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.