The Pittsburgh Press (February 1, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A forward airdrome in French North Africa – (Jan. 31)
The American soldier is a born housewife, I’ve become convinced. I’ll bet there’s not another army in the world that fixes itself a “home away from home” as quickly as ours does. I’ve seen the little home touches created by our soldiers in their barns and castles and barracks and tents all over America, Ireland, England and Africa. But nowhere has this sort of thing given such a play as here at one of our desert airdromes.
The reason is twofold: First, the climate here is so dry you can fix up something with a fair certainty that it won’t be washed away in the morning. Second, because of the constant danger of a German bashing, the boys have dug into the ground to make their homes, and the things they can do with a cave were endless, as every farm boy knows.
The basic shelter here is a pup tent, but the soldiers have dug holes and set their tents over these. And the accessories inside provide one of the greatest shows on earth. Wandering among them is better than going to a state fair. The variations are infinite.
There are a few fantastically elaborate two- and three-room apartments underground. One officer has dug his deep slit trench right inside his tent, at the foot of his bed. He has even lined the trench with blankets so he can lie six feet below ground under canvas and sleep during a raid. The finest homes are made by those who are lucky enough to get or borrow the covered-wagon ribs and canvas from a truck. They dug a hole and plant the canopy over the top.
Some of them have places fixed like sheiks’ palaces. On the dirt floors are mats bought from Arabs in a nearby village. Some have electric lights hooked to batteries. One man bought a two-burner gasoline stove from some Frenchman for $3.20. On it he and his buddies heat water for washing and fry an occasional egg. Furthermore, they have rigged up a shield from a gasoline tin and fitted it over the stove so that it channels the heat sideways and warms the tent at night.
An officer whose bedroll lies flat on the ground dug a hole two feet deep beside this ‘‘bed” so he can let his legs hang over the side normally when he sits on the bed. Many dugouts have pictures of girls back home hanging on the walls. A few boys have papered their bare walls with Arab straw mats.
One evening I stuck my nose into the dugout of Sgt. Ray Aalto, 4732 Oakton Street, Skokie, Illinois. He is an ordnance man now, caring for the guns on airplanes, but before the war he was a steam-boiler man. Aalto has one thing nobody else in camp has. He has built a fireplace inside his dugout. He has tunneled into one end of the dugout, lined the hole with gasoline tins, and made a double-jointed chimney so that no sparks nor light can show. He wishes his wife could see him now.
The deepest and most comfortable dugout I’ve seen was built by four boys in the ground crew of a fighter squadron. It is five feet deep, and on each side, they left a ledge wide enough for two bedding rolls, making two double beds. You enter by a long L-shaped trench, with steps leading down the first part of the L. At the door is a double set of blackout curtains. Inside they have rigged up candles and flashlights with blackout hoods.
Most of the soldiers go to bed an hour or so after dark, because the camp is blacked out and there’s nothing else to do. Only those with blackout lights in their dugouts can stay up and read or play cards or talk. These four boys have dug a square hole in the wall of their dugout and fitted into it a gasoline tin with a door lock, making a perfect wall safe for cigarettes, chocolates, etc. Their dugout is so deep they can stay in it during a raid. In fact, they don’t even get out of bed.
It took the four of them three days, working every minute of their spare time, to dig their hole and fix it up. The four are Pvt. Neil Chamblee of Zebulon, North Carolina, Pvt. W. T. Minges of Gastonia, North Carolina, Sgt. Robert Cook of Montpelier, Indiana, and Sgt. Richard Hughes of Weiner, Arkansas. Sgt. Hughes was especially pleased that I came around, because his mother had written him that I was in Africa and that she hoped our paths would cross, but he never supposed they would.
I believe a character analyst could walk around this camp and learn more than you could by having the boys fill out a thousand questionnaires. Hundreds of boys have done nothing at all to their tents, but I believe at least half of them have added some home touch. A fellow doesn’t think of these things and work his head off on his own time creating them unless he’s got a real lively ingenuity in him.