The Pittsburgh Press (June 22, 1944)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in France – (by wireless)
Folks newly arrived from America say that you people at home are grave and eager about this, our greatest operation of the war so far.
But they say also that you are giving the landings themselves an important out of proportion to what must follow before the war can end. They say you feel that now that we are on the soil of France, we will just seep rapidly ahead and the Germans will soon crumble.
It is natural for you to feel that, and nobody is blaming you. But I thought maybe in this column I could help your understanding of things if we sort of charted this European campaign. This is no attempt to predict – it is just an effort to clarify.
On the German side in Western Europe, we face an opponent who has been building his defenses and his forces for four years. A great army of men was here waiting to us, well prepared and well equipped.
On the English side of the Channel, we and the British spent more than two years building up to equality in men and arms with this opponent. Finally we reached that equality, and I am sure considerably more than equality.
Then – on June 6 – came the invasion we had waited for so long. The big show has begun. So, let’s divide the remainder of this campaign into phases.
Phase No 1 was the highly vital task of getting ashore at all. That phase could not last long. We either had to break a hole in the beach defenses and have our men flowing through that hole within a few hours, or the jig was up. Phase No. 1 came out all in our favor.
We planned Phase No. 2 so that we could throw in our first follow-up waves without casualties or delay. That was also a phase we didn’t care to dillydally about. The beaches were fairly clear of shellfire within two days.
Phase No. 2 is what we are in right now. And that is to build a wall of troops around the outer rim of our beachhead that will hold off any German counterattacks.
The whole split-second question of the first few days was whether we could get troops and supplies through our little needle’s-eye of a beachhead faster than the Germans could bring theirs from all over Europe.
As this is written, no important counterattack has developed. The Germans are having plenty of trouble moving their stuff up, because of our savage air activity. Every day that passes adds to our forces and gives us greater security.
If we can hold that outer line against all attack for a short while yet, then we will have won Phase No. 3. And right now, it certainly seems that we are winning it.
Phases 1, 2, and 3 were all preliminary ones. It took three of them merely to get us a place in Europe from which to begin. The three of them merely give us the corner lot on which we are going to build our house.
Phase No. 4 is the housebuilding phase. This is the phase you folks at home have been working so hard to make possible.
In England and America, we’ve got the men and machines and supplies and munitions to overbalance the great stockpile Germany has built up in Western Europe, But we’ve got to get it over here into France before we go on.
You may have imagined that we would hit the beach and go right on, advancing 30 miles a day till we reached the German border. We could no more do that than a baby, after taking its first step, could run a hundred-yard dash. You have to wait until your strength is built up before you can run.
That is Phase No. 4. It will go on for some time yet. Don’t be impatient. The wall in front of us will hold while we gradually pile this beachhead to the saturation point with extra men, guns, trucks, food, ammunition, gasoline, telephone wire, repair shops, hospitals, airfields, and thousands of other items – pack it until we have more than the Germans have, and with lots of reserves in addition.
Then and not until then will Phase No. 5 start. Phase No. 5 is the real war – big-scale war. How long we will have to wait between now and the beginning of Phase No. 5, I don’t know. But my guess is that it will take months rather than weeks.
Naturally there will be fighting during that time. The Germans will try to crush us back onto the beaches. We at the same time will try to extend our holdings enough to protect our accumulating men and supplies.
But Phase No. 5 will be the final one. How long it will last, I also don’t know – and in that ignorance, I have a great deal of company. I doubt if anyone in the world knows. All we do know is that things look good and that it will definitely end in our favor.
So don’t be impatient if we seem to go slowly for a while. You can’t lay the foundation of a house in the forenoon and move into the house that evening. We are just now laying the foundation of our house of war in Europe. It will take a while to build the wall and get the roof on. And then…