The Pittsburgh Press (June 20, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in France – (wireless)
Would you be interested in hearing how we spent our first night in France? Well, even if you wouldn’t…
Just after supper we got an order to unload our vehicles from the LST. One of those big self-propelled bargelike things, made of steel pontoons bolted together, came up in front of our ship and the vehicles were driven off onto it.
These barges are called rhinos. They move very slowly, and it took us an hour to get to shore. Then the beachmaster signaled us not to land, for the tide wasn’t right. So, we had to loaf around out there on the water for another hour.
They were blowing up mines on the beach, and some of our bug naval guns were still thundering away at the Germans. The evening was cloudy and miserable, and it began to rain as we waited. We were all cold.
At last, the beachmaster let us in. The barge grounded about fifty yards from shore, and runways were let down.
Every one of our vehicles had been waterproofed, so that the engines wouldn’t drown out while going through the surf.
I came ashore in a jeep with Pvt. William Bates Wescott of Culver City, California. Wescott is a good-looking, intelligent man of 26 who used to be a salesman for the Edgemar Farms Dairy at Venice, California. He is at war for the first time, and all this shooting and stuff are completely new to him, but he is doing all right.
Wescott’s wife works in downtown Los Angeles, and just in case you want to take her some flowers for being the wife of such a nice guy, she’s a girl who makes Pullman reservations for the Southern Pacific Railroad at Sixth and Main.
Wescott and I were the first ones off the barge. I had waterproofed my typewriter by taping it up in a gas cape. But the water came only to the floor of the jeep. We didn’t even get out feet wet, but the waves did slosh in and get the seats of our pants wet.
It was several miles to our bivouac area. On the way we passed many bodies lying alongside the road, both German and Americans but mostly German. Some of the French people along the roads smiled and waved, while others kept their heads down and wouldn’t look up.
It was dark when we got to our bivouac, a grape and apple orchard on a hillside. We pulled in and parked under a tree. First, we posted sentries, and then Wescott dug into his big ration box in the jeep and got out some grapefruit juice crackers and sardines.
While we were eating, the first German planes of the night came over. One dropped its bombs not awfully far away – enough to give us
It was midnight by the time we had finished eating and got a camouflage over the jeep in preparation for the first light next morning. We decided to get what sleep we could. We didn’t have our bedrolls yet, but we did have two blankets apiece. We just lay down on the ground.
Another jeep had pulled under the tree with us. Altogether, our little group sleeping on the ground consisted of two colonels, three enlisted men and myself. We slept in all our clothes.
German planes kept coming over one by one. Our guns kept up their booming and crackling all night long, in fits and jerks.
After an hour or so, one of our colonels said we’d better move our blankets so our heads would be under the jeeps because pieces of flak were falling all over the orchard.
He said the flak wouldn’t kill you unless it hit you in the head. I said I guessed it would if it hit you in the stomach. He said it wouldn’t. I still think it would.
Anyhow, I moved my head under and left my stomach out in the open. My hand was right behind the front wheel, under the fender. It was a good place, but the headroom was so scant that every time I would turn over I would get a mouthful of mud from the fender.
Then we got cold. Our two blankets might as well have been handkerchiefs, for all the warmth there was in them. We lit cigarettes and smoked under our blankets. We couldn’t sleep much anyhow, for the noise of the guns.
Sometimes planes would come in low, and we would like there scrunched up in that knotty tenseness you get when waiting to be hit.
Finally, daylight came. At dawn, our planes always come over and the Germans leave, so the days are safe and secure as Far as the air is concerned.
We all got up at dawn, welcoming a chance to move around and get warm. Pvt. Wescott opened some K rations and we ate a scanty breakfast off the hood of the jeep. Then a colonel made a reconnaissance tour. When he came back, he said that our little orchard, which looked so rural and pretty in the dawn, was full of dead Germans, killed the day before. We would have to help bury them pretty soon.
That was our first night in France.