The Pittsburgh Press (June 1, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in England –
The commander of the tank destroyer battalion I have been visiting is Lt. Col. Joseph Deeley of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. He used to run a wool-carding mill there. I like his attitude toward things.
When I first showed up, he was perfectly courteous but he made plenty sure I had proper credentials and whatnot. As he said, they have had plenty of security preached into them back home, and this indeed is a critical period and he isn’t taking any chances.
But once he had assured himself I was all right, he called in his sergeants and told them to go around and tell their men they were perfectly free ti show me any and all equipment they had and talk to me as freely as they wanted to.
As I told him later, I don’t think he need have bothered. For these boys, approaching war for the first time, pumped me so thoroughly on what war is like that I hardly got a chance to ask any questions of them. Maybe I’ll have to write some security regulations of my own just out of self-protection. Who the devil is reporting this war, anyway?
One company commander, Capt. Charles Harding of Olmsted Falls, near Cleveland, had just had a letter from home telling him to keep an eye out for me. He figured that in a war this big our paths would never cross, but they did.
Another Ohioan came up and introduced himself. This was Pfc. James Francis McClory of Cleveland. McClory is what is aptly known in the battalion as a “character.” He used to be a prizefighter. Being in the horny-handed world of pugilists, he has a great affinity for apes. There’s an almost-human ape at the zoo in a nearby city which McClory goes to see every time he gets a pass. He calls him “Alfred the Ape,” and says he sure wishes he could take him back to Cleveland.
McClory used to work for the Cleveland Welding Company, which made bicycles. When I asked him what he did, he said, “Oh, I was just a hod knocker.”
You can kid lots with McClory. When I want to write down his name, I out “Sergeant” in front of it, and he says, “No, no, I’d never get to be a sergeant if the war lasted 50 years.”
So I said, “Well, ‘Corporal’ then.” But he said, “No, I ain’t even got sense enough to be a corporal.”
So I said:
Well, we simply can’t have you a private. What would the McClorys of the world think with you only a private?
So we compromised and made his a PFC.
McClory is one of those guys who are good for the morale of an outfit. He is always doing or saying something funny. And he is a good soldier. He is one of the kind who are fanatically loyal.
He has a great affection for his company commander, Capt. John Jay Kennedy of Roslindale, Massachusetts. Once when some gasoline caught fire, McClory threw himself on the captain and knocked him out of the way, saving him from serious injury. Another time, when Capt. Kennedy’s mother was very ill, McClory took the last money he had and telegraphed home to his parish to have a mass said for the captain’s mother.
A number of men in the battalion told me later that McClory was the kind of man they would like to have with them when the going got tough.
Here in England this battalion is living in pyramidal tents, sleeping on cots. But when they start across, they will take only pup tents and two blankets apiece and they will be sleeping on the ground. Their barracks bags with extra clothes and stuff will catch up with them some time in the dim future.
I had been under the impression that all troops recently arrived from the States would be wearing the new infantry boots which we have been issuing in Italy. I had heard that the old cumbersome and unsatisfactory legging was in limbo. But these boys all wore leggings and had never heard of the new boot.
English dogs have begun to attach themselves to the tank destroyer boys, as they do to any and all camps of soldiers. These boys haven’t actually adopted any of them as individual pets, because they can’t take them along to the continent. They are, however, pet-minded. They say that back in the States they had a number of pigs for pets. In that case, you could have your pet and eat it, too.