everything but me.
I went sailing right over the driver’s shoulder, hit the steering wheel, and slid out onto the hood. And I remember that as I flew past the driver I said, “Excuse me.”
That’s all there is to the story.
Has been wounded twice
Our company had a mascot which had been with it more than a year. It was an impetuous little black-and-white dog named Josie, a native of North Africa. Josie’s name gradually had been transformed into Squirt.
Squirt was extremely affectionate, and when she came romping back to camp after a whirl with some gay Italian dog, she would jump all over the old-time sergeants and lick their faces until they had to push her away.
Squirt had been wounded twice, which is an unusual experience for a dog. But more a source of wonderment to the soldiers is how, unchaperoned and free-reined as her life is, she has managed to survive all the time without becoming a mother.
Shell was all a mistake
While I was with my company, we had one afternoon that was beautifully sunshiny and warm. Incessant but distant artillery walled the far horizons, yet nothing came into our area, and the day seemed infinitely peaceful.
We ate supper about an hour before dark, in the grove back of a stone farmhouse. We had just started eating when all of a sudden “Whyyyeeeooowww-Bang” came a shell right over our heads and whammed into the hillside on beyond us.
It was so close and so unexpected that even the veterans ducked, and the soldiers took to their foxholes pronto. Lt. Jack Sheehy, the company commander, ducked too, but then he immediately said:
There won’t be any more. That one was a mistake.
Lt. Sheehy used to be a clerk for American Airlines, but he has been at war a long time. He instantly figured out that the Germans had pulled a tank out of the woods a mile or so away, and were trying to shell the hillside ahead of us. And their first practice shot had gone high and come over the ridge.
His theory was proved right a few moments later, when shells began pounding steadily on the other hillside just over the ridge. Which shows how wise a man can become in the ways of a world utterly foreign to a ticket desk in the dimly remembered city of New York.
German ‘fire’ pills handy
Eggs are now 30¢ apiece over here, and it’s hard to get any even at that price.
Our soldiers tell of a small white oil they discovered in captured German combat rations. It is a “fire” oil, which produces heat without either flame or smoke, and which is sufficient to heat a cup of coffee or a can of ration.
I forgot to ask how you start the pill going. I do know that our troops would like to have something similar for frontline mountaintop work, for just one warm meal a day would mean a great deal.
On further nosing around, I discovered that we have specialists over here studying just such a thing. And that when the invasion of Western Europe starts, the British troops at least are to be equipped with them, and possibly ours will too.