Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 9, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the frontline in Tunisia – (Feb. 9)
We drive our jeep in under a tree, camouflaged it by covering it with limbs, and then walked up the side of a hill for about 500 yards. Half a mile to the south of us, the battle for Ousseltia Pass in central Tunisia was going on.

We stopped in what is known as a forward command post, from which a battle is directed. This one consisted of a tent 20 feet square, well hidden under a tree. However, the whole tent had been dropped down and simply lay like a tarpaulin covering the officers’ bedrolls and bags. All the work was being done around two field telephones lying in their leather cases on the ground ten feet from the tent.

The rocky hillside was covered with little bushes and small fir trees. The sun was out and the day was rather warm. There were no papers or desks or anything – just three or four officers standing and sitting on a hillside near two telephones on the ground. One officer had a large map case. That’s all the paraphernalia there was for directing the battle.

Our troops were on top of a ridge about a quarter of a mile above us. The enemy was in the valley beyond, and on a parallel ridge a mile farther on. We could walk up and look over, but we couldn’t see anything. Both sides were well hidden in the brush. Every minute or two our nearby artillery would fire, and then half a minute or so later we could hear faintly the explosion of the shells far away. An officer said:

Nobody’s doing much damage right now, but at least we’re getting in ten shots to their one.

Now and then a louder and much nearer blast interrupted us. When I asked what size gun this was, an officer said it wasn’t a gun – it was enemy mortar shells exploding. I supposed they were three or four miles away, but he said they were falling only 800 yards from us.

Once in a while we could hear machine-gun fire in the distance. A young second lieutenant stood near the phones and did all the talking over them. In fact, he appeared to be making all the decisions. And he impressed me as knowing his business remarkably well.

The highest officer around was a lieutenant colonel, but he seemed to leave everything to his lieutenant, and at every signal of approaching planes, he ran to a nearby foxhole and stayed there till the planes had gone. Other officers commented about him in terms not meant for mixed company, but the young lieutenant said nothing.

The phone rang every few minutes. Other command posts would be calling in to report or to ask instructions. Now and then the chief post, some 15 miles back, would call and ask how things were going. Officers and enlisted men kept appearing from down below or over the hill, asking about things. One sergeant came to inquire where a certain post was, saying he had two jeep tires and a tire for an antitank gun that he was supposed to deliver.

Another sergeant, wearing an overcoat, came up the hill, saluted formally, and reported that a certain battery setup was ready to fire. They told him to go ahead. A phone rang. The captain of an ack-ack battery said the enemy had his range and asked permission to move. He was told to go ahead. All the conversation was informal and unexcited.

A phone rang again. An officer at another command post was asking for a decision on whether to move forward. The young lieutenant, apparently not wishing to give direct orders to a higher officer, solved the problem by putting his words in the form of advice, sprinkling two or three “sirs” in every sentence. I thought he handled it beautifully.

Now and then the lieutenant would phone some other post. All the posts have code terms such as “Hatrack” and “Monsoon” and “Chicago.” I’ve just made those up as examples, since naturally I can’t print the real codenames.

Once the lieutenant phoned to a rear command post and told them to send more trucks to a town where two trucks had been disabled that morning. Several times he phoned other posts to check up on a colonel who was wandering around the battle area in a jeep. You could tell they were very fond of the colonel, and that he apparently paid little attention to danger.

There were no planes in the sky when we arrived, but that morning the Germans had been over and bombed and strafed our troops badly. The command post had called for air support, but somebody at the other end said the planes were busy on other missions and:

You’ll just have to grin and bear it.

The men around our post spoke cynically about that remark all afternoon. They would say:

Grin and bear it, eh? Well, we’ll bear it but we won’t guarantee to grin.

But in the late afternoon, our planes did come. First, we didn’t know they were ours, so we all took to the foxholes. Finally, after they had flown overhead a couple of times without doing anything, somebody yelled:

They’re definitely ours!

So, we came out. The planes circled for about 10 minutes hunting for the correct spot in the bush-covered mountainside. They seemed to take their time at it, to make sure, and then finally they started peeling off one at a time and came diving down at a hillside a mile away.

They’d dive and then wheel back high into the sky and dive against. Apparently, there was no enemy attack, for there were no black puffs around the planes. We could hear their machine guns, and their cannon shells bursting.

They kept on diving and shooting for about 15 minutes. Pretty soon an officer came running up the hill and said:

Do you see that? Those damned Germans are mixed up and strafing hell out of the Italians!

When we told him they were our planes, he said “Oh!” and went back down the hill.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 10, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the frontline in Tunisia – (Feb. 9)
The afternoon sun went over the hill and the evening chill began to come down. We were sitting on a busy hillside – just a small bunch of American officers forming what is called a forward command post.

Officers who had been in the battle for Ousseltia Pass all day started wandering in through the brush on foot, to report. They were dirty and tired but the day had gone well, and they were cheerful in a quiet and unexpressed way.

A Medical Corps major came up the hill and said:

Those blankety-blanks! They’ve knocked out two of my ambulances that were trying to get the wounded back. A hell of a lot a Red Cross means to them!

Nobody said anything. He went back down the hill, as mad as a hornet.

The officers kept talking about three fellow officers who had been killed during the day, and a fourth one who was missing. One of the dead men apparently had been a special favorite. An officer who had been beside him when it happened came up with blood on his clothes. He said:

We hit the ground together. But when I got up, he couldn’t. It took him right in the head. He felt no pain.

An officer told an enlisted man:

Raise up that tent and pack his stuff.

Another one said:

The hell of it is his wife’s due to have a baby anytime now.

Just then a sergeant walked up. He had left the post that morning with the officer who was now missing. They all asked:

Where’s Captain So-and-so?

The sergeant said he didn’t know. Then he said he himself had been captured. “Captured?” the officers asked.

He said:

Yes. The Italians captured me and then turned me loose.

The sergeant was Vernon Gery, 305 West Navarre St., South Bend, Indiana. He is a married man, and was a lawyer before the war. He is a young and husky fellow. He didn’t appear to be very much shaken by his experience, but he said he never was so scared in his life.

Sitting there on the ground he told me his experience. He and the missing captain and a jeep driver had gone forward at 9:30 in the morning to hunt for the body of a popular officer who had been killed. They parked the jeep, and the captain told them to stay there till he returned. They covered the jeep with brush and then hid in the bushes to wait while the captain went on alone. As they were lying there the driver yelled to Sgt. Gery:

Look, they’re retreating!

He saw eight soldiers coming toward them. He thought they were French, but actually they were an Italian patrol. The driver’s shout attracted their attention and they began shooting. The two Americans fired back. The jeep driver was hit and killed instantly. Gery said the driver yelled just once when he was hit. He said:

I’ll be hearing that yell for a long time.

In a moment the Italians had Gery. Apparently, they were on a definite mission, for seven of them went on, leaving one guard to watch Gery. They had taken his rifle, searched him, and given back his identification cards, but they kept his cigarettes, pipe, tobacco, chewing gum, and message book.

I asked:

Did they take your money?

Gery said:

I didn’t have any. I haven’t been paid in three months. I haven’t had a cent in my pocket for weeks.

For an hour the Italian sat 10 feet from Gery with his rifle pointed at him. Gery says the Italian must have been well-acquainted with the American rifle, for he passed the time taking it apart and putting it together, and did it rapidly and correctly. The Italian didn’t try to talk to Gery.

Suddenly our artillery began dropping shells close to where they sat. That was too much for the Italian. He just got up and disappeared into the bushes. And Gery started home.

As Gery finished his story, the commanding colonel came back from his afternoon’s tour. He sat down on the ground, and the officers gathered around to hear his reports and get their instructions for the night. There was still gunfire around. The colonel, a tall, middle-aged man, wore glasses and had a schoolteacherly look. But he cussed a blue streak and made his decisions crisply. You could tell he was loved and respected. He called all his men by their first names. He wore a brown canvas cap, without any insignia at all. Officers at the front tried to look as little like officers as possible, for the enemy liked to pick them off first.

Somebody asked if the colonel would like a cup of tea. He said he would. Somebody yelled, and out of the bushes came a Chinese boy in uniform and helmet, carrying a teapot covered with a rag.

Planes came over again, and several officers ran to foxholes, but the colonel acted as if he didn’t see them. The rest of us stayed and continued the conversation. The officers told him about the three members of his staff who had been killed.

He said:

Christ! Well, we’re in a war. We’ve got to expect it. We must try not to feel too bad about it.

And then he went on:

Here’s the way it is. We are being relieved at 11:30 tonight. Jim, you start taking up your phone wire, but nothing else moves a foot before daylight. Joe, you keep on firing up to leaving time, so they won’t know we are pulling out. We’ve got ‘em on the run, and I wish we could stay, but we’ve got our orders.

Then everybody left to carry out his new duties, and we went back down the hill to our jeep.

That is the way war looks from a forward command post.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 11, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward airdrome in French North Africa – (Feb. 10)
It is hard for a layman to understand the fine points of aerial combat as practiced at the moment in North Africa. It is hard even for the pilots themselves to keep up, for there are changes in tactics from week to week.

We will have some new idea and surprise the Germans with it. Then they’ll come across with a surprise maneuver, and we will have to change everything to counteract it. But basically, at the moment, you can say that everything depends on teamwork. The lone dashing hero in this war is certain to be a dead hero within a week. Sticking with the team and playing it all together is the only guarantee of safety for everybody.

Our fighters go in groups with the bombers, ranging the sky above them, flying back and forth, watching for anything that might appear. But if they see some Germans in the distance nobody goes after them. That would be playing into the enemy’s hands. So, they stick to their formation above the bombers, making an umbrella.

The German has two choices – to dive down through them, or to wait until somebody is hit by flak and has to drop back. Then they are on him in a flash. 'When that happens, the fighters attack but still in formation. Keeping that formation always and forever tight is what the flight leaders constantly drilled into the boys’ heads. It is a great temptation to dash out and take a shot at some fellow, but by now they’ve seen too many cases of the tragedy of such actions.

One group leader told me:

If everything went according to schedule, we’d never shoot down a German plane. We’d cover our bombers and keep ourselves covered and everybody would come home safe.

The fighter pilots seem a little different from the bomber men. Usually, they are younger. Many of them were still in school when they joined up. Ordinarily they might be inclined to be more harum-scarum, but their work is so deadly and the sobering dark cloud of personal tragedy is over them so constantly that it seems to have humbled them. In fact, I think it makes them nicer people than if they were cocky.

They have to get up early. Often, I’ve gone to the room of my special friends at 9:30 in the evening and found them all asleep. They fly so frequently they can’t do much drinking. One night recently, when one of the most popular fighter pilots had been killed right on the home field, in an accident, some of the boys assuaged their grief with gin. They said:

Somehow you feel it more when it happens right here than when a fellow just doesn’t come back.

When they first came over here, you’d frequently hear pilots say they didn’t hate the Germans, but you don’t hear that anymore. They have lost too many friends, too many roommates. Now it is killing that animates them.

The highest spirits I’ve seen in that room were displayed one evening after they came back from a strafing mission. That’s what they like to do best, but they get little of it. It’s a great holiday from escorting bombers, which they hate. Going out free-lancing to shoot up whatever they could see, and going in enough force to be pretty sure they’ll be superior to the enemy – that’s utopia.

That’s what they had done that day. And they really had a field day. Them ran onto a German truck convoy and blew it to pieces. They’d laugh and get excited as they told about it. The trucks were all full of men, and “they’d fly out like firecrackers.” Motorcyclists would get hit and dive 40 feet before they stopped skidding. Two Messerschmitt 109s made the mistake of coming after our planes. They never had a chance. After firing a couple of wild bursts, they went down smoking, and one of them seemed to blow up.

The boys were full of laughter when they told about it as they sat there on their cots in the dimly lighted room. I couldn’t help having a funny feeling about them. They were all so young, so genuine, so enthusiastic. And they were so casual about everything – not casual in a hard, knowing way, but they talked about their flights and killing and being killed exactly as they would discuss girls or their school lessons.

Maybe they won’t talk at all when they finally get home. If they don’t, it will be because they know this is a world apart and nobody else could ever understand.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 12, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward airdrome in French North Africa – (Feb. 10)
Lt. Jack Ilfrey is the leading American ace in North Africa at the moment. However, that’s not my reason for writing about him.

In the first place, the theory over here is not to become an individual fighter and shoot down a lot of planes, so being an ace doesn’t mean so much. In the second place, somebody else might be ahead of Ilfrey by this evening, with fate pulling the strings the way she does.

So, I’m writing about him largely because he is a fine person and more or less typical of all boys who fly our deadly fighters.

Jack Ilfrey is from Houston. His father is cashier of the First National Bank. His family home is at 3122 Robinhood Street. Jack is only 22. He has two younger sisters. He went to Texas A&M for two years, and then to the University of Houston, working at the same time for the Hughes Tool Company. He will soon have been in the Army two years.

It is hard to conceive of his ever having killed anybody. For he looks even younger than his 22 years. His face is good-humored. His darkish hair is childishly uncontrollable and pops up into a little curlicue at the front of his head. He talks fast, but his voice is soft and he has a very slight hesitation in his speech that somehow seems to make him a gentle and harmless person.

There is not the least trace of the smart aleck or wise guy about him. He is wholly thoughtful and sincere. Yet he mows ‘em down.

Here in Africa, Ilfrey has been through the mill. He got two Focke-Wulf 190s one day, two Messerschmitt 109s another day. His fifth victory was over a twin-motored Messerschmitt 110, which carries three men. And he has another kill that has not yet been confirmed.

He hasn’t had all smooth sailing by any means. In fact, he’s very lucky to be here at all. He got caught in a trap one day and came home with 268 bullet holes in his plane. His armor plate stopped at least a dozen that would have killed him.

Jack’s closest shave, however, wasn’t from being shot at. It happened one day when he saw a German fighter duck into a cloud. Jack figured the German would emerge at the far end of the cloud, so he scooted along below to where he thought the German would pop out, and pop out he did – right smack into him, almost.

They both kicked rudder violently, and they missed practically by inches. Neither man fired a shot, they were so busy getting out of each other’s way. Jack says he was weak for an hour afterward.

There is nothing “heroic” about Lt. Ilfrey. He isn’t afraid to run when that is the only thing to do.

He was telling about getting caught all alone one day at a low altitude. Two Germans got on his tail.

He says:

I just had two chances. Either stay and fight, and almost surely get shot down, or pour on everything I had and try to get away. I ran a chance of burning up my engine and having to land in enemy territory, but I got away. Luckily the engine stood up.

Ilfrey, like all the others here, has little in the way of entertainment and personal pleasure. I walked into his room late one afternoon, after he had come back from a mission, and found him sitting there at a table, all alone, killing flies with a folded newspaper.

And yet they say being an ace is romantic.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 13, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward airdrome in French North Africa – (Feb. 12, by wireless)
Although our fighter pilots are shooting down more German planes than we are losing, still they have a deep and healthy respect for the German airmen.

One of the boys said:

They apparently brought their very best men to Africa because the newcomers sure know their business. There are no green hands among them.

American fliers who have been captured, and then escaped, report that there seems to be a sort of camaraderie among airmen – not in the air, but on the ground. There is no camaraderie at all in the air – it’s fight to the death and nothing else.

The other night the boys were recalling stories from the last war. They had read how Allied and German fighters would shoot up all their ammunition and then fly alongside each other and salute before starting home. There is none of that stuff in North Africa.

Our pilots really lead lonesome lives over here. There is nothing on earth for them to do but talk to each other. In two weeks, you’ve talked a guy out, and after that it’s just the same old conversation day after day.

The boys hang around the field part of the day, when they’re not flying; then go to their rooms and lie in their bunks. They’ve read themselves and talked themselves out. There are no movies, no dances, no parties, no women – nothing. They just lie on their cots.

One of them said:

We’ve got so damn lazy we hardly bother to go to the toilet. We’re no damn good for anything on earth anymore except flying.

Flying a fighter plane is not comfortable. There is so much to do, and you’re so cramped, and you strain so constantly watching for the enemy. Also, fighter cockpits are not heated. The pilots get terribly cold at 25,000 and 30,000 feet. They don’t wear electrically heated suits. In fact, they can’t even wear too heavy flying clothes, for their bulk would have made it impossible to twist around in the cockpit. They wear only their ordinary uniforms with coveralls on top of those, plus flying boots and gloves. And they can’t even wear really heavy flying gloves.

One of them said:

Our bodies don’t get so cold, it’s our hands and feet. Sometimes they get so cold they’re numb.

Said another:

It’s funny, but you’re never cold when you’re in a fight. You actually get to sweating, and when it’s over your underwear is all wet in back. Of course, that makes you get all the colder afterwards.

It’s interesting to sit in with a bunch of pilots in the evening after they’ve returned from their first mission. They’re so excited they are practically unintelligible. Their eyes are bloodshot, they are red-faced with excitement, and they are so terrifically stimulated they can’t quiet down. Life has never been more wonderful. They tell the same story of their day’s adventure over and over two dozen times before bedtime. The other night one boy couldn’t eat his supper. Another one couldn’t go to sleep.

The older boys listen patiently. They were that way not so long ago themselves. They know that battle maturity will come quickly. Just drop in a few weeks from now.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

With U.S. forces in North Africa – (Feb. 16)
Four good soldiers, who have already done more than their share in the war have been down in these parts lately. They are Kay Francis, Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair and Carole Landis.

Some people may take lightly the contributions of Hollywood folks to the war effort, but I don’t. These gals work themselves to a frazzle. They travel dangerously. They live and work under mighty unpleasant conditions. They don’t get a dime. They are losing a lot and they have nothing to gain – nothing material, that is. But surely, they are going home with a warm inner satisfaction, knowing that they have performed far beyond the ordinary call of duty.

The quartet of stars has been away from America since October. They flew the Atlantic by Clipper, toured the camps in Northern Ireland and England, and came to Africa by Flying Fortress. They have heard bombs fall, and they know about Army stew. They’ve averaged four hours’ sleep a night. Each of them has had a bout with the flu. They have done all their own washing, because there’s no other way to get it done. Yet they could all be in California lying on the sand.

When they came out to our far desert airdrome, they put on their performance on the flat bed of a big wrecking truck out in the midafternoon sun, surrounded by soldiers sitting on the ground. They spoke the first English from a woman’s mouth these soldiers had heard in months. To say they were appreciated is putting it mildly.

Half the fun and half the good, I suppose, of such a performance is the opportunity it gives the soldiers in the audience to imagine themselves as great lovers, and the inspiration it provides for the soldiers’ own brand of humor.

Kay Francis starts it off by saying they’d rather be here than any place in the world. That brings a thunderous cascade of boos. Then she says:

The reason is there’s no place else we could be the only women among several thousand men.

That brings the laugh. Then she says:

And I know every one of you would protect me, wouldn’t you?

That brings the “Oh yeahs!” and yells and whistles of appreciation.

When Carole Landis comes out, something like a great sigh goes over the crowd. Carole, as you know, is rather voluptuous. As she finishes her song and holds out her arms, a pathetic, wracked voice comes from the far edge of the audience, a lonely guy screaming to the world his comical misery:

I can’t stand it!

Mitzi Mayfair wears a skimpy green spangly thing and does her famous dances. A couple of dozen soldiers are perched on the truck’s big steel boom above her, and every time Mitzi kicks, they pretend to swoon and fall off. Mitzi ends her act by calling for jitterbug volunteers. The boys are bashful, but finally a private is pulled down off the boom. He is no slouch as a jitterbug, but she almost dances him off his feet. She winds up by throwing the exhausted soldier over her shoulder and carrying him off the stage.

Sometimes Mitzi gets herself in a pickle with this stunt. One night in England she had to carry off a guy who weighed 225 pounds. Another time she sprained a shoulder. And in her second performance at this airdrome, she almost met her Waterloo.

This show was for flying officers, the ones who actually do the bombing and fighting, and there’s nothing bashful about them. When Mitzi called for volunteers, up rose Capt. Tex Dallas, a Fortress pilot who doesn’t give a damn about anything. Tex took off his coat, folded it neatly, and walked challengingly onto the stage. Mitzi whispered instructions to him, but Tex doesn’t follow instructions very well. Instead of pretending to be exhausted, he had Mitzi on the ropes within a minute. After chasing her around the stage he finally had her hiding behind the piano. The audience went wild.

Eventually, after poor Mitzi had given herself up for lost, Tex relented and let her carry him off the stage.

I’ve seen Mitzi dance in New York musical comedies, and now I’ve seen her dance in dust-covered slacks on the African desert. She has already given a strenuous year and a half of her life to the war and she’s in it for the duration, and all I can say is, she’s a honey.

Martha Raye is really the star of the troupe. The soldiers have gone for her crazy brand of slapstick. The program winds up practically in a riot when all four girls sing the French, British and American national anthems.

The girls are pretty sore about one thing. It seems one of the American broadcasters in Algiers broadcast back to America that they wouldn’t go to the Tunisian front because they were afraid. He asked why they were any better than anybody else.

Actually, the girls begged to go to Tunisia but were turned down. The generals wouldn’t let them go because it would be dangerous for troops to be concentrated to see the show. Those girls were not afraid. Carole Landis even wanted to go on a bombing mission.

Personally, I think they will deserve medals.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 18, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 17)
A big military convoy moving at night across the mountains and deserts of Tunisia is something that nobody who has been in one can ever forget.

Recently I have been living with a frontline outfit. Late one afternoon, it received sudden orders to move that night, bag and baggage. It had to pull out of its battle positions, time the departures of its various units to fit into the flow of traffic at the first control point on the highway, and then drive all night and go into action on another front.

All the big convoys in the war area moved at night. German planes would spot a daytime convoy and play havoc with it. It is extremely difficult and dangerous, this moving at night in total blackness over strange and rough roads. But it has to be done.

Our convoy was an immense one. There were hundreds of vehicles and thousands of men. It took seven and a half hours to pass one point. The convoy started moving at 5:30 in the evening, just before dusk. The last vehicle didn’t clear till 1 o’clock the next morning.

I rode in a jeep with Capt. Pat Riddleberger, of Woodstock, Virginia, and Pvt. John Coughlin, Manchester, New Hampshire. Ahead of us was a small covered truck which belonged to Riddleberger’s tank-destroyer section. We were a little two-vehicle convoy within ourselves. We were to fall in near the tail end, so we had half the night to kill before starting. We stood around the truck, parked in a barn lot, for an hour or two, just talking in the dark. Then we went into the kitchen of the farmhouse which had been used as a command post and which was empty now. There was an electric light, and we built a fire in the kitchen fireplace out of boxes. But the chimney wouldn’t draw, and we almost choked from the smoke.

Some officers had left a stack of copies of the New York Times for October and November lying on the floor, so we read those for an hour or so. We looked at the book sections and the movie ads. None of us had ever heard of the new books or the current movies. It made us feel keenly how long we had been away and how cut off we were from home. One of the boys said:

They could make money just showing all the movies over again for a year after we get back.

We finished the papers and there were still three hours to kill, so we got blankets out of the truck and lay down on the concrete floor. We were sleeping soundly when Capt. Riddleberger awakened us at 1:00 a.m. and said we were off.

The moon was just coming out. The sky was crystal-clear, the night bitter cold. The jeep’s top was down. We all put on all the clothes we had. In addition to my usual polar-bear wardrobe, which includes heavy underwear and two sweaters, that night I wore a pair of coveralls, a heavy combat suit that a tank man lent me, a pair of overshoes, two caps – one on top of the other – and over them a pair of goggles. The three of us in the jeep wrapped up in blankets. In spite of all that, we almost froze before the night was over.

We moved out of the barn lot, and half a mile away we swung onto the main road, at the direction of motorcyclists who stood there guiding the traffic. Gradually our eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness, and it wasn’t hard to follow the road. We had orders to drive in very close formation, so we kept within 50 feet of each other.

After a few miles we had to cross a mountain range. There were steep grades and switchback turns, and some of the trucks had to back and fill to make the sharper turns. There was considerable delay on the mountain. French trucks and buses would pass and tie up traffic, swinging in and out. And right in the center of these tortuous mountains we met a huge American hospital unit, in dozens of trucks, moving up to the front. They were on the outside of the road, and at times their wheels seemed about to slide off into the chasm.

We had long waits while traffic jams ahead were cleared. We shut off our motors and the night would be deathly silent except for a subdued undertone of grinding motors far ahead. At times we could hear great trucks groaning in low gear on steep grades far below, or the angry clanking of tanks as they took sharp turns behind us.

Finally, the road straightened out on a high plateau. There we met a big contingent of French troops moving silently toward the front we had just vacated. The marching soldiers seemed like dark ghosts in the night. Hundreds of horses were canning their artillery, ammunition and supplies.

I couldn’t help feeling the immensity of the catastrophe that had put men all over the world, millions of us, to moving in machine-like precision throughout long foreign nights – men who should have been comfortably asleep in their warm beds at home. War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 19, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 18)
The jeep in which I was riding was almost at the tail end of our immense armored convoy when we started, but before many hours and passed we had overtaken so many slow-moving vehicles that we worked our way well up into the convoy. As we droned along through the night it was hard to realize that we were part of such a fabulously long string of war machines. Vehicles stretched ahead of us for scores of miles, but of course we couldn’t see them, and our only companionship was five or six red taillights ahead of us. We all drove without headlights, but did have taillights so we could see when the fellow ahead was stopping.

Occasionally we would smoke, and I would light cigarettes for the others. We didn’t try to hide the flare of the match, for it was only a flash and then quickly gone. Once in a while we would overtake a truck with a dead engine, or a big wrecker towing a half-track. But our American machines are good ones, and of the hundreds of vehicles in that great convoy, only a handful had trouble during the long journey.

Our convoy was as complete as a circus. There were ammunition trucks, kitchens, repair shops, trucks carrying telephone switchboards and generators for camp lighting, trucks carrying bombs. There were jeeps carrying generals, and there were great wreckers capable of picking up a whole tank. It was quite a contrast to the Arabs we’d pass in the night, with their heavily loaded camels and burros.

The moon gave us enough light to drive by, but how the bulk of the convoy, which started long before the moon came up, ever got over the mountain range is beyond me. They had to drive in total blackness. Guides would go ahead to study the road. They spotted all the sharp turns and steep banks, and they would indicate the direction of traffic with their hooded flashlights.

About every hour and a half, we would stop for the truck driver’s traditional stretch. At one of these stops the drivers checked their mileage. We had been on the road three hours and come exactly 27 miles. Snaking a huge convoy over a mountain range in the dead of night is slow business.

But open country was ahead, and when we reached that we stepped up to 35 and 40 miles an hour. The night wind cut more cruelly now. We didn’t talk much, for it was too cold. My goggles kept steaming inside, and I would have to lift them off and wipe them. Finally, all of us except the drivers pulled blankets over our heads and dozed a little. But not much, for holes in the gravel roads were hard to see and often the jeep would do a backbreaking hurdle.

At the stops, the soldiers would get out and run up and down the road, or stand in one spot jitterbugging in an effort to warm their feet. The ones I felt sorriest for were the infantrymen, packed like sardines in open trucks with no protection from the bitter cold. It seems as if the infantry always gets it in the neck.

Several hours after midnight the convoy got itself into a ridiculous snarl. During a rest stop apparently some driver far ahead had gone to sleep and forgotten to start on again. We waited for half an hour. Then impatient drivers pulled out and started passing. That was fatal. The first thing we knew two lines of traffic choked the road. At every gully and every turn they would snarl up and one line would have to stop. Eventually it got just like those awful holiday jams at home where you move a few feet at a time.

I said to Capt. Riddleberger:

I’m amazed that such a thing could be allowed to happen. This strikes me as being the perfect way not to win the war.

He agreed, but I was sorry for my remarks later, for in an hour or so, everything straightened itself out. We were clear of the mountains now. We passed through silent little Arab villages, and drove across treeless prairies.

About 4 a.m., Riddleberger and I changed places with two soldiers riding in the back end of the truck ahead. We lay down on barracks bags and pulled blankets over us, thinking we’d snatch a little sleep. Pretty soon Riddleberger said:

These blankets smell so bad I can’t sleep.

Mine didn’t smell exactly like perfume either.

The captain said:

Well, hell. The poor guys never have a chance to take a bath.

Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that he and I never took baths either, I wonder how we smell to others.

My feet were so cold and achy that at last I took off my overshoes and shoes and held my cold toes in my hands, trying to warm them. After half an hour or so they quit hurting. Eventually I went to sleep. When I came to there was a faint light in the sky. It was just 7 o’clock. I had been dead to the world for two hours. It was hard to believe, for the truck had been jolting and bouncing and stopping and starting all that time. Weariness is a great cure for insomnia, or maybe I had been anesthetized by those blankets, who knows?

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 20, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the front in Tunisia – (Feb. 19)
This is the last of a series about an armored convoy trip in which a whole great section of an Army moved by night across half of Tunisia, from one fighting front to another. I have written so much about it because soldiers at the front are moving constantly and the battle areas of the world writhe with these vast convoys stealing dangerously across country, hidden in the darkness.

You hear little about them, but this one I’ve just ridden with is typical of hundreds that are moving somewhere this very night.

The head of our convoy started just at dusk and reached its destination at 4 in the morning. The tail end didn’t start till 1 a.m., and it was nearly noon before it reached journey’s end and safety. We were near that tail end.

Just after daylight the members of our little party changed places again. Capt. Pat Riddleberger got behind the wheel of the truck on which we had snatched a couple of hours’ sleep. I went back to relieve one of the half-frozen soldiers in our jeep. When we started again, we were all wide awake and vividly alert, for the hour of danger was upon us. We still had hours to go in daylight, and it was a magnificent chance for the Germans to destroy us by the hundreds with strafing planes.

The sun came up slowly over the bare mountain ridges. The country was flat and desert-like. There was not a tree as far as we could see. It looked like West Texas. We passed Arabs, blue with cold, shepherding their flocks or walking the roads. There was hoarfrost on the ground, and sometimes we saw thin ice in the ditches.

At daylight our vehicles, acting on orders and through long experience, began to spread out. Now we were running about 200 yards apart. As far as we could see across the desert, ahead and behind, the road was filled with drab brown vehicles.

Sgt. James Bernett, 1541 Cheyenne St., Tulsa, Oklahoma, was driving our jeep. I rode up front with him. Pvt. John Coughlin sat in the back. He unsheathed a machine gun and mounted it on a stanchion between us. We kept a careful lookout for planes. After a while we saw trucks ahead stopping and soldiers piling out like ants, but I was in such a daze from cold and fatigue that I didn’t sense at first what that meant. Neither did the others.

Then all of a sudden Coughlin yelled:

Watch it! Watch it!

And we both knew what he meant. By now all the men ahead were running out across the desert as fast as they could go. Bernett slammed on the brakes – and you can stop a jeep almost instantly. I was so entangled in blankets that it took a few seconds to get loose. Coughlin couldn’t wait. He went out right over my head before the jeep had stopped. He caught a foot as he went, and it threw him headlong. He hit the road, flat, and skidded on his stomach in the gravel. He hurt one knee, but he limped the fastest limp I’ve ever seen.

We beat it out across the desert until we found a little gully a hundred feet from the road. We didn’t get into the gully, but stopped and took our bearings. None of us could see or hear anything. We waited about five minutes. Soldiers were strung out over the desert on both sides of the road. Everybody gradually decided it was a false alarm. And so, cussing but immensely relieved, we straggled back to the road.

We were all so cold we were brittle. One tall soldier came limping back saying:

My feet are so damn cold that when I hit the ground my toes broke right off.

That remark seemed to set us off, and suddenly the whole thing got funny. One soldier yelled at Coughlin:

My grandma’s awkward too. But then she’s old.

It wasn’t funny to Coughlin. He was angry and dead serious about his tumble. Sgt. Bernett and I got the giggles. You can do that sometimes when you’re pitifully cold and also wonderfully relieved. We couldn’t keep from laughing at Coughlin’s comical misery and rage, and laughed till we could hardly breathe. Bernett said:

Well, there’s one thing about the Army. It’s good for a laugh a minute.

I can still see us out there on the African desert at dawn, snickering, with death iti the sky. It wasn’t till later that we learned the alarm was real and that far ahead of us, out of sight and sound, the convoy had been strafed and men wounded.

The rest of the trip was like any trip. The road grew dusty and the wind colder, it seemed, than ever. But the danger of attack was always with us, and we stopped and hit the ditch a couple of times before realizing that the planes we saw were our own.

We pulled into our new station a little before 11 in the morning, camouflaged the tanks and trucks, and then broke out some canned rations. We cooked sausages on a gasoline stove on the hood of the jeep. And a half hour later we went to a kitchen truck and ate a big lunch.

Then, while others worked at digging themselves in and cleaning a jumble of gear, I spread my bedroll on the ground and slept in utter unconsciousness, for three hours, with the bright sun benevolently baking my dirty face.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 22, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (Feb. 21)
It must be hard for you folks at home to conceive how oru troops right at the front actually live. In fact, it is hard to describe it to you even when I’m among them, living in somewhat the same way they are.

You can scarcely credit the fact that human beings – the same people you’ve known all your life – could adjust themselves so acceptably to a type of living that is only slightly above the caveman stage.

Some of our troops came directly to the Tunisian front after the original occupation of North and West Africa, and have been here ever since. They have not slept in a bed for months. They’ve lived through this vicious winter sleeping outdoors on the ground.

They haven’t been paid in three months. They have been on British rations most of the time, and British rations, though good, get mighty tiresome. They never take off their clothes at night, except their shoes. They don’t get a bath oftener than once a month. One small detachment acquired lice and had to be fumigated, but all the rest have escaped so far. They move so frequently they don’t attempt to put in any home touches, as the men do at the more permanent camps toward the rear. Very few of the frontline troops have ever had any leave. They never go to town for an evening’s fun. They work all the time.

Nobody keeps track of the days or weeks. I’ll wager that 90% of our frontline troops never know when Sunday comes.

Furthermore, the old traditional differences between day and night have almost ceased to exist. Nighttime no longer necessarily means rest, nor daytime work. Often, it’s just reversed. The bulk of our convoying of supplies and shifting of troops is done at night. The soldiers are accustomed to traveling all night, sometimes three or four nights in a row. Irregularity of sleep becomes normal. On soldier told me he once went three days and nights without sleep.

You see men sleeping anywhere anytime. The other day I saw a soldier asleep in blankets under an olive tree at 2 in the afternoon. A few feet away a full colonel was sleeping soundly on the ground. In battle you just go on until you drop.

It isn’t always possible to get enough food up to the fighting soldiers. I have just been with one artillery outfit in the mountains who were getting only one cold meal a day.

Nurses tell me that when the more seriously wounded reach the hospital, they are often so exhausted they fall asleep without drugs, despite their pain.

The war coarsens most people. You live rough and talk rough, and if you didn’t toughen up inside you simply wouldn’t be able to take it. An officer friend of mine, Lt. Leonard Bessman of Milwaukee, told me two incidents of a battle that touched him deeply.

One evening he and another officer came up to a tiny farmhouse, which was apparently empty. To be on the safe side he called out, “Who’s there?” before going in. The answer came back:

Capt. Blank, and who the hell wants to know?

They went in and found the captain, his clothes covered with blood, heating a can of rations over a gasoline flame. They asked if they could stay all night with him. He said he didn’t give a damn. They started to throw their blankets down, and the captain said:

Look out for that man over there.

There was a dead soldier lying in a corner.

The captain was cooking his supper and preparing to stay all night alone in that same room. The blood and fury of death about him that day had left him utterly indifferent both to the companionship of the living and the presence of the dead.

The other incident was just the opposite. Another captain happened to be standing beside Bessman. It was just at dusk and they were on the desert. The night chill was coming down. The captain looked to the far horizon and said, sort of to himself:

You fight all day here in the desert and what’s the end of it all? Night just closes down over you and chokes you.

A little later Bessman got out a partly filled bottle of gin he had with him and asked this same sensitive captain if he’d like a drink. The captain didn’t even reach out his hand. He simply asked:

Have you got enough for my men too?

He wouldn’t take a drink himself unless the enlisted men under him could have some.

All officers are not like that, but the battlefield does produce a brotherhood. The common bond of death draws human beings toward each other over the artificial barrier of rank.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 23, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (Feb. 22)
After a few weeks of frontline living, your whole perspective on the niceties and necessities of life change.

You used to be sore when you couldn’t get a taxi. Now you’ve struck gold when you find a spot where you can lie down out of the wind.

Even my own perspective has changed, and as a correspondent I’ve had only the barest taste of the rough going. For a lifetime I have bathed with becoming regularity, and I thought the world would come to an end unless I changed my socks every day. Now I have just had my first bath in a month, and I go two weeks at a time without even taking off my socks. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

The other day, I had to laugh at myself over a little emotion I experienced. We had arrived one evening at a new frontline headquarters. It was centered around a Tunisian farmhouse, as practically all command posts were. Soldiers and officers alike were sleeping just anywhere they could – in trucks, under trees, in the barn and chicken houses. It was cold and damp, as usual.

Nobody tells a correspondent where to sleep or what to do when he is gypsying around the front. He shifts for himself. So I nosed around and found a place to sleep. It was under a big French grain wagon sitting in the barn lot. Some soldiers had found several strips of corrugated tin roofing and set them around three sides of the wagon, making walls. The wagon bed formed a roof overhead. They had brought straw from a nearby stack and put it on the ground under the wagon. There we threw our bedding rolls.

It was the coziest place I’d slept in for a week. It had two magnificent features – the ground was dry, and the wind was cut off. I was so pleased at finding such a wonderful place that I could feel my general spirits go up like an elevator. When the detachment got orders to move the next day, I felt a genuine regret at leaving this little haven. And to think after all it was only some pitiful straw on the hard ground under a wagon.

As we were going to bed that night, Hal Boyle of the Associated Press, who was sleeping next to me, said:

I believe that in wartime your physical discomfort becomes a more dominant thing in life than the danger you’re in.

And I believe that’s true. The danger comes in spurts; discomfort is perpetual. You’re always cold and almost always dirty. Outside of food and cigarettes, you have absolutely none of the little things that made life normal back home. You don’t have chairs, lights, floors, or tables. You don’t have any places to set anything, or any store to buy things from. There are no newspapers, milk, beds, sheets, radiators, beer, ice cream or hot water. You just sort of exist, either standing up working or lying down asleep. There is no pleasant in-between. The velvet is all gone from living.

It doesn’t get much below freezing here in central Tunisia, but you must believe me when I say we all suffer agonies from the cold. Any soldier will back me up.

The days are sunshiny, and often really warm, but the nights are almost inhuman. Everybody wears heavy underwear and all the sweaters he can find, plus overcoat and gloves and knitted cap. And still he’s cold. We have snow on the mountains here.

The soldiers somehow resent the fact that so many of you folks at home just think because we’re in Africa that we’re passing out with the heat. Any number of soldiers have showed me letters from their families full of sympathy because of the heat prostrations they must be suffering.

Soldiers ask me for Heaven’s sake to get over to the folks at home that Africa in winter is frigid. I’ll tell you, in one little incident, just how cold it is. And also how little money means compared to bodily necessities.

When not traveling around the fronts, I’m living in a small igloo tent among fir trees at a certain forward camp. There I hole up for days at a time to write these columns. The tent is fine except that there’s no heat in it and no way to get any heat.

So the other day, along the road, I ran into a soldier in a half-truck who had a kerosene stove – the old-fashioned kind they used to heat the school with, you know, I offered him $50 for it – back home it would be worth about $3.

He didn’t hesitate a second. He just said, “No sir,” and that was the end of that.

It would have been just the same if I’d offered him $500. He couldn’t use the money, and without the stove he’d be miserable.

Now do you see how things are different over here with us?

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 24, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

At the Tunisian front – (Feb. 23, by wireless)
You folks at home must be disappointed at what happened to our American troops in Tunisia. So are we over here.

Our predicament is damned humiliating, as Gen. Joe Stilwell said about our getting kicked out of Burma a year ago. We’ve lost a great deal of equipment, many American lives, and valuable time and territory – to say nothing of face. Yet no one over here has the slightest doubt that the Germans would be thrown out of Tunisia. It is simply in the cards.

It is even possible that our defeat may not even delay Rommel’s exodus, for actually our troops formed only a small part of the total Allied forces in Tunisia. Estimates among men at the front run anywhere from two to six months for finishing the Tunisian campaign.

One thing you folks at home must realize is that this Tunisian business is mainly a British show. Our part in it is small. Consequently, our defeat is not so disastrous to the whole picture as it would have been if we had been bearing the major portion of the task.

When the time comes

We Americans did the North African landings and got all the credit, although the British did help us. The British are doing the Tunisia job and will get the credit, though we are giving them a hand. That’s the way it has been planned all the time. That’s the way it will be carried out. When the time comes, the British 1st Army will squeeze on the north, the British 8th Army will squeeze on the south, and we will hole in the middle. And it will really be the British who will run Rommel out of Tunisia.

The fundamental cause of our trouble over here lies in two things: we had too little to work with, as usual, and we underestimated Rommel’s strength and especially his audacity.

Both military men and correspondents knew we were too thinly spread in our sector to hold if the Germans were really to launch a big-scale attack. Where everybody was wrong was in believing they didn’t have the stuff to do it with.

Can’t tell all – new

Correspondents are not now permitted to write anything critical concerning the Tunisian situation, or to tell what we think was wrong. The powers that be feel that this would be bad for “home morale.” So, you just have to trust that our forces are learning to do better next time.

Personally, I feel that some such setback as that – tragic though it is for many Americans, for whom it is now too late – is not entirely a bad thing for us. It is all right to have a good opinion of ourselves, but we Americans are so smug with our cockiness. We somehow feel that just because we’re Americans we can whip our weight in wildcats. And we have got it into our heads that production alone will win the war.

There are two things we must learn and we may be learning them right now – we must spread ourselves thicker, on the frontlines, and we must streamline our commands for quick and positive action in emergencies.

Another tank, please

As for our soldiers themselves, you need feel no shame nor concern about their ability. I have seen them in battle and afterwards, and there is nothing wrong with the common American soldier. His fighting spirit is good. His morale is okay. The deeper he gets into a fight, the more of a fighting man he becomes.

I’ve seen crews that have had two tanks shot out from under them but whose only thought was to get a third tank and “have another crack at those blankety-blanks.”

One can’t whip two

It is true they are not such seasoned battle veterans as the British and Germans. But they had had some battle experience before this last encounter, and I don’t believe their so-called greenness was the cause of our defeat. One good man simply can’t whip two good men. That’s about the only way I know to put it. Everywhere on every front we simply have got to have more stuff before we start going forward instead of backward.

I happened to be in on the battle of Sbeitla, where we fought the German breakthrough for four days before withdrawing. In the next few days, I shall try to describe to you what it was like.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 25, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (Feb. 24, by wireless)
On the morning the big German push started against the American troops in Tunisia, our forward command post in that area was hidden in a patch of cactus about a mile from the town of Sidi Bouzid.

It had been there more than a week and I had visited there myself only three days previously. I had spent a lot of time with our forward troops in the hills, and I knew most of the officers.

A command post is really the headquarters of a unit. In this case a brigadier general was in command. His staff included intelligence and planning officers, unit commanders, a medical detachment, kitchens, and various odds and ends.

A command post of that size has several score vehicles and two or three hundred men. Its work is all done in trucks, half-tracks or tents. It is always prepared to move, when at the front. And it does move every few days, so the enemy won’t spot it. This special command post was about ten miles back from the nearest known enemy position. Our artillery and infantry and some tanks were between it and the enemy.

Almost too late

I am describing all this because I will use the men of this command post as characters in our story as I try to picture the tragedy of that first day’s surprise push.

That Sunday morning hordes of German tanks and troops came swarming out from behind the mountains around Faid Pass. We didn’t know so many tanks were back there, and we didn’t know so many Germans were either, for our patrols had been bringing in mostly Italian prisoners from their raids.

The attack was so sudden nobody could believe it was in full force. Our forward troops were overrun before they knew what was happening. The command post itself didn’t start moving back till after lunch. By then it was too late – or almost too late.

Command cars, half-tracks and jeeps started west across the fields of semi-cultivated desert, for by then the good road to the north was already cut off. The column had moved about eight miles when German tanks came charging in on the helpless vehicles from both sides.

A headquarters command post is not heavily armed. It has little to fight with. All that these men and cars could do was duck and dodge and run like hell. There was no such thing as a fighting line. Everything was mixed up over an area of ten miles or more.

Bad gas stops them

It was a complete melee. Every jeep was on its own. The accompanying tanks fought until knocked out, and their crews then got out and moved along on foot. One tank commander, whose whole crew escaped after the tank caught fire, said that at least die Germans didn’t machine-gun them.

Practically every vehicle reported gasoline trouble that afternoon. Apparently, there was water in the gas, yet nobody felt that it was sabotage. They say there had been similar trouble before, but never so bad.

A friend of mine. Maj. Ronald Elkins, of College Station, Texas, had his half-track hit three times by German shells. They were standing still, cleaning a carburetor filter, when the third shell hit. It set them afire. Some of the crew eventually got back safely, but others are still missing. Maj. Elkins said they could have got clear back with the car “if the damned engine had only kept running."

Back to the cactus patch

The Germans just overran our troops that afternoon. They used tanks, artillery, infantry, and planes dive-bombing our troops continuously. Our artillery was run over in the first rush. We were swamped, scattered, consumed, by the German surprise.

Twilight found our men and machines straggling over an area extending some ten miles back of Sidi Bouzid. Darkness saved those that were saved. During the night the command post assembled what was left of itself in another cactus patch about 15 miles behind its first position. Throughout the night, and for days afterward, tired men came straggling in afoot from the desert.

That night the Germans withdrew from the area they’d taken, and next morning we sent trucks back to bury the dead and tow out what damaged vehicles they could. But by next afternoon the battle was on again.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 26, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (Feb. 25)
On the morning of the Germans’ surprise breakthrough out of Faid Pass, I was up in the Ousseltia Valley with another contingent of our troops.

Word came to us about noon that the Germans were advancing upon Sbeitla from Faid. So, I packed into my jeep and started alone on the familiar 85-mile drive south to Sbeitla. It was a bright day and everything seemed peaceful. I expected to see German planes as I neared Sbeitla, but there was none, and I drove into my cactus-patch destination about an hour before sundown.

I hadn’t been there 15 minutes when the dive bombers came, but that’s another story, which will come later.

I checked in at the intelligence tent to see what was going on, and found that things were dying down with the coming of dusk. So, I pitched my tent and went to bed right after supper.

Back to the cactus

Next morning, I got up before daylight and caught a ride, just after sunrise, with two officers going up to the new position of our forward command post. We drove very slowly, and all kept a keen eye on the sky. I didn’t have a gun, as correspondents are not supposed to carry arms. Occasionally we stopped the jeep and got far off the road behind some cactus hedges, but the German dive bombers were interested only in our troop concentrations far ahead.

Finally, we spotted a small cactus patch about half a mile off the road. We figured this was the new home of the forward command post, and it was. They had straggled in during the night and were still straggling in.

Along a one-way road

The cactus patch covered about two acres. In it were hidden half a dozen half-tracks, a couple of jeeps, three light tanks, and a couple of motorcycles – all that was left of the impressive array of the traveling headquarters that had fled Sidi Bouzid 18 hours before.

The commanding general had already gone forward again, in a tank, to participate in the day’s coming battle. The others of the command post were just sitting around on the ground. Half their comrades were missing. There was nothing left for them to work with, nothing to do.

When I came into this cactus patch the officers that I knew, and had left only four days before, jumped up and shook hands as though we hadn’t seen each other in years. Enlisted men did the same thing. I thought this was odd, at first, but now I know how they felt. They had been away – far along on the road that doesn’t come back – and now that they were still miraculously alive it was like returning from a voyage of many years, and naturally we shook hands.

A familiar pattern

During the next few hours there in the cactus patch I listened to dozens of personal escape stories. Every time I would get within earshot of another officer or enlisted man, he’d begin telling what had happened to him the day before. Talk about having to pull stories out of people – you couldn’t keep these guys from talking. There was something pathetic and terribly touching about it. Not one of them had ever thought he’d see the dawn, and now that he had seen it, his emotions had to pour out. And since I was the only newcomer to show up since their escape, I made a perfect sounding board.

The minute a man started talking he’d begin drawing lines on the ground with his shoe or a stick, to show the roads and how he came. I’ll bet I had that battleground scratched in the sand for me 50 times during the forenoon. It got so I could hardly keep from laughing at the consistency of their patterns.

Soothed by the sun

By all rights, that morning should have been a newspaperman’s dream. There were fantastic stories of escape, intimate recountings of fear and elation. Any one of them would have made a first-page feature story in any newspaper. Yet I was defeated by the flood of experiences. I listened until the stories finally became merged, overlapping and paralleling and contradicting, until the whole adventure became a composite, and today it is in my mind as in theirs a sort of generalized blur.

The sun came out warmly as though to soothe their jagged feelings, and one by one the men in the cactus patch stretched on the ground and fell wearily asleep at midday. And I, satiated with the adventures of the day, lay down and slept too, waiting for the new day’s battle to begin.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 27, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (Feb. 26, by wireless)
Capt. Jed Dailey of Sharon, Massachusetts, got back safely in his jeep after the German breakthrough out of Faid Pass, but he had a horrible time. He was beating it to the rear across the desert, along with the rest of the command post’s personnel, when suddenly he saw a Mark IV tank staring him in the face not a hundred yards away. The tank was stopped, the crew had the turret door open, and a German was just standing there, looking at Capt. Dailey as cold as ice. It was enough to give you the creeps.

Jed swung the jeep around – and there was another Mark IV staring at him. He kept turning and dodging, but everywhere he could go he was looking smack at the front end of a Mark IV. They just seemed to appear from nowhere, and there they’d be suddenly, until he felt like a mouse trying to get out of a roomful of silent cats.

And they didn’t shoot

Finally, Jed did the only thing left to do. He took his heart in his hand and drove right between two German tanks, with their crews sitting there at the guns and looking at him as he passed 50 yards away. They didn’t shoot, and to this day he doesn’t know why they didn’t.

Then he stepped on that jeep and went soaring across the desert, flying over irrigation ditches you’d normally cross in low gear. German artillery got after him. They dropped an 88 on his right, and then one on his left, and then one in front of him. They had him pocketed. When artillery does that, the next shot always gets you. But they never fired a fourth shell. He had no idea why. It was just kind of like a miracle.

Now he hates Germans

Things like that went on all afternoon. Finally, it got dark, and a sort of safety came. But it wasn’t complete safety, for German patrols were out scouring the desert for stragglers. Jed finally got away by driving the jeep straight up over the top of a mountain and down the other side. He just missed driving over several sheer cliffs. From now on, he hates Germans.

Most of the men who survived the Germans’ surprise breakthrough on that first day of the Sbeitla battle lost everything they had. Maj. ''Satch” Elkins of College Station, Texas, came out with only the clothes on his back. But he resented most losing 300 razor blades to the Germans.

Capt. Dailey swears he will get the German who is now sleeping in his bedroll. One soldier was sore as a hornet because the day before he gathered up his inertia and accomplished the nasty job of writing six long overdue letters home. Now the Germans have them, and he has that writing job to do all over.

Men’s souls are tried

Again, Jed Dailey lost his camera and a dozen rolls of film he had been taking for months. One of them was a foolish picture, such as the soberest of adults sometimes indulges in. He had picked some desert flowers, stuck them behind his ears, and posed for the camera making a silly face.

He says:

The Germans will develop those films for what information they can get. And when they come to the one of an American officer with flowers behind his ears, they’ll probably tell Goebbels to put it out on the radio that Americans are sissies.

One soldier told me his most vivid impression of the afternoon was seeing ten brand-new tires burning up on the wheels of a huge American truck. He said:

With rubber so short at home, and tires rationed, it seemed awful to see those brand-new ones burning.

Another soldier said:

You damn fools, here’s the sky full of planes, and the country full of tanks, and 88s dropping all around you, and you’re worrying about tires!

Saved by a compass

Lt. Col. George Sutherlin of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Lt. Robert Simons Jr. of Columbus, Ohio, walked 29 miles across the desert that night. They had a compass, and it saved them. We had been talking about them while they were missing. One officer said:

George will show up. I’ll bet any amount of money on it. Hell, the Germans will turn him loose after two days, to get rid of him before he talks them to death.

And show up he did. He and Junior Simons say they consider the compass the most valuable piece of equipment the Army issues. They had one horrible experience that night. An Arab they encountered in the desert ran them almost into the hands of a German patrol. They escaped only by lying deathly still, hardly breathing, for an hour, while the Germans hunted within a few yards of them. But another Arab balanced the account by getting out of bed to give them drinking water.

Arabs are 99% true

Most men who walked to safety through the desert that night and the following night were helped by Arabs. I’ve heard of only two cases where Arabs refused to help Americans. One put “Satch” Elkins into a ditch, and covered him with a long rope from a well, and another Arab walked 25 miles leading some enlisted men to safety.

Many soldiers traded their overcoats for Arab burnooses to disguise themselves. There has been much discussion of the Arabs among our men, and the average soldier seems to have a feeling that an Arab can’t be trusted as far as you could throw him by the tail of his burnoose. But figures don’t lie, and the statistics of those awful nights of fleeing, crawling and hiding from death show that Arabs were 99% with us. Many hundreds of grateful Americans wouldn’t be alive today if the Arabs hadn’t helped them.

[dan.harnden]

Ernie Pyle is such a good writer. I would think he was vital to the war effort by making civilians feel more involved.

Notice how fast he got news out of the battle too. Censorship is definitely there but it doesn’t delay people finding out what is happening good and bad.

This leads me to a question for you. Do you get the impression that the press is tied into death notices in their reporting? I never thought they were and that is a huge difference from later wars.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 1, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front –
This and the next few columns will be an attempt to describe what a tank battle looks like.

Words will be poor instruments for it. Neither can isolated camera shots tell you the story. Probably only Hollywood with its machinery of many dimensions is capable of transferring to your sense a clear impression of a tank battle.

The fight in question was the American counterattack on the second day of the battle at Sidi Bouzid which eventually resulted in our withdrawal.

It was the biggest tank battle fought so far in this part of the world. On that morning I had a talk with the commanding general some 10 miles behind the frontlines before starting for the battle scene.

He took me into his tent and showed me just what the battle plan was for the day. He picked out a point close to the expected battle area and said that would be a good place for me to watch from.

The only danger, he said, would be one of being encircled and cut off if the battle should go against us.

He said:

But it won’t, for we are going to kick hell out of them today and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.

Unfortunately, we didn’t kick hell out of them. In fact, the boot was on the other foot.

Americans in desert ‘pie’

I spent the forenoon in the newly picked, badly shattered forward command post. All morning I tried to get on up where the tanks were but there was no transportation left around the post and their communications were cut off at noontime.

We sat on the ground and ate some British crackers with jam and drank some hot tea. The day was bright and mellow. Shortly after lunch a young lieutenant dug up a spare jeep and said he’d take me on up to the front.

We drove a couple of miles east along a highway to a crossroads which was the very heart center of our troops’ bivouacs. German airmen had been after this crossroads all morning. They had hit it again just a few minutes before we got there. In the road was a large crater and a few yards away a tank was off to one side, burning.

The roads at that point were high and we could see a long way. In every direction was a huge semi-irrigated desert valley. It looked very much like the valley at Phoenix, Arizona – no trees but patches of wild growth, shoulder-high cactus of the prickly-pear variety. In other parts of the valley were spotted cultivated fields and the tiny square stucco houses of Arab farmers. The whole vast scene was treeless, with slightly rolling big mountains in the distance.

As far as you could see out across the rolling desert, in all four sections of the “pie” formed by the intersecting roads, was American equipment – tanks, half-tracks, artillery, infantry – hundreds, yes, thousands of vehicles extending miles and miles and everything standing still. We were in time; the battle had not yet started.

We put our jeep in super low gear and drove out across the sands among the tanks. Ten miles or so east and southeast were the Germans but there was no activity anywhere, no smoke on the horizon, no planes in the sky.

It all had the appearance of an after-lunch siesta, but no one was asleep.

Tanks charge forward

As we drove past tank after tank we found each one’s crew at its post inside – the driver at his control, the commander standing with head sticking out of the open turret door, standing there silent and motionless, just looking ahead like the Indian on the calendars.

We stopped and inquired of several what they were doing. They said they didn’t know what the plan was – they were merely ready in place and waiting for orders. Somehow it seemed like the cars lined up at Indianapolis just before the race starts – their weeks of training over, everything mechanically perfect, just a few quiet minutes of immobility before the great struggle for which they had waited so long.

Suddenly out of this siesta-like doze the order came. We didn’t hear it for it came to the tanks over their radios but we knew it quickly for all over the desert tanks began roaring and pouring out blue smoke from the cylinders. Then they started off, kicking up dust and clanking in that peculiar “tank sound” we have all come to know so well.

They poured around us, charging forward. They weren’t close together – probably a couple of hundred yards apart. There weren’t lines or any specific formation. They were just everywhere. They covered the desert to the right and left, ahead and behind as far as we could see, trailing their eager dust tails behind. It was almost as though some official starter had fired his blank pistol. The battle was on.

[NormanStewart]

@dan.harnden

Do you get the impression that the press is tied into death notices in their reporting? I never thought they were and that is a huge difference from later wars.

Not too often, though I must point out that if a local soldier had become a casualty, there’s a report on that. And at the moment, papers are being gradually more open regarding the reporting of wartime casualties overall.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 2, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (March 1, by wireless)
We were in the midst of the forward-rushing tanks, but didn’t know what the score was. So, I pulled the jeep to the side, gradually easing a way out. We decided to get to a high spot and take a look at what was happening, before we got caught. We bounced over gullies and ditches, up the side of a rocky hill.

There – in a hidden gully – we found the commanding colonel, standing beside a radio half-track. We stood close enough to the radio to hear the voice of the battalion commander, who was leading the tank attack. At the same time, through binoculars, we watched the fantastic surge of caterpillar metal move forward amidst its own dust.

Far across the desert, in front of us, lay the town of Sidi Bouzid. Through the glasses we could see it only as a great oasis, whose green trees stood out against the bare brown of the desert. On beyond were high hills, where some of our troops were still trapped after the surprise attack of the day before.

Whole desert in gigantic movement

Behind our tanks, leading the attack, other armored vehicles puffed blue smoke. New formations began to move forward swiftly. The artillery went first, followed by armored infantry in half-tracks and even in jeeps. The entire desert was surging in, one gigantic movement.

Over the radio came the voice of the battalion commander:

We’re in the edge of Sidi Bouzid, and have struck no opposition yet.

This peaceful report from our tank charge brought no comment from anyone around the command truck. Faces were grave: it wasn’t right – this business of no opposition at all; there must be a trick in it somewhere…

Little streaks of dust – Germans

Suddenly, brown geysers of earth and smoke began to spout. We watched through our glasses. Then, from far off, came the sound of explosions. Again the voice from the radio:

We’re getting shelled, but can’t make out where it’s coming from.

Then a long silence, while the geysers continued to burst…

I’m not sure, but I think it’s artillery along the road north of town… Now there is some from the south.

We looked, and could see through our glasses the enemy advancing. They were far away, perhaps 10 miles – narrow little streaks of dust, like plumes, speeding down the low sloping plain from the mountain base toward the oasis of Sidi Bouzid. We could not see the German tanks, only dust plumes extending and pushing forward.

Just then I realized we were standing on the very hill the general had picked out for me on his map that morning. It was not good enough. I said to the young lieutenant:

Let’s get on up there.

He replied:

I’m ready.

So, we got into the jeep, and went leaping and bounding up toward what was – but we didn’t know it then – the most ghastly armored melee that had occurred so far in Tunisia.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 3, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (March 2, by wireless)
It was odd, the way we went up into the thick of the battle in our jeep. We didn’t attach ourselves to anybody. We didn’t ask anybody if we could go. We just started the motor and went. Vehicles ahead of us had worn a sort of track across the desert and through irrigated fields. We followed that awhile, keeping our place in the forward-moving procession. We were just a jeep with two brown-clad figures in it, indistinguishable from anyone else.

The line was moving cautiously. Every now and then the procession would stop. few times we stopped too. We shut off our motor to listen for planes. But finally, we tired of the slow progress. We dashed out across the sand and the Arabs’ plowed fields, skirting cactus fences and small farmyards. As we did this, a sensation of anxiety – which had not touched me before – came over me. It was fear of mines in the freshly dug earth; one touch of a wheel – we could so easily be blown into little bits. I spoke of this to the lieutenant, but he said he didn’t think they had had time to plant mines. I thought to myself:

Hell, it doesn’t take all night to plant a mine.

We did not – it is obvious to report – hit any mines.

The battlefield was an incongruous thing. Always there is some ridiculous impingement of normalcy on a field of battle.

Arabs continue plowing

Here on this day were the Arabs. They were herding their camels, just as usual. Some of them continued to plow their fields. Children walked along, driving their little sack-laden burros, as tanks and guns clanked past them. The sky was filled with planes and smoke burst from screaming shells.

As we smashed along over a field of new grain, which pushed its small shoots just a few inches above earth, the asinine thought popped into my head:

I wonder if the Army got permission to use this land before starting the attack.

Both sides had crossed and recrossed those farms in the past 24 hours. The fields were riddled by deep ruts and by wide spooky tracks of the almost mythical Mark VI tanks. Evidence of the previous day’s battle was still strewn across the desert. We passed charred half-tracks. We stopped to look into a burned-out tank, named Temes, from which a lieutenant colonel friend of mine and his crew had demolished four German tanks before being put out of commission themselves.

We passed a trailer still full of American ammunition, which had been abandoned. The young lieutenant wanted to hook our own jeep to it as a tow when we returned, but I talked him out of it. I feared the Germans had boobytrapped it during the night.

We moved on closer to the actual tank battle ahead, but never went right into it – for in a jeep that would have been a fantastic form of suicide. We stopped, I should judge, about a mile behind the foremost tanks.

Behind us the desert was still alive with men and machines moving up. Later we learned that some German tanks had maneuvered in behind us, and were shooting up our half-tracks and jeeps. But fortunately, we didn’t know that at the time.

Light American tanks came up from the rear and stopped near us. They were to be held there in reserve, in case they had to be called into the game in this league which was much too heavy and hot for them. Their crews jumped out the moment they stopped, and began digging foxholes against the inevitable arrival of the dive bombers.

Soon the dive bombers came. They set fires behind us. American and German tanks were burning ahead of us. Our planes came over, too, strafing and bombing the enemy.

War sounds are unforgettable

One of our half-tracks, full of ammunition, was livid red, with flames leaping and swaying. Every few seconds one of its shells would go off, and the projectile would tear into the sky with a weird whang-zing sort of noise. Field artillery had stopped just on our right. They began shelling the German artillery beyond our tanks. It didn’t take long for the Germans to answer.

The scream of an approaching shell is an, appalling thing. We could hear them coming (you sort of duck inside yourself, without actually ducking at all). Then we could see the dust kick up a couple of hundred yards away. The shells hit the ground and ricocheted like armor-piercing shells, which do not explode but skip along the ground until they finally lose momentum or hit something.

War has its own peculiar sounds. They are not really very much different from sounds in the world of peace. But they clothe themselves in an unforgettable fierceness, just because they are born in danger and death. The clank of a starting tank, the scream of a shell through the air, the ever-rising whine of fiendishness as a bomber dives – these sounds have their counterparts in normal life, and a person would be hard put to distinguish them in a blindfold test. But, once heard in war, they are never forgotten.

Their nervous memories come back in a thousand ways – in the grind of a truck starting in low gear, in high wind around the eaves, in somebody merely whistling a tune. Even the sound of a shoe, dropping to the floor in a hotel room above you, becomes indistinguishable from the faint boom of a big gun far away. A mere rustling curtain can paralyze a man with memories.