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.