The Pittsburgh Press (March 1, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
In my usual role of running other people’s business, I’ve been thrashing around with an idea – honest. It’s to give the combat soldier some little form of recognition more than he is getting now.
Everybody who serves overseas, no matter where or what he’s doing, gets extra pay. Enlisted men get 20% additional and officers 10%.
Airmen get an extra 50%above this for flight pay. As a result, officer-fliers get 60% above their normal base pay and enlisted fliers such as gunners and radio operators get 70%.
All that is fine and as it should be, but the idea I was toying with is why not give your genuine combat ground soldier something corresponding to flight pay? Maybe a good phrase for it would be “fight pay.”
Of any one million men overseas, probably no more than 100,000 are in actual combat with the enemy. But as it is now, there is no official distinction between the dogface lying for days and nights under constant mortar fire on an Italian hill, and the headquarters clerk living comfortably in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro.
Their two worlds are so far apart the human mind can barely grasp the magnitude of the difference. One lives like a beast and his kind die in great numbers. The other is merely working away from home. Both are doing necessary jobs, but it seems to me the actual warrior deserves something to set him apart. And medals are not enough.
Recognition of miserable job
When I was at the front the last time several infantry officers brought up this same suggestion. They say combat pay would mean a lot to the fighting man. It would put him into a proud category and make him feel that somebody appreciates what he endures.
Obviously, no soldier would ever go into combat just to get extra “fight pay.” That isn’t the point. There is not enough money in the world to pay
But it would put a mark of distinction on him, any single individual his due for battle suffering.
One of the meanest stunts I’ve heard of was a Christmas envelope full of clippings that a practical joker back home sent a soldier over here.
The clippings consisted of colored ads cut out of magazines – and they showed every luscious American thing from huge platters of ham and eggs on up to vacationists lolling in bright bathing robes on the sand, surrounded by beautiful babes. There ought to be a law.
An even meaner trick
On second thought, I know even a meaner trick than that one. In fact, this one would take first prize in an orneriness contest at any season, Christmas or otherwise. The worst is that it happened to a frontline infantryman.
Some of his friends back home sent him three bottles of whisky for Christmas. They came separately, were wonderfully packed, and the bottles came through without a break.
The first bottle tasted fine to the cold kids at the front, but when the second and third ones came the boys found they had been opened and drained along the way, then carefully resealed and continued on their journey.
Of course, mailing them in the first place was illegal, but that’s beside the point. The point is that somewhere in the world there is a louse of a man with two quarts of whisky inside him who should have his neck wrung off.
At one of our airdromes recently a German plane sneaked over and dropped five-pronged steel spikes over the field. Our fliers called it a “jacks raid,” since the spikes resembled the “jacks” that kids used to play with in school, only much bigger. These vicious spikes would puncture the tires when our planes taxied out.
So, the field engineers got a huge magnet, attached it to the front of a truck, and swept the field free of the spikes. Then they were loaded into our planes and dropped on German airfields. There haven’t been any “jacks raids” since.