Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 21, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Lt. Eugene Tousineau of Detroit is the official greeter for the new Anzio Chamber of Commerce. He visits every ship as soon as it drops anchor in Anzio waters, and “extends the key to the city.” Most of his guests would prefer being ridden out of town on a rail.

He’s the guy who checks the cargo of every incoming ship and checks daily on the progress and the quality of their unloading.

All day long he rides around in an LCVP (EDITOR’S NOTE: Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) climbing rope ladders up the sides of ships, snaking back down on single ropes – just holding on with his hands while his bouncing steel boat below tries to crush him. “I’ve got $10,000 insurance,” he laughs.

All day he is out there on the water with shells speckling the whole area. I wouldn’t have his job for a million dollars. But he enjoys it.

I rode around with him one day seeing how the ships unload, seeing how it feels to be sitting there at anchor aboard a ship full of explosives within range of enemy artillery. It doesn’t feel too good.

Lt. Tousineau has been on this job for six weeks. He is an ebullient fellow who insists on enjoying whatever he does, regardless.

Rank means nothing

He goes aboard ships and serves notice to ship’s officers. He bawls out some people even though he’s only a second lieutenant, and commiserates with others who have been bawled out by somebody that matters.

If things aren’t going well enough on a certain ship, he’ll say to the Army officer in charge, “No excuse for this, sir,” and never bat an eye. But that’s the way wars are won.

Riding around with us that day was Lt. John Coyle of Philadelphia, who is learning the game. Our supply shipping has become so thick that the checking job is too much for one man, so the two will divide it between them in the future.

Lt. Tousineau has had dozens of Hairbreadth Harry escapes. Shells explode in the water, bombs drop beside his house at night. He has even climbed off a ship just a few minutes before it was hit.

Before the war, Lt. Tousineau was a nightclub manager, a sandhog and numerous other things. He is tall and dark, has a very long and narrow face and a little pencil mustache, and looks like the Anzio edition of Cesar Romero.

He calls himself the “bad boy” of his regiment. “I get a commendation one day and a reprimand the next,” he says. “The colonel will commend me for good work under dangerous conditions and then I’ll go to Naples and get ticketed for having my hands in my pockets.” But that’s the Army, and Lt. Tousineau can take it.

Crew not nautical

The lieutenant has a crew of four soldiers who run his boat. The former crew, according to the lieutenant, got “Anzio anxiety” and took off, so he picked his own men.

Volunteers for the boat job were called for. Nobody volunteered. So, four men were assigned. Now that they’ve got the hang of it, everybody else in the company is mad at himself for not volunteering, for it’s a soft job. All they do all day long is ride around in this boat and dodge a shell now and then.

None of them knew anything about boats before Anzio. They learned by trying. Pvt. James Davis, a farm boy from Covert, Michigan, said:

We didn’t know nothin’ from sour apples about a boat, but we went along.

Later, as we lay alongside a British ship, I heard Pvt. Davis say, “Let’s go ashore onto that boat.” Such nautical sabotage as that would turn Adm. Dewey over in his grave.

When these soldiers first started learning how to run a boat, they sometimes got seasick, but they don’t anymore. And they have become fairly indifferent to shells too.

They don’t even wear their steel helmets half the time. When shells begin coming too close, Pvt. Davis will remark:

For a month I’ve been telling that fellow to take a furlough and go to Rome and have himself a time. But he doesn’t seem to get my message.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 22, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
The greatest apprehension I’ve found in the Anzio-Nettuno area is not among the men on shore who have been under it constantly for weeks, but among the crews of ships that sit out in the Mediterranean, unloading.

It takes several days to unload a big freighter, and during all that time they are subject to shelling from land and air raids from the sky. Their situation, I’ll admit, is not an enviable one.

It’s true that few of them get hit, considering the amount of shooting the Germans do out there. Yet there is always the possibility. And what gives them the creeps is when they’re sitting on a ship full of ammunition or high explosive.

The crews of these big freighters are members of the Merchant Marine. They merely operate the ship. They don’t do the stevedoring work of unloading. That’s done by soldiers.

They have a good system for this. At Naples, a whole company of port-battalion soldiers is put on each ship just before it sails. They make the trip up and back with the vessel, do the unloading at Anzio, and when they return to Naples, they go back to their regular dock jobs there. A different company goes aboard for the next trip.

New system promotes efficiency

The result is that each one-time unloading crew is so anxious to get unloading and get out of Anzio that everybody works with a vim and the material flies.

Up until a few weeks ago, all unloading was done by port-battalion groups based at Anzio. As soon as the crew finished one ship, it would have to go to work on another. There wasn’t any end to it. The boys just felt they couldn’t win. Since the new system went into effect, efficiency has shot up like a rocket.

The bigger ships are unloaded just as they would be at a dock, with winches hoisting out big netfuls of cargo from the deep holds and swinging them over the sides and letting them down – not onto a dock, however, but into flat-bottomed LCTs which carry the stuff to the beaches.

Each hold has a dozen or more men working down below, plus the winch crews and signalmen. They are all soldiers. They work in 12-hour shifts, but they get intervals of rest.

I was aboard one Liberty ship about 10:00 a.m. all five hatches were bringing up stuff. You could lean over and watch the men down below piling up ration boxes. And on the deck immediately below us you could see scores of other soldiers trying to sleep, the deafening noise of the winches making no difference to them. They were the night shift. They slept on folding cots between blankets, with their clothes on.

One crew boss was Sgt. Sam Lynch of Wilmington, Delaware. He is a veteran soldier, having served four months in the Arctic and 14 months on this side. Before the war, he was a fireman on the Pennsylvania Railroad and later a railway mail clerk. He is married and has one child.

Feel defenseless on ship

I asked him how he liked coming up to Anzio on a ship and he said he didn’t like it any too well. He said:

The trouble is that you feel so darned defenseless. If you could just man a gun and shoot back, it wouldn’t be so bad.

But the Navy operates the gun crews aboard all these freight ships and the soldiers can only sit there idle and sweat it out when bombs or shells start flying.

You should see them work when a ship is about finished and it looks as though they might not get through in time to catch the next convoy.

They laugh and tell a story about one ship which finished 45 minutes after the convoy started. The skipper pulled anchor and started chasing the convoy. The Navy radioed him orders to stop and wait. But this fellow kept right on going. He simply figured he’d rather face disciplinary action at Naples than German bombers for one more night at Anzio.

The Navy’s premise was that he was in greater danger from German subs and E-boats while running alone after the convoy than he would be from another night at Anzio. They have it all figured out by percentages, and they are right.

But this fellow was lucky and caught up with the convoy. I never heard what his supporters did when he got there, but I bet they didn’t invite him out for a round of golf.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 24, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Once on shore, our supplies for the Anzio beachhead are taken over by the Quartermaster Corps (food and clothing) and the Ordnance Department (ammunition).

The Quartermaster Corps traditionally is seldom in great danger. Up here on the beachhead they are blowing that tradition all to hell.

The Quartermaster Corps has been under fire ever since the beachhead was established, and still is. Its casualties from enemy action have been relatively high.

Around 70% of the Quartermaster troops on the beachhead are colored boys. They help unload ships right at the dock. They drive trucks. They man the supply dumps. Hardly a day goes by without casualties among then. But they take this bombing and shelling bravely. They make an awful lot of funny remarks about it, but they take it.

We drove out to one of the ration dumps where wooden boxes of rations are stacked head-high in piles for hundreds of yards, as in a lumber yard. Trucks from the waterfront add continually to the stock, other trucks from the various outfits continually haul it away.

Our ration dumps are not at all immune from shellfire. This single one has had more than 100 shells in it. Many of the soldier-workmen have been killed or wounded.

Ration dumps seldom burn

Ration dumps seldom burn, because you can’t burn C-rations. But early in the beachhead’s existence, they hit a dump of cigarettes and millions of them went up in smoke.

Our local dumps of ammunition, food, and equipment of a thousand kinds are now so numerous that a German artilleryman could shut his eyes and fire in our general direction and be almost bound to hit something.

Our dumps do get hit; but the fires are put out quickly, the losses are immediately replaced, and the reserve grows bigger and bigger.

The boss of the Quartermaster troops is a former newspaperman – Lt. Col. Cornelius Holcomb of Seattle. He worked on The Seattle Times for 12 years before going into the Army. He is a heavily built, smiling, fast-talking, cigar-smoking man who takes terrific pride in the job his colored boys have done. He said there’s one thing about having colored troops – you always eat like a king. If you need a cook, you just say, “Company, halt! Any cooks in this outfit?” And then pick out whoever looks best.

The colonel himself has had many close squeaks up here. Just before I saw him, a bomb had landed outside his bivouac door. It blew in one wall, and hurt several men.

Another time he was standing in a doorway on the Anzio waterfront talking to a lieutenant. Stone steps led from the doorway down into a basement behind him.

Bomb hits in front of door

As they talked, the colonel heard a bomb whistle. He dropped down on the steps and yelled to the lieutenant, “Hit the deck!”

The bomb hit smack in front of the door and the lieutenant came tumbling down on top of them. “Are you hurt?” Col. Holcomb asked. The lieutenant didn’t answer. Holcomb nosed back to see what was the matter. The lieutenant’s head was lying over in a corner.

Soon a medical man came and asked the blood-covered colonel if he was hurt. Col. Holcomb said no. “Are you sure?” the doctor asked. “I don’t think I am,” the colonel said.

“Well, you better drink this anyway,” the doctor said. And poured him a water glass full of rum which had him in the clouds all day.

In the Quartermaster Corps, they’ve begun a system of sending the key man away after about six weeks on the beachhead and giving them a week’s rest at some nice place like Sorrento.

A man who goes day and night on an urgent job under the constant strain of danger finally begins to feel a little punchy or “slug-butt,” as the saying goes. In other words, he has the beginnings of “Anzio Anxiety,” without even knowing it.

But after a week’s rest, he comes back to the job in high gear, full of good spirits, and big and brave. It’s too bad all forms of war can’t be fought that way.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 25, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
In addition to its regular job of furnishing food and clothing to the troops, the Quartermaster Corps of the 5th Army beachhead runs the bakery, a laundry for the hospitals, a big salvage depot of old equipment, and the military cemetery.

Hospital pillows and sheets are the only laundry done on the beachhead by the Army. Everything else the individual soldiers either wash themselves or hire Italian farm women to do. People like me just go dirty and enjoy it.

The Army laundry is on several big mobile trucks hidden under the sharp slope of a low hill. They are so well camouflaged that a photographer who went out to take some pictures came away without any – he said the pictures wouldn’t show anything.

This laundry can turn out 3,000 pieces in 10 hours of work. About 80 men are in the laundry platoon. They are dug in and live fairly nicely.

Laundrymen have been killed in other campaigns, but so far, they’ve escaped up here. Their worst disaster was that the little shower-bath building they built for themselves has been destroyed three times by “ducks” which got out of control when their brakes failed and came plunging over the bluff.

‘Ducks’ have names

Continuing with “ducks” for a moment, in one company all these amphibian trucks have been given names. The men have stenciled the names on the sides in big white letters, and every name starts with “A.”

There are such names as Avalon and Ark Royal. Some bitter soul named his duck Atabrine, and an even bitterer one called his Assinine - misspelling the word, with two s’s, just to rub it in.

Our salvage dump is a touching place. Every day five or six truckloads of assorted personal stuff are dumped on the ground in an open space near town. It is mostly the clothing of soldiers who have been killed or wounded. It is mud-caked and often bloody.

Negro soldiers sort it out and classify it for cleaning. They poke through the great heap, picking out shoes of the same size to put together, picking out knives and forks and leggings and underwear and cans of C ration and goggles and canteens and sorting them into different piles.

Everything that can be used again is returned to the issue bins as it is or sent to Naples for repair.

They find many odd things in the pockets of the discarded clothing. And they have to watch out, for pockets sometimes carry hand grenades.

You feel sad and tightlipped when you look closely through the great pile. Inanimate things can sometimes speak so forcefully – a helmet with a bullet hole in the front, one overshoe all ripped with shrapnel, a portable typewriter pitifully and irreparably smashed, a pair of muddy pants, bloody and with one leg gone.

Cemetery is neat – and big

The cemetery is neat and its rows of wooden crosses are very white – and it is very big. All the American dead of the beachhead are buried in one cemetery.

Trucks bring the bodies in daily. Italian civilians and American soldiers dig the graves. They try to keep ahead by 50 graves or so. Only once or twice have they been swamped. Each man is buried in a white mattress cover.

The graves are five feet deep and close together. A little separate section is for the Germans, and there are more than 300 in it. We have only a few American dead who are unidentified. Meticulous records are kept on everything.

They had to hunt quite a while to find a knoll high enough on this Anzio beachhead so that they wouldn’t hit water five feet down. The men who keep the graves live beneath ground themselves, in nearby dugouts.

Even the dead are not safe on the beachhead, nor the living who care for the dead. Many times, German shells have landed in the cemetery. Men have been wounded as they dug graves. Once a body was uprooted and had to be reburied.

The inevitable pet dog barks and scampers around the area, not realizing where he is. The soldiers say at times he has kept them from going nuts.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 26, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
Taking over a wrecked port and making it work is, like everything in war, first of all a matter of thorough organization.

At Anzio, the British Navy and the American Army have the thing organized down to a “t.” Soldier executives and clerks, sitting at regular desks in regular offices, do paperwork and make telephone calls and keep charts and make decisions just as they would in a shipping office in New York.

Seldom do three hours pass without shells or bombs shaking the town around then, and everywhere there is wreckage. Yet they have fixed up their offices and quarters in a fairly business-as-usual way.

When I walked into the Port Commander’s Office, who should it be but the same man I rode into Licata with on the morning of D-Day of the invasion of Sicily last July. He was a major then, but is now Lt. Col. Charles Monnier of Dixon and Tremont, Illinois. As an engineer, he has been helping capture ports and then turning them from chaos into usefulness ever since he hit Africa a year and a half ago.

In their wisdom built up through actual practice, such men as Col. Monnier know exactly what to look for, what to do and how to do it when they come in to work on the wreckage of a place like Anzio.

There is no guesswork about their progress. On the walls of the shipping room are big blackboards and charts and graphs. Hour by hour the total of the day’s supplies brought ashore is chalked up on the blackboard.

The big graph is brought up to date every evening. You can look back over it, and translate the activities of the past three months day by day, and see what happened and why.

Fuel dump innovation

Up here the Quartermaster Corps, which handles supplies after they are put ashore, has had to improvise and innovate. One of their main problems is how to keep gasoline fires from spreading when shells hit the dumps, which they do constantly.

So, Lt. Col. Cornelius Holcomb of Seattle had a brain throb. He had the gasoline dumps broken up into small caches, each bunch about as big as a room and about two cans high.

Then he had bulldozers dig up a thick-walled ditch around every cache. This shuts off the air that seeps in from the bottom and makes gasoline fires so bad. Since then they’ve had dozens of hits, but seldom a fire.

I was riding through the wreckage of Anzio and saw a big bulldozer in a vacant lot. On it was the name “Ernie,” spelled out in big blue metal letters wired to the radiator. So, I stopped to look into this phenomenon. The displayer of this proud name was Pvt. Ernie Dygert of Red Lodge, Montana. His father owns a big ranch there.

Young Dygert has driven trucks, ducks and bulldozers in the Army. His main job here is filling up shell craters. He doesn’t seem to mind living in Anzio (the same can’t be said for his namesake).

It’s the spirit that counts

Maj. John C. Strickland of Oklahoma City is the area quartermaster. On his desk is a unique paperweight – a small can of Vienna sausage.

His wife sent it to him. He keeps it as an ironic souvenir. He wrote her that as an Army quartermaster he handles millions of cans of it, and eats it in various forms a dozen times a week, but thanks anyway.

You’ve never seen a shell hit the water? Well, a dud makes a little white splash only a few feet high. A medium-sized shell makes a waterspout about a hundred feet high.

And one of the big shells makes a white geyser a couple of hundred feet in the air. A tall, thin, beautiful thing, like a real geyser, and out from it a quarter of a mile go little corollary white splashes as shrapnel gouges the surface.

Sometimes you hear the shell whine, see the geyser, hear the explosion and feel the concussion, all at once. That’s when they’re landing only 50 yards or so from you. And you’d just as soon they wouldn’t.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 27, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With 5th Army beachhead forces, Italy – (by wireless)
When the time finally came for me to leave the Anzio beachhead, I had a choice of coming out by airplane, by LST ship or by hospital ship. I chose the hospital ship, because I’d never been on one.

At the beachhead, the hospital ships lie two or three miles out while loading. Ambulances bring patients from the tent hospitals to the waterfront. There they are loaded on the small, flat-decked LCTs, which have canvas over the tops to keep off rain.

Usually more than half the men in each load are walking cases. They sit or stand at one end of the deck, while the litter cases lie in rows on the other. I went out to the hospital ship with such a load of wounded.

Once out there, we had to lie off and wait for an hour or so while previous LCTs finished unloading their wounded. As we lay there, the officers in charge decided to transfer the walking wounded off another LCT onto ours. So, it drew alongside, threw over a line, and the two ships came against each other. The slightly wounded and sick men jumped across whenever the ships hit together.

A heavy swell was running and the ships would draw a few feet apart and then come together with a terrific bang. It was punishing to the wounded men. I stood among them, and every time we’d hit, they would shut their eyes and clench their teeth.

Pounding worse than shells

One mature man, all encased in a cast, looked at me pleadingly and said:

Don’t those blankety-blank so-and-sos know there are men here who are badly hurt?

Occasionally shells screamed across the town and exploded in the water in our vicinity. The wounded men didn’t cringe or pay any attention to this near danger, but the pounding of the ships together made them wild.

Once alongside the big white hospital ship, the wounded are hoisted by slings, just as you’d hoist cargo. A sling is a wooden, boxlike affair which holds two litters on the bottom and two on top. Up they go as the winches grind. Litter bearers wait on deck to carry them to their wards. The merchant seamen also pitch in and help carry.

Each badly wounded man carries his own X-ray negative with him in a big brown envelope. As one load was being hoisted, the breeze tore an envelope out of a wounded man’s hand and it went fluttering through the air. Immediately a cry went up, “Grab that X-ray, somebody.” Fortunately, it came down on the deck of the smaller ship below and was rescued.

It took about four hours to load the more than 500 wounded and sick men aboard our ship. As soon as it was finished, we pulled anchor and sailed. Hospital ships, like other ships, prefer to sit in the waters of Anzio just as short a time as possible.

Hospital ships have luxuries

Our hospital ships run up to Anzio frequently, because we want to keep our hospitals there free for any sudden flood of new patients. Also, being in a hospital on the beachhead isn’t any too safe.

The hospital ships are mostly former luxury liners. Right now, most of those here are British, but the one I came on was American.

Its officers and crew are all merchant seamen. Its medical staff is all Army – 10 doctors, 33 nurses and about 80 enlisted men. Maj. Theodore Pauli of Pontiac, Michigan, commands.

These ships ferry back and forth on trips like this for a few months, then make a trip back to America with wounded. My ship has been back to the States three times since it first came over less than a year ago.

In a sense, a hospital ship is the nearest thing to peacetime that I’ve seen in a war zone. The ship runs with lights on all over it, the staff has good beds and good cabins, there is hot water 24 hours a day, the food is wonderful.

I was given a top bunk in a cabin with one of the doctors. After nosing around into all the nice conveniences of the place, I discovered we also had a toilet and a shower.

I asked unbelievingly if the bath worked. They said sure it worked. So, I took a bath for half an hour and felt very weak and civilized and wonderful afterwards.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 28, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Naples, Italy – (by wireless)
On the hospital ship which I rode back from Anzio, part of two decks remained just about as they were when the vessel was a luxury cruise ship in the Caribbean. In this part the permanent staff of doctors and nurses live, and also the officers of the ship.

But the rest has been altered just as liners are altered when made into troopships.

Cabin walls have been cut out to form big wards. Double-deck steel beds have been installed. The whole thing is fitted like a hospital operating room and wards.

The wounded men get beautiful treatment. They lie on mattresses and have clean white sheets – the first time since coming overseas for most of them.

There is a nurse to each ward, and the bigger wards have more than one. Enlisted men serve the meals and help the nurses.

The doctors have little to do. On this run the wounded are on the ship less than 24 hours. Their wounds have been thoroughly attended before the men are brought aboard, and it’s seldom that anything drastic develops on the short voyage.

Pennsylvanian aboard

One of the doctors took me in tow and showed me the entire ship after supper. He was Capt. Benjamin Halporn of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Capt. Halporn’s wife is also a doctor back in Harrisburg, practicing under her own name, Dr. Miriam R. Polk.

Capt. Halporn said:

We really have so little to do we almost forget how. My wife back home does more work in one day than I do in a month.

But that’s nobody fault. The doctors must be on the ship for advice and emergency.

As we went around the ship, our trip turned into a kind of personal-appearance tour. When we left one ward, the nurse came running after us and said to me, “Do you mind coming back? The boys want to talk to you.”

And while I stood beside the bunk gabbing with a couple of wounded men, another one across the ward yelled, “Hey, Ernie, come over here. We want to see what you look like.”

If this keeps up, I’ll have to have my face lifted. Nobody with a mug like mine has a right to go around scaring wounded men.

The boys had read about the proposal in Congress to give “fight pay” to combat troops and they were for it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The proposal resulted from a suggestion by Ernie Pyle.

Most of them said it wasn’t so much the money as to give them some recognition and distinction, and money seemed the only way to do it.

Men made comfortable

As we went around, some of the wounded would call to the doctor and he would have a nurse attend to them. One boy with an arm wound was bleeding too much, and needed a new bandage. Another one in a shoulder case said good-naturedly that he couldn’t tell by the feel whether he was bleeding or just sweating under his cast.

A Negro boy with a shattered leg said his cast was too tight and hurt his instep. So, the doctor drew a curved line on it with his pencil and ordered the cast sawed off there. Each cast has written on it the type of wound beneath it.

We stopped beside one man whose right leg was in a cast. The writing of it revealed that he was a British Commando. The doctor asked him if he were in pain, and he smiled and said with some effort, “Quite a bit, sir, but not too much.”

When you ask a wounded man how he got hit, the majority of them are eager to tell you in great detail just how it happened. But those in the most pain are listless and uninterested in what goes on around them.

Mattress for everyone

When the ship is overcrowded there aren’t bunks enough for everybody. So those who aren’t in bad shape – merely sick or with slight wounds – sleep on mattresses on the floor of what used to be the salon.

Everybody does have a mattress, which is just so much velvet to any soldier.

Down below in smaller wards were the shock cases.

Actually, most of them were what doctors call “exhaustion” cases and would be all right after a few days’ rest.

Their wards had heavy screen doors that could be locked, but not a single door was closed, which showed that the boys weren’t in too bad shape.

In addition, the ship has four padded calls for extreme shock cases. The steel door to each one has a little sliding panel peephole. Only one cell was occupied.

This was a boy who refused to keep his clothes on. We peeked in and he was lying on his mattress on the floor, stark naked and asleep.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (April 29, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Naples, Italy – (by wireless)
A Red Cross worker rides each hospital ship, not only to do anything for the wounded she can, but also to help keep the ship’s staff and crew happy.

On our ship, the Red Cross girl was Percy Gill of Palo Alto, California. She used to teach physical education at Castilleja School for Girls.

After supper, she passed out a bottle of Coca-Cola to every man on the ship. It was the first time most of the boys had had one since leaving America. The Merchant Marine seamen in the crew always help her pass the cokes around.

Miss Gill has a tiny office filled with books, toilet supplies, musical instruments and magazines. As soon as the wounded men are brought aboard, she gives everyone a pack of cigarettes and a toothbrush, for most of them have lost their gear.

Some completely empty-handed

As they were swung aboard, you see some completely emptyhanded and others carrying their pitiful little possessions in their tin hats, balanced on their stomachs. Some have on hospital pajamas, some just OD shirts, some only their dirty gray underwear.

Miss Gill does not intrude herself on the men, for she knows that the most badly wounded want to be left alone. Now and then she’ll give a boy a book and discover that he’s still looking at the same page three hours later. Another boy used his as a fan all afternoon.

Miss Gill has books in French, and in German too. Every shipload has a few wounded prisoners. We had two on my trip. One was a startled-looking German kid whose card showed him to be only 17. The prisoners are treated just the same as anybody else.

Miss Gill’s musical warehouse includes an accordion, four guitars, a violin, two saxophones, a clarinet, a trombone, and two dozen harmonicas. She doesn’t have many requests for either the musical instruments or the books on these short trips between the beachhead and Naples, for there’s hardly time. But on the long trip back to America they are a godsend, for the men are feeling better by then and time goes slowly. On one 16-day trip across the ocean the wounded men read 3,000 books – an average of six to a man.

Relief from mud and cold

It is a relief and a comfort for men to be on a hospital ship after their months of mud and cold and misery and danger and finally the agony of their wounding. It is a relief because the hospital ship is so little like war, and because those who operate it are in a world apart from the world these men have known.

There’s no blackout at all. Nobody is ever dirty or cold. Cabin windows have no shutters. You can smoke on deck. Big spotlights slung on brackets point their dazzling beams at the big red cross painted on the ship’s sides.

The ship takes its course far outside the channels of regular war shipping, and instead of keeping radio secrecy we broadcast our position every 15 minutes. The hospital ship wants the enemy to know where it is so no mistake can be made.

Our ship has had several “incidents.” It has been stopped by surfaced submarines and been circled by enemy planes. But the enemy has always respected it. The greatest danger is going to such places as Anzio, or standing in ports during air raids.

Scene of quiet and peace

Usually, the ward lights are left on until 10:30 p.m. But on our trip, they were turned off at 9:30, for we were to dock very early next morning and the men had to wakened by 5:00 a.m. to give the nurses time to get the wounded all washed and fed.

By 10 o’clock, the inside of the ship was dim and quiet. Nurses went about softly in the faint glow of the blue nightlight. The doctors, all through, were playing chess and solitaire in their small salon on the top deck. A few soldiers strolled on deck or hung over the rail. It was warm and gentle outside. The washing of the water seemed like a purring against the ship’s sides.

It was wonderful to be going away from war instead of toward it. For the badly wounded there was a sense of completion of a task, for the others a sense of respite. And the sheets and the soft beds and the security of walls lent a confidence in things present and to come.

There was intense suffering aboard that ship. But by 10:30, you could somehow feel the quiet, masked composure that comes to men of turmoil when they settle down for the night in the clasp of a strange new safety.

And early next morning we were here.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 1, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In Italy – (by wireless)
Funny how nicknames change from one war to the next, and even during wars.

Last war, if I remember correctly, the Germans were almost always referred to as “Huns,” but you don’t hear the word used in this war, at least not in the rear. For the first year or so it was always “Jerry.” Now in the last few months the term “Kraut” has shown up, and it is used at the front more than any other, I guess.

The latest term is Tedeschi, the Italian word for German. The “ch” is hard, like the “k” in Kansas. About a third of the time our soldiers speak of the Germans as “the Tedeschi.”

One of the most practical pieces of equipment our Army has got around to is the little Coleman stove for cooking. It’s about eight inches high and burns gasoline. It comes in a round metal can which you can use to heat water in after you take the stove out of it.

The stove has folding legs and folding griddles which you open up to set a can or a canteen cup on. It’s easy to carry and burns without a lot of tinkering.

Almost every group of frontline soldiers has one now. They heat their C-rations on it, make coffee several times a day, heat water for shaving, and if they’re in an enclosed place such as a dugout they even use it for warmth.

You have no idea what a big thing some practical little device like a successful stove is in the life of a man at the front.

Candles now plentiful

Our Army canteen cup is pretty good, but it has one big drawback. The rolled-over rim collects so much heat you can’t put it to your lips without burning them. Hence you have to wait till your coffee is lukewarm before you can drink it.

A few soldiers I’ve noticed have partly solved the problem by cutting the rim off and filing the top smooth.

Another much-needed item that at last has shown up in good quantity is candles.

It seems to take any nation a year or two to find out through experience all the little things needed at the front, and to produce them and get them there. Last winter we needed candles, but they were as scarce as though made of gold. Now at last they have become plentiful.

They are white and about nine inches long. We either drip some tallow on a table and anchor them in it, or set them in empty cognac bottles. Of course, if you had a full cognac, you wouldn’t need a candle.

Soldiers like kids

I’ve told you time and again about the dogs our soldiers have taken as pets and mascots. Running second to dogs, I believe, are Italian kids. There’s no way of estimating how many Italian boys have been adopted by our troops, but there must be hundreds.

An outfit will pick up some kid, usually one who has been orphaned by bombing and has no home and no place to go. The children come along of their free will, of course. And they begin having the time of their lives.

The soldiers cut down extra uniforms and clothe them in straight G.I. The youngsters pick up English so fast it makes your head swim. They eat better than they have eaten in years. The whole thing is exciting and adventuresome to them. The units keep them in areas as safe as can be found when they go into action.

What will become of these kids when the war ends, I don’t know. Probably many will be carried clear back to America and their collective godfathers will try to sneak them in.

I do know of Sicilian adoptees who were brought along on the invasion of Italy, just like the animal pets. And I’ve heard of two other adoptees, already written up by some of the other correspondents, who stowed away and went on the Anzio beachhead landings on D-Day.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 2, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Italy – (by wireless)
One of our diversions while at the Anzio beachhead was listening to “Axis Sally” on the radio.

Doubtless you’ve heard of her back home. Hers is one of several German propaganda programs in English directed at the morale of our troops. The thing is wonderful but, as far as I can see, a complete failure, because:

• Only a tiny few of our troops ever hear the radio.

• For those who do, Sally’s music is so good and her jokes so pathetically corny that we listen just to be entertained. We feel like cads for enjoying Sally’s music while being unconvinced by her words.

Sally comes on the air five or six times a day, starting around 6:00 a.m. and lasting until 2:00 a.m. A guy named George serves as Sally’s end man. Some of the programs are directed at the British troops, some at ours.

Actually, it isn’t the same girl on all the programs, although they all call themselves Sally. The program is entitled Jerry’s Front.

German song adopted

Early in each program they sing the great German war song, “Lilli Marlene,” which we all love and which we’ve practically taken away from the Germans as our national overseas song.

Then Sally reads a list of prisoners’ names, and just as she finishes, a female quartet swings off into a snappy version of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The idea being, you see, that it’s all over now for these prisoners and they’re safe and happy, so why don’t we all come and surrender and be happy too.

The rest of the program is divided up between the byplay of Sally and George and the playing of German and American music, including such things as “Star Dust” and all of Bing Crosby’s records.

The news is actually funny. For example, they would tell us of ships sunk at Anzio that day. From where we sat, we could spit into the waters of Anzio, and we knew that what Sally said was not true.

Both Sally and George speak good English and claim to be Americans. But they do make odd mistakes. They pronounce Houston, Texas, as though it were “House-ton,” and they speak of Columbus Square in New York when they mean Columbus Circle. It’s tiny little mistakes like that which nullify a propaganda program.

‘Hello, Mom,’ by request

I get lots of letters from soldiers mentioning their little grievances and desires. Here are just a few:

An ack-ack gunner writes that he has just listened to a BBC program in which parents in England send messages to their men overseas. He continues:

As far as I know, our boys have no program like that, and while I was listening, I thought how wonderful it would be if I could turn a dial and listen to my mom say hello.

The 5th Army has created a “Fifth Army Plaque,” which is an award to non-combatant units that have done meritorious service. Now the boys of one outfit are hurt because they are included in this plaque. They are a chemical mortar outfit (combatant), but they come under the Chemical Warfare Service (usually non-combatant). Being included in this plaque makes these boys look like non-combatant troops when they are actually frontline troops, and, as they say themselves, “have been in there punching.”

An Air Corps captain writes:

Along with thousands of others, I’ve learned the inexpressible value of letters from home. Don’t you think a good slogan to pass on to your readers would be, “A letter is like a five-minute furlough”?

Another boy wants me to use some influence in the matter of servicemen getting first chance at the gear and clothing the Army will dispose of after the war.

And, he concludes:

What is most likely to happen, we will be left holding the bag while some moneymaking fool will get control.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 3, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Naples, Italy – (by wireless)
When I’m caught talking with anyone above the rank of major, the other correspondents kid me and say, “You’re losing the common touch, Ernie.”

I try to excuse myself by saying:

Well, democracy includes the big as well as the little, so I have to work in a general now and then just to keep the balance.

Naturally there’s nothing wrong with a general just because he’s a general, and I have several mighty good friends who wear stars.

All of which is just a way of starting to tell you that I had dinner with Gen. Mark Clark the other night. I had seen Gen. Clark at a distance, but had never met him.

The most remarkable thing about our meeting was a letter I had received a few hours before, as I was setting out for Gen. Clark’s main headquarters in the country. I started reading my mail just before going over to meet the general. And I almost fell over at the return address on one envelope.

It was from Mrs. Mark Clark. Within five minutes after opening the letter, I walked over and showed it to her husband.

The general said that if his wife was going to start writing me, he’d better have me court-martialed. I said, “Hell, if I were running this Army, I’d have her court-martialed.” We compromised by drinking a toast to her.

Dine in small collapsible building

Our dinner was in a small, one-room, collapsible building, with the wind howling and blowing until we thought the building would really collapse in fact. There were three other correspondents at dinner, and four officers of the general’s staff. We just ate and chatted and leaned back in our chairs as if we were at home. The general told us some things we didn’t know before and some things I can’t print, but he didn’t tell us when the war would end.

Running the Italian war has been a headache of tremendous proportions, and I for one do not think it Gen. Clark’s fault that the campaign has gone slowly. I thought that before meeting him, so no one can accuse him of charming me into saying that.

I found Gen. Clark very congenial, and straightforward too. He impressed me as a thoroughly honest man.

There is another lieutenant general in this area that I do know well. He is Ira Eaker, head of all the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. We’ve been friends for more than 15 years.

I go up and have dinner with him now and then. He usually has four or five guests every evening. He flatters me by saying to his guests, “I knew Ernie when he wasn’t anybody.” I flatter myself by saying, “I knew the general when he was a captain.”

I never leave the general’s headquarters without his giving me some kind of present, and now and then he gives me something to send to That Girl back in America. He is one of the most thoughtful men about doing little things for people that I’ve ever known.

Gen. Eaker is nearly bald, likes to smoke cigars, and sucks frequently at a pipe. He talks with the slow clarity of a Texan. His voice is so low and gentle you can hardly hear him sometimes.

Likes to play volleyball

He likes to play volleyball late in the afternoon. He drinks almost none. His driver is a sergeant who has been with him for two years. One of his greatest traits is love and loyalty to his old friends of early years.

The Air Force staff lives in trailers and tents in a lovely grove, and eat in one big mess hall where the general also eats with his guests.

The general lives in a wooden Dallas hut, fixed up with a big fireplace and deep lounges and pictures until it resembles a hunting lodge. It is lovely.

Every morning at 9:30, the general goes to his “war room,” and in a space of 20 minutes receives a complete history of the war throughout the world for the previous 24 hours. In order to provide this comprehensive briefing, many of his staff have to get up at 5 o’clock collecting the reports.

Gen. Eaker’s job here is a tremendous one. He ran the great 8th Air Force in England with distinction, but down here he has had to face problems he never had up there. In England, it was purely an air war. Down here it is air and ground both. Further, his command is stretched over thousands of miles and includes fliers of three nations.

Integrating the air war with the ground war is a formidable task that hasn’t yet been wholly accomplished. Doing that is Gen. Eaker’s biggest job right now, for he already knows about the other side of his job – which is to bomb the daylights out of Fortress Europe.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 4, 1944)

Goodbye to Italy –
Ernie Pyle in England ready for the invasion

Ernie Pyle has been in England for some days, ready for his next – and biggest – job of war reporting.

In today’s column, he bids farewell to the boys in Italy. He writes:

Few of us can ever conjure up any truly fond memories of the Italian campaign. The enemy has been hard, and so have the elements. A few men have borne a burden they felt should have been shared by many more.

There is little solace for those who have suffered, and none at all for those who have died.

Ernie will cable his dispatches from England for the present – and then watch for Pyle when the invasion hour strikes.

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Naples, Italy –
Again the time has come for me to travel a long way. When you read this, I should be in England. (EDITOR’S NOTE: He is.)

Some people laugh and say, “Well, that’s the tipoff, when you leave for England, the invasion must be about ready.”

That, I assume, is a jibe at me for having dinner with generals and supposedly getting the inside dope.

They flatter me, for I don’t know a bit more about the invasion than you do. I’ve intended going to England all along, and the only reason I held off till now was to wait for warm weather up there. These old bones ain’t what they used to be – they never were, as far as I can remember – and spending a winter in sunny Italy (ha!) hasn’t helped them.

At any rate, I do hate to leave now that the time has come. I’ve been in this war theater so long that I think of myself as a part of it. I’m not in the Army, but I feel sort of like a deserter at leaving.

There is some exhilaration here and some fun, along with the misery and sadness; but on the whole it has been bitter. Few of us can ever conjure up any truly fond memories of the Italian campaign.

The enemy has been hard, and so have the elements. Men have had to stay too long in the lines. A few men have borne a burden they felt should have been shared by many more.

Little or no solace

There is little solace for those who have suffered, and none at all for those who have died, in trying to rationalize about why things in the past were as they were.

I look at it this way – if by having only a small army in Italy we have been able to build up more powerful forces in England, and if by sacrificing a few thousand lives here this winter we can save half a million lives in Europe this summer – if these things are true, then it was best as it was.

I’m not saying they are true. I’m only saying you’ve got to look at it that way or else you can’t bear to think of it at all. Personally, I think they are true.

Before going, I want to pay a kind of tribute to a little group pf people I’ve never mentioned before. They are the enlisted men of the various Army public-relations units who drive us correspondents around and feed us and look after us. They are in the Army and subject to ordinary discipline, yet they live and work with men who are free and undisciplined. It is hard for any man to adjust himself to such a paradoxical life. But our boys have done it, and retained both their capabilities and their dignity.

Can’t mention them all

I wish I could mention them all. The few I can mention will have to represent the whole crew of many dozens of them…

There are drivers such as Delmar Richardson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Paul Zimmer of Oakland, California, and Jerry Benane of Minneapolis. They take care of the bulk of the correspondents, and it is only a miracle none of them has been wounded. They remain courteous and willing, despite a pretty irritating sort of life.

Then there are such boys as Cpl. Thomas Castleman, of my own town of Albuquerque, who rides his motorcycle over unspeakable roads through punishing weather to carry our dispatches to some filing point.

And then there is Pvt. Don Jordan, probably the most remarkable of all the PRO men I know. Don is a New England blueblood from Welles, Missouri and Attleboro, Massachusetts. He is a Brown University man, a dealer in antiques, a writer. He talks with a Boston accent, speaks French, and is at home in conversations about art and literature.

And do you know what he does? He cooks. He not only cooks, but he cooks with a flash and an imagination that make eating at our place a privilege.

Works like a slave

And on top of that, he runs the place as bookkeeper, house mother, translator and fulfiller of all requests, working like a slave with an unending good nature.

And there are such men as Sgts. Art Everett of Bay City, Michigan, and Harry Cowe of Seattle, who missed being officers by the unfair fates of war, and who go on doing work of officer responsibility with an admirable acceptance.

To these few men, and to all the others like them who have made life at war possible for us correspondents – my salute.

To all the rest of you in this Mediterranean army of ours – it has been wonderful in a grim, homesick, miserable sort of way to have been with you.

In two years of living with the Army there has not been one single instance from private to general when you have not been good to me. I want to thank you for that.

I’ve hated the whole damn business just as much as you do who have suffered more. I often wonder why I’m here at all, since I don’t have to be, but I’ve found no answer anywhere short of insanity, so I’ve quit thinking about it. But I’m glad to have been here.

So, this is farewell, I guess, for me. I’ll probably spend the rest of the war in England and upper Europe. And then – maybe I’ll see you in India.

Until then, goodbye, good luck and – as the Scottish say – God bless.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 5, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
Well, here we are again in dear old London town. At least they still call it London, although you can hardly see the city for Americans. But before going into that, I’ll tell you about our trip up here.

The morning I left Italy, I had to get up at dawn to catch the plane. Sgt. Harry Cowe, who was a part of the gang I had been living with, somehow managed to get both himself and me up right on the dot.

It was so early I hadn’t wanted or expected anybody else to get up. But while I was still rubbing my eyes, in came Pvt. Donn Jordan with a beautiful breakfast tray of juice, eggs, bacon, toast and coffee, just as though we weren’t at war at all.

But that wasn’t all. Our Italian boy, Reif (pronounced “Rafe”), who ordinarily didn’t come to work till 8 o’clock, showed up just as it was starting to get daylight.

Reif was a grand kid, smart and agreeable and full of good humor, and I’m sure he had never been so happy in his life as when working in our little madhouse. He had come voluntarily to help rassle my luggage out to the airport.

And last but not least, in another minute here came prancing in my tiny little friend, Lt. Maxine Budeman, the nurse-dietitian from the nearby Army hospital. She is from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and everybody calls her Goldilocks. She is just shoulder-high and weighs approximately 90 pounds.

A couple of months ago, when I was wasting away with anemia, Goldilocks kept sneaking me eggs and steak from the hospital. We had a lot of fun joking with the nurses about my meager hemoglobin and my one corpuscle, and it was Goldilocks who undoubtedly saved my life with her surreptitious calories.

A goodbye kiss for Goldilocks

At the airport, Rief lugged in my bedroll and bags for me and I got all set for the plane. Then we started to say goodbye. We four were standing beside a command car. A group of officers and soldiers stood nearby, idly watching us, while they waited for their planes. Our little goodbye sequence must have given them a chuckle or two.

First, I shook hands with Harry. And then, since pretty nurses don’t come into one’s life every day, I managed to inflict upon Goldilocks a goodbye kiss that must have shaken Rome. And then I turned to shake hands with Reif.

But Reif, instead, grabbed me by both shoulders and in true continental fashion implanted a large Italian smack, first on my right cheek and then on my left. Our audience was astonished, and so was I. And though slightly embarrassed, I must admit I was also sort of pleased. There are swell people in any nation, and I know that in our crazy little group there was a genuine fondness for many of our Italian friends.

Thus buoyed and puffed up by this international osculation, I floated onto the plane and we were off. On the way out, we flew right past the magnificence of Vesuvius, but I was feeling badly about leaving and didn’t even want to look out, or look back, so I didn’t.

Dusk over the Atlas Mountains

We flew most of the day and far into the night. Crossing the Mediterranean, I knotted myself up on top of a pile of mailsacks and slept half the trip away.

And then, in a different plane, over western Algeria and Morocco, I got myself a blanket, stretched out on the floor and slept for hours. The sun was just setting when I woke up.

I’ve written many times that war isn’t romantic to the people in it. Seldom have I ever felt any drama about the war or about myself in two years overseas. But here in that plane, all of a sudden, things did see romantic.

A heavy darkness had come inside the cabin. Passengers were indistinct shapes, kneeling at the windows to absorb the spell of the hour. The remnants of the sun streaked the cloud-banked horizon ahead, making it vividly red and savagely beautiful.

We were high, and the motors throbbed in a timeless rhythm. Below us were the green peaks of the Atlas Mountains, lovely in the softening shroud of the dusk. Villages with red roofs nestled on the peak tops. Down there lived sheep men – obscure mountain men who had never heard of a Nebelwerfer or a bazooka. Men at home at the end of the day in the poor, narrow, beautiful security of their own walls.

And there high in the sky above, and yet part of it all, were plain Americans incongruously away from home. For a moment, it seemed terribly dramatic that we should be there at all amid that darkening beauty so far away and so foreign and so old.

It was one of those moments impossible to transmit to another mind. A moment of overpowering beauty, of the surge of a marching world, of the relentlessness of our own fate. It made you want to cry.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 6, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
I hadn’t realized now immersed one can become in a war zone until we got to Casablanca, where there is no war.

Our war at Casablanca was brief and has long since moved on and far away. Our soldiers there now are only a few. They handle the port, which still receives supplies, and they handle the flow of airplanes to and from the war zones, but Casablanca really is a city at peace.

More than anything else you are impressed by the traffic on the streets being normal traffic. In every other city I had been in of recent months the streets were choked with speeding Army trucks, both American and British. Everywhere you would see a hundred Army vehicles for every local one.

But Casablanca has returned to its old ratio. Local autos and trucks and horse-drawn barouches fill the streets. The olive drab of the American uniform stands out as an individual thing among the sidewalk crowds, rather than forming a solid sea of brown as it does in our other war cities.

Being now such a backwash of the war, our few soldiers in Casablanca are bored. Some of them have been there a year and a half. They live almost normally, which in a manner is really the worst way to live during a war.

I talked to one officer who was typical. His chin was down. He said:

A WAC could do my job. A cripple could do my job. I’m young and healthy and should be at the front. But here I am, and here doubtless I will stay.

Crisis of the necktie

Military regulation is always stricter the farther away from the front you get. There in Casablanca they regulate your appearance, which is something you usually don’t have to worry about in Italy.

I did go so far as to get a clean uniform before leaving Italy, and considered myself very much dressed up. Yet when we go to Casablanca, I suddenly realized that anybody in uniform without a necktie was practically naked.

Once upon a time I had a necktie, but that was long ago and I have no idea what became of it. In Casablanca, I was caught between the devil and the sea, for one regulation required that you wear a necktie while another forbade transients from buying neckties at the post exchange.

My good name was saved by a soldier who took pity on me. This was Sgt. Ed Schuh of Altoona, Pennsylvania. He asked me up to his room for a chat one afternoon and, seeing my pitiful condition, gave me one of his numerous neckties.

Sgt. Schuh has a sister who is a nurse in one of our Army hospitals in England, and I promised to carry a verbal message to her. But the prospects of my succeeding look slim. This necktie will have me choked to death before I ever find her.

The Air Transport Command treats you well on these long trips. During our several days’ layover at Casablanca, waiting for the weather over the ocean to clear up, the ATC put us up at the best hotel in town and fed us fine food at an Army mess in another hotel.

My roommate for this stay was Lt. Col. Maynard Ashworth of Columbus, Georgia. Time was really heavy on our hands. There is nothing worse than waiting from day to day in a strange place for a plane to get ready to go somewhere. You don’t feel like settling down to reading. You’ve seen so much foreign country already that you don’t enjoy sightseeing. So, you just lie on a bed and look at the ceiling and count the slow passage of the hours and days.

Pal from Pittsburgh

One day, however, Col. Ashworth and I got a guide and went through the medina, which is the Arab quarter. I had been in medinas before, and they’re picturesque but horribly filthy. I would just as soon never see another one.

Another afternoon we hired a horse and buggy and took a long drive out along the seahorse road. We passed the country hotel where President Roosevelt stayed when he was there.

A couple of friends who helped us pass the time were Lt. Col. Tom Cassady of Pittsburgh and Maj. Charlie Moore of Inglewood, New Jersey, old acquaintances of mine from Marrakech and Dakar.

Lt. Col. Cassady is a son of Mrs. Susan Cassady of 521 El Court Street, Wilkinsburg, and was proprietor of two downtown parking lots before being called from the Officers’ Reserve to active duty in 1940.

He had been with the 176th Field Artillery for about 15 years, but after returning to service as a major he transferred to the Air Force and later to the Air Transport Service, with which he is stationed in North Africa now, his family reported.

Everybody was wonderful to us, and Casablanca is the nicest city I’ve seen in the Mediterranean Theater, and the weather was lovely – and yet a person who has nothing to do but wait almost goes crazy under the best of circumstances.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 8, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
About the most touching thing that has ever happened to me, I think, happened in Casablanca.

One afternoon, there was a knock at my hotel door. When I opened it, in walked six soldiers. Two of them I had known in Italy. They were in a predicament.

They were at a camp outside Casablanca, on their way back to America for specialized training. They were frontliners, men who had been through the mill. Most of them had been overseas for nearly two years. They were specialty selected men and carried in their pockets official orders sending them home.

But they had got so far as Casablanca and then hit one of those famous Army dead-end streets. They had been “frozen.” The details are too involved to explain. But they had become officially lost.

About to give up hope

For weeks they had pleaded, appealed, explored every approach imaginable, to try to get themselves unfrozen and on the way. They just couldn’t find out anything. They had exhausted all their possibilities and were just sitting there without hope. They were truly desperate. Then they heard I was in town, and with a new ray of hope came to see me.

These six had been chosen as representatives of 180 such men out at the camp. As I say, I had known two of them in Italy – Sgt. James Knight of Oklahoma and Pvt. Gerard Stillwell of Minnesota. I knew they were swell boys and true veterans.

Now it happened that in Casablanca I had some old-time friends who were pretty high-ranking officers. So, I picked up the phone and told one of them the story. He was a full colonel, and when he heard the story, he was furious. He asked if I could bring my soldier friends and meet him at the Red Cross Club immediately.

So we met. The big Red Cross lobby was full of soldiers, reading or talking or loafing. Officers aren’t supposed to come into an enlisted men’s club, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to the colonel.

Out of my six boys, I chose the two I had known in Italy to talk to the colonel. The four others sat at a distance.

The colonel is handsome and straight, silver-haired but youngish and a very vital kind of man. He is the kind real soldiers trust and are proud to say “Sir” to.

Sgt. Knight sat on the edge of a deep leather chair facing the colonel, and Pvt. Stillwell knelt on the floor in front of him, and they told their story. Their great sincerity and desperation showed in every word they said.

Colonel promises decision

The colonel took some notes as they talked, and asked some blunt and pointed questions.

For the first time in six weeks, the boys had found somebody who gave a damn. The colonel’s interest was electric. As old soldiers, they could instantly sense that here was an officer who meant business.

They finished, and then he said:

I’ll get a decision on this. I promise that by tomorrow night you will know one way or the other. Don’t get up too much hope. You might be sent back to your outfits instead of going home. But at least you’ll know right away.

That was all the boys wanted. They had got to the point where they didn’t much care whether they got home or not. All they wanted was for somebody to recognize that they existed.

I left Africa that night, so I don’t know what the decision was. But I have enough faith in my friend to feel positive that some immediate decision was obtained.

The colonel was busy, and as he started to rush out, he said to me, “Come jump in my car and I’ll take you back to your hotel.” But as we had risen from our chairs, I could sense that soldiers all over the lobby were getting up and starting to move tentatively toward us. I told the colonel I’d stay at the club awhile.

The moment he left I was surrounded by soldiers. There were more than 100 of them, mostly from this gang of lost men out at the transient camp. I didn’t know them, but they knew me, from Tunisia and Sicily and Italy.

Were frantic to get unlost

They surged around and talked and tried to tell me how desperate they had become. They tried to say they didn’t just selfishly want to go home, but were frantic to get unlost and get to doing something in the war again, even if it meant going back to the front at once.

Then they pulled out notebooks and franc notes, lira and postcards and snapshots of wives, sweethearts, and shoved them at me to sign. One boy even ruined a fresh $10 bill with my signature. I sat and wrote my name for 20 minutes without stopping.

Then they asked if they could take some snapshots on the sidewalk out front. So we moved out in a great body and held up sidewalk traffic while soldier after soldier snapped his camera.

Finally, we were through and I said goodbye and asked the way back to my hotel. And at that, a white-helmeted MP stepped out of the crowd and said, “We’ll take you back, sir.”

And so, in the splendor of a weapons carrier with an MP on either side of me, I rode back to the hotel. And that is the end of the story. I tell it because a man cannot help but feel proud to be thought well of by frontline soldiers.

Most men ‘stuck’ at Casablanca ‘frozen’ March 17 by Army

Washington –
War Department officials, shown the above Ernie Pyle dispatch, said today that they believed most of the men “stuck” at Casablanca were caught by the Army order of March 17 “freezing” – pending further instructions – all prospective Air Force trainees overseas who had not yet left for the States.

Two weeks later, the Department ordered the “frozen” men reassigned in the theaters from which they had been scheduled to depart for air training.

Gen. H. H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, in announcing that the Air Forces training program had been cut back – because air casualties were lighter than anticipated, and the demands of the ground forces were increasing – spoke of his “full knowledge of the disappointment” this would bring to personnel of the ground and service forces volunteering for air training, and expressed his “heartfelt appreciation for their proffered services.”

Sgt. Knight and Pvt. Stillwell, mentioned by Mr. Pyle, have now been restored to their original units, the War Department said. It added that Stillwell arrived in Casablanca March 4, just missing the ship home, and Knight arrived March 20. The men were never “lost,” it was said, but were under orders at all times pending War Department action.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 9, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
On the way across Africa I struck up an acquaintance with two British officers – Lt. Col. Colin Linton and Lt. Col. Jack Donaldson.

Linton is a Scot, a Sandhurst graduate and a Regular Army officer. He is not quite 30.

Donaldson did social work before the war. He is in his late 30s. His wife has turned farmer since the war and has written a book about it.

The viewpoints of the two colonels are very dissimilar – a social worker contrasted to a professional soldier – but they are both the kind of people you like. During those long days of waiting in Casablanca we would load around for hours whole those two argued good-naturedly and I pay on the bed and grinned.

We had hoped we might continue to England together, and we did. we flew in a converted bomber with old-fashioned seats.

I had got a big box lunch the night before for us to take along, but this time lunch was provided. We had a conglomeration of passengers, all military, running through four nationalities. Most of them were English, but we also had French, American and German. Yes, I said German. There were three prisoners, from a captured U-boat crew, with a British captain in charge. They sat just ahead of us.

What knowledge justified priority?

We all wondered what knowledge the Germans could possess that would justify flying them with high priority all the way to England, but we didn’t ask questions.

The three were very young, strong of body and good-looking too, and yet with sort of brutal faces. They talked very little among themselves. In fact, they slept most of the trip. The British captain spoke German, but he talked with them only in giving instructions.

Our cabin windows were blacked out during the night. The whole interior of the cabin was sheathed with heavy, padded cloth. But when dawn came the pads were taken down so we could see the sunrise.

The cabin was heated and we were not uncomfortable, except that we were not allowed to smoke. But soon after the takeoff, most of the passengers were asleep in their chairs.

Most everybody has some little quirk about traveling, and mine takes the form of airplane motors playing tunes. It’s just as clear as though there were an orchestra in the cabin. And to me they always play “You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.”

And so out there over the ocean the motors of our big plane droned on and on with “You Are My Sunshine,” and I couldn’t go to sleep. I think I was the only one awake when, long past midnight, I could sense that we were getting terribly high, for it was getting chilly and hard to breathe.

Motors stop playing tune

Then one of the crew came back to the cabin with a flashlight. He seemed worried, seeing me awake. He flashed his light and said with alarm in his voice, “Do you feel all right?”

I said I did. Then he said, “You sure you fell all right?” I said, “Sure, I feel all right.” Then he said, “If you are feeling faint, let me know.” I said, “All right,” and asked how high we were.

“Fifteen thousand,” he said, and then he added in a tone as though taking me into a horrible confidence: “And we are icing bad.”

Being the worrier type, I immediately expected the plane to fall out of control and plunge into the ocean three miles below us. Suddenly the motors stopped playing my tune, and it seemed to me they were all out of rhythm and vibrating badly.

For an hour I was as tense as piano wire, expecting the worst any moment. But nothing happened, and at last the sandman got the best of me and I slept till daylight.

Col. Donaldson woke me up to look at the sunrise. It was a majestic thing. We were above an ocean of mountainous clouds and the sun came up violently red over the snow-white horizon. Everybody was awake looking, but grogginess got the better of men and after one look I went back to sleep.

Wonderful to be safely in England

Finally after many hours we landed, and we climbed out stiffly. The first cigarette almost knocked us over. The air was snappy, but the sun was shining and it felt wonderful to be safely in England, for I had sort of dreaded the trip.

RAF and USAAF people saw us through the formalities. We ate breakfast in an RAF dining room. In an hour we were in another plane on the way to London. By noon we had landed at an airdrome near London where I had been many times before, and a big bus was waiting to take us into the city.

The British colonels were very happy. They had been away from England for years, and by suppertime they would see their wives. We gave each other our addresses.

I had left London for Africa one dark and mysterious night a year and a half ago. Many times since then I had never expected to see England again. But here it was, fresh and green and pretty.

And although I was still far from home and family, it was a wonderful thing to be returning, for I have loved London ever since first seeing it in the Blitz and it has become sort of my overseas home.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 10, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
I can’t seem to make up my mind about London this trip.

Some say that they can see in people’s conduct the strain of waiting on the invasion – that tempers are short and nerves taut. Yet the English seem to me just as imperturbable as ever.

Some say the English have been at war so long they’ve forgotten about peacetime life and are resigned like sheep to the war dragging on and on. But I don’t sense any such resignation.

It is certainly true that Britain has adjusted herself to wartime life, but that doesn’t mean blind, perpetual acceptance. People have learned to get along. American aid, and years of learning how to do, have eased the meager war life of the early days. There is more food now, and it is better than it used to be. There are more people on the streets, more shopping, more Sunday strollers in the parks.

I had supposed the people would look shabbier than a year and a half ago, but to me they look neater. And the physical city itself seems less dreary than in the fall of 1942.

English as polite as ever

As for short tempers, I haven’t seen any. Maybe it’s just because I have been accustomed to the screaming outbursts at each other of the emotional Italians. But from what I’ve seen so far, the English are as kind and polite to each other as they always were.

All in all, my first impression is that England is better, all around, than it was a year and a half ago, of course spring may have something to do with it. The days are warm and the buds are out and flowers are blooming, and everything always seems kind of wonderful to me in springtime.

Every day the London papers quote all the German rumors on invasion. They print the predictions of the German radio, and pieces from neutral countries saying the invasion will have to occur between 4:39 a.m. today and 4:41 a.m. tomorrow, or else be put off for a month. They print pictures of German fortifications, and tell of the sudden regrouping and rushing around of German troops. They conjecture on the thunderous explosions heard daily on the French side of the Channel.

Since the only invasion news we have is what the Germans predict, this echo from Germany has the effect, upon me at least, of a war of nerves.

London is crawling with Americans, both Army and civilian. All headquarters cities are alike in their overcrowding, their exaggerated discipline, and what appears to be military overstaffing.

Some say London is as bad as Washington. Some say it is worse. I do know that the section where American offices are most highly concentrated is a funny sight at lunchtime or in late afternoon. American uniforms pour out of the buildings in floods. On some streets an Englishman stands out as incongruously as he would in North Platte, Nebraska. Desk officers and fliers and WACs and nurses abound.

Two things that amuse the British are the “pink” trousers our officers wear and our perpetual saluting.

The American Army is very strict about saluting here. Everybody has to salute. Second lieutenants salute other second lieutenants. Arms flail up and down by the thousands as though everybody was crazy. People jab each other in the eyes saluting.

Sidewalk traffic one way

On one short street much traveled by Americans they have had to make sidewalk traffic one-way, presumably to prevent saluting casualties.

A friend of mine, a captain recently arrived from Africa, was stopped the other day by another captain just over from America who bawled the living daylights out of him for not returning his salute. My captain friend said he couldn’t because his right arm had become muscle-bound from waving it too much.

They’re strict about dress here too. You have to wear your dress blouse and either pinks or dark-green dress trousers. Everybody looks just so-so and exactly like everybody else.

I thought I looked very pretty when I got here, for all my clothes were clean for the first time in months. But I hadn’t reckoned with the headquarters atmosphere. I have never been stared at so much in my life as during my first three days here.

For I had on a British battle jacket, OD pants, and infantry boots. They never had seen anybody dressed like that before. Nobody knew what his strange apparition was, but they all played safe and saluted it anyhow – and then turned and stared belligerently at it. I think sheer awe is all that kept the MPs from picking me up.

Finally, after three days, I dug up a trunk I had left here a year and a half ago and got out my old brown civilian suit and gray hat, and now I’m all right. People just think I’m a bedraggled bank clerk, and it’s much better.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 11, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
If the Army fails to get ashore on D-Day, I think there are enough American correspondents here to force through a beachhead on their own.

There are gray men who covered the last war, and men from the Pacific, and there are little girls and big girls and pretty girls, and diplomatic correspondents and magazine contributors and editors and cubs and novelists. If Dog News doesn’t get a man over here pretty quickly to cover the dog angle of the invasion, I personally will never buy another copy.

At last reports, there were around 300 correspondents here. They say transmission facilities are being set up to carry a maximum of half a million words a day back to America.

While in London, we correspondents can wear either uniforms or civilian clothes. Some correspondents up from Italy have no civilian clothes and can’t get any – since we can’t get British coupons – so they have to wear uniforms constantly.

I am a civilian again for this little interlude, thanks to the old brown suit I left here a year and a half ago. The only trouble is, I get cold if the day is chilly. For the only outer coat I have is a dirty old mackinaw. I can’t wear that with my brown suit, for you can’t mix military and civilian clothing. I can’t wear it with my uniform, for it is nonregulation for city dress, and the MPs would pick me up. And I can’t buy a topcoat, for I can’t get British coupons. So, I just freeze, brother, freeze.

We live where we please, and that is a problem. It’s hard to find a place to live in crowded London. Some correspondents are lucky enough to find apartments or to share apartments with Army officers they know. Others manage to get into hotels.

Through a friend I got into one of London’s finest hotels. Ordinarily you are allowed to stay there only a few days. But, again through the influence of this very influential friend, I think the hotel is going to shut its eyes and let me stay, although nothing has actually been said about it – and I’m afraid to bring up the subject.

Odd feeling of guilt

For the first two days in my luxurious hotel room, I had an odd feeling of guilt. I’m really sincere about it. I felt ashamed, coming from Italy where so many live so miserably, to be sleeping in a beautiful soft bed in a room so tastefully decorated and deeply carpeted, with a big bathroom and constant hot water and three buttons to press to bring running either a waiter, a valet or my mail.

But I find I have a very strong willpower when it comes to readjusting to comfortable life. After a couple of days I said, “Boy, take it while you can get it,” and I don’t feel the least bit ashamed anymore.

Most correspondents who were through the campaigns in Africa, Sicily and Italy are up here now, and we feel like a sort of little family among all the new ones here.

Before I arrived, they had a big banquet for the correspondents who had been in the Mediterranean. There has been no general get-together since I got here, but a few of us call each other up and get together for a meal.

Most correspondents base on London and work out to the camps or airfields on trips of a few days each, then come back to write their stuff and wait on the invasion.

A vast Army Public Relations Branch occupied one huge four-story building and overflows into several others. They have set up a “correspondents’ room” as a sort of central headquarters for us. We get our mail there, and we go there to ask questions, and get various problems worked out, and meet each other.

Mail comes through fast

The mail, incidentally, is a revelation here. In the Mediterranean, the average letter took at least two weeks and a half to come from the States, and most of it much longer. Up here half of my mail is coming through in a week. I even have had one letter in five days, and the longest has been only two weeks on the way.

Obviously, no correspondent knows when the invasion will be or where. I imagine you could count on your fingers all the Army officers in England who know. All we correspondents can do is be ready.

Only a few will go in on the initial invasion or in the early stages. Some of the eager ones have tried to pull strings to get front seats in the invasion armada. Others with better judgment have just kept quiet and let matters take their course. Personally, I am trying to get accredited to the British Home Guard to help defend the mid-England town of Burford from German attack.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 12, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
The American contingent in London has many new terms since I left here in 1942. The newest and most frequently heard is “SHAEF.” This is the initials of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. It is SHAEF that is planning and will direct the invasion. Gen. Eisenhower is head man of SHAEF.

I mention it only to show how initials grow into words over here, just as they do back in Washington.

The word ETOUSA still exists. That stands for European Theater of Operation United States Army. That is, headquarters of the American Army as distinct from Allied Headquarters. It is two years old and still functioning.

When we were here in 1942, ETOUSA was always pronounced “eetoosa.” For some unexplainable reason, the pronunciation has now changed to “eetowza.” Being old-fashioned and set in my ways, I like the first one better.

‘Frozen’ soldiers rejoin units

I had a quick V-letter the other day from the Mediterranean. It was from one of the “frozen” boys in Casablanca that I wrote about – the American-bound soldiers who had hit a dead-end street and had been hung up in Casa for six weeks when I ran into them.

Well, they got a decision on their fate. But it was the wrong one. Their schooling program was called off, their transfer home was canceled, and they were ordered back to their original outfits. The letter says:

It was a great dream while it lasted, but it’s over now. We have been riding the Forty-and-Eights and hitting the replacement depots – and you know what that means.

The only thing that really hurts is that we didn’t catch the many boats we might have caught if we had seen “somebody” sooner. But enough of this crying in your Scotch, Ernie. We will see you again someday. And again, thanks a million from all of us.

It was a cruel and disappointing thing, but that is the way real soldiers take it. The Army is so big that things like that are bound to happen. But they shouldn’t happen too often.

Such a thing had happened to one of those boys four times in two years. Even the best soldier can’t have too much discouragement and disillusionment heaped upon him.

The other day I took a trip up to mid-England to see a man from Albuquerque. He is, in fact, the man who built our little white house out there on the mesa, and who subsequently became one of our best friends.

His name is Arthur McCollum. He was a lieutenant in the last war and he is a captain in this. He spent 20 years regretting that he never got overseas the other time, and he is very happy that he made it this time. He is attached to a big general hospital in the country.

Son missing following reunion

In January, Capt. McCollum had a reunion with his son, Lt. Ross McCollum, Ross was chief pilot of a Flying Fortress. Father and son had two wonderful weekends together. And then on his second mission over Germany, Ross didn’t come back. Nothing has been heard from him since. That was nearly four months ago.

Capt. Mac and Ross were real companions – they played together and dreamed and planned together. After the war, they were going to fish a lot and then start an airplane sales agency together.

Capt. Mac says he kind of went to the bottom of the barrel over Ross. For two months, he was so low he felt he couldn’t take it. And then he said to himself, “Look here, you damn fool! You can’t do this. Get yourself together.” And having given himself that abrupt command, he carried it out. And today he is all right.

I found him the same kind of life-loving, gay friends I had known in Albuquerque. We rode bicycles around the countryside, celebrated here and there, made fools of ourselves and had a wonderful time.

Capt. Mac talked a lot about Ross, and felt better for the talking, but he didn’t do any crying on my shoulder. He feels firmly that Ross will come back, but he knows now that if he never does, he can take it.

Even though he is an intimate friend of mine, I consider him one of the finest examples I know of what people can and must do when the tragedy of war falls fully upon them.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 13, 1944)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

London, England – (by wireless)
You pick up a lot of funny stories as you wander around London. Maybe these little yarns have been printed before. If so, you’ll just have to excuse me on the grounds that I’ve been in another world for a long time.

One story has to do with Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz, head of the American Army Air Forces here. One night he was standing on a balcony, watching a German raid on London. Their aim was very bad that night and they were dropping bombs miles from any target. Gen. Spaatz was furious. He turned to one of his fellow watchers and blurted out, “The damn fools. They’re setting bombing back 20 years.”

Another one has to do with the way Americans have flooded this island and nearly crowded the English off. Actually, the Americans aren’t bad and the English reception is good. Little stories like this help to keep us from getting on each other’s nerves. Americans tell it themselves, so it’s all night. the story is simply that one American said to another, “These English are beginning to act as if this country belonged to them.”

Meets friend’s sister

A year ago, I was with an infantry company of the 1st Division in those bitter mountain battles west of Mateur, in Tunisia. For three days I had been living in a tent with a British captain attached to us as a liaison officer. The night before an attack, he and I marched up to the lines with separate battalions of the same regiment.

Some of you may remember my writing about him at the time. Just after dawn the next day I saw a British officer being carried on a stretcher. When I ran over, sure enough it was my friend, Capt. Jack Morris Enfield. He was badly wounded in the back and arm. Our stretcher bearers carried him to the rear and I never saw him again.

Yesterday I was having lunch in an officer’s club when an American colonel I had known in Tunisia came over. He said he had a British girl at his table he’d like to me to meet. And when he introduced us, it was Capt. Enfield’s sister.

She said her brother had recovered. He still had some pain in his back, but she guessed he was all right as he was now in the paratroops. I had missed him in London by only 24 hours.

I suppose to give this story the proper ending Miss Enfield and I should get married and live happily ever after. That occurred to me too, but when I asked her, she said no. Oh well, lackaday.

Pyle sleeps through raid

You’ve probably heard what a frightful noise the new rocket guns in London make. At least I’d heard about it before coming up here.

Well, we’ve had a few minor raids since I arrived. On the first one I found I was so scared after our Anzio escape that all I could do was just lie there trying to get my breath. A fellow has a kind of cumulative fright after he has had a real close one.

I think also that I was so afraid to hear the awful noise of those rocket guns that I was practically paralyzed. Finally they did go off. I guess I had expected too much, for they didn’t horrify me half as much as I had thought they would. The noise itself isn’t so bad – it’s what it sounds like that terrifies you. For a rocket going up sounds like a bomb coming down. After you’ve learned that and adjusted yourself to it, rocket guns aren’t bad.

P.S.: A few nights later, we had the noisiest raid of my stay here and I slept through the whole thing. When the waiter came to the room next morning, he started talking about the raid and I said, “What raid?” He said, “Quit joking. Why, every gun in London was going last night.” But I didn’t wake up. I wish I could arrange it that way for all raids.

Americans fare well

We Americans in London fare very well on post-exchange rations. We are allowed seven packs of cigarettes a week, two bars of chocolate, two razorblades and a can of fruit juice.

In addition, we can buy such needs as soap, toothpaste, shaving cream, handkerchiefs, fountain pens and dozens of other little things. We aren’t suffering, I assure you.

And along that line, many readers at home are good enough to send me boxes. I appreciate them, but right now I would like to urge you not to send me any more. First, it needlessly takes up shipping space, and second, there isn’t a thing I need.

My family has begged me to ask them for something, but truthfully there’s nothing I want. Nothing, that is, except a dog and a sport roadster and a fireplace and my own easy chair and a dozen new books and lots of spare time. But of course, they all weigh over eight ounces, so never mind.