The Pittsburgh Press (May 16, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
London, England – (by wireless)
More on how we eat in London…
In addition to the huge “Willow Run” mess I told about yesterday, there are a number of smaller messes and clubs, all run by the Army. They get more exclusive as they get smaller. Prices go up as you advance to the higher echelons, although the food is about the same.
The highest mess I’m allowed in charges $1.20 for dinner.
There is a junior officers’ mess which serves about 600 meals a day. The officers can bring guests, and you are served by British waitresses. You are supposed to eat everything on your plate here too, but they’re not quite so strict about it as at “Willow Run.”
Then there is the senior officers’ club. It’s about the same size and on the same principle as the junior officers’ club, only you have to be a major or above to get in. We call this the “Old Men’s Club.”
You can take female guests here, and most everybody does. The place is full of big stomachs and bald heads and service stripes from the last war.
Next up in the scale is the mess for full colonels and generals only, and no guests are allowed. Needless to say, I’ve never been in this mess.
One solely for generals
But we haven’t reached the top yet. The zenith is called the “Yankee Doodle Club,” and it is open only to major generals and up, either American or British. It’s a joke around town about the poor brigadier generals being so low and common they can’t even get into the generals’ mess.
We correspondents and many of the other civilian workers over here, such as Red Cross people and aircraft technical men, are allowed membership in both Willow Run and the junior officers’ club. In addition, a handful of old correspondents like me are allowed in the senior officers’ club.
So, all this gives us a very fine choice in eating. Just for diversity we sort of rotate among the three, and probably four times a week we eat at British restaurants, just because we happen to be in a different part of town or are invited out.
The only one of these many messes that serves breakfast is Willow Run. But now that I’m a city man, I can’t get myself up in time to make Willow Run. So I’m caught in the English custom of eating breakfast in your room. And what a concoction the English hotel breakfast is!
But Pyle eats eggs
It consists of porridge, toast, some coal-black mushrooms (which no self-respecting Englishman would have breakfast without) and a small slice of ham – which the British for some reason call bacon.
Being an old Army scrounger, I’ve found a way out of this. The floor waitress, although daily appalled by the suggestion, does bring me each morning one big beautiful American shredded-wheat biscuit. From the Army I got enough extra sugar to make it palatable. Also from the Army I got a can of condensed milk to add to my small hotel portion.
But best of all I have eggs, this enviable acquisition came through the big heart of correspondent Gordon Gammack of The Des Moines Register and Tribune. “Gamm” came back from Ireland the other day bearing five dozen duck eggs, and he gave me two dozen of them. A duck egg, my friends, is a big egg. One of them gives you all you can hold for breakfast.
So, all in all, we expatriates over here bleeding out the war in London do manage to suffer along and gain a little weight now and then.
All messes have bars
Every one of the messes has a bar.
At peak hours you can’t get within yelling distance of the bar at Willow Run.
But don’t worry, you folks at home, about our officers drinking themselves to death over here. Liquor is very, very short in London.
Each mess has a definite ration each day. It isn’t very much. Every person who goes to the bar is on his honor not to drink more than two drinks. In addition to that, the bar has a unique rationing system of its own.
It will sell whisky and gin for about 15 minutes and then hang up the “all out” sign, leaving only beer and wine. The dense crowd at the bar gradually drifts away, and a new crowd forms. Then they start selling whisky and gin again for about 15 minutes.
It seems to work out to everybody’s satisfaction. There is only one drawback. The shock of drinking good liquor after a winter of poisonous bootleg cognac is almost too much for soldiers up from Italy.