Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 6, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (March 5, by wireless)
Late one afternoon, I drove my jeep to the cactus patch which contained headquarters, I had often stayed there, and felt like a member of the family.

Without reporting in or anything, I just picked out a little open spot among the bushes, got out my shovel and started digging a hole to sink my pup tent into. I had the hole about four inches deep and only half long enough, when I heard a shout:

Here they come.

Immediately all over the cactus patch guns started firing. Dive bombers had comer out if the sun, and were on us almost before we knew it. My hole in the sand was still not large enough to harbor a man even as slight as myself. But, I assure you, its inadequacy did not deter me from diving into it forthwith.

As always in an air raid, I was torn between getting under cover and staying out to see what was going on. My policy seems to be the reverse of the ostrich – I stuck my rear in the sand and leave my head out, thinking I’m safe.

So, I lay there in the shallow depression, but proposed one elbow to get a good view.

Right now, I want to say that anybody who can tell, after a dive-bombing attack, just exactly what happened is a genius. It is all so fast and confusing.

Details hard to remember

Your senses seem to play hooky on you. After that raid, I could not tell you how many bombs dropped, how many planes took part, what kind they were, whether any stated smoking, or what direction they went when they left.

They came down one at a time, seemingly from everywhere. As soon as one finishes its dive, you start looking for the next one. You lose sight of the one which just passed, and don’t know what happened to him.

You see others in the sky in addition to the one now making its dive. They seem to be going in all directions. The air is full of tracer bullets and black ack-ack puffs. You get these spots confused with planes.

I remember feeling a wonderful elation when I saw one tracer tear right smack into its target – only to realize a moment later it had entered a puff of smoke instead of an enemy plane. You hear the scream of diving planes and the clatter of shooting around. You hear explosions of ack-ack and shells and bombs going off, and truly can’t tell which is which. At least, I can’t.

You sense, more than actually see, bombs falling around you – and duck after you hear the explosion, which obviously would be too late if it were really close.

They dive-bombed us twice that evening. Before I got my sandpit finished, men were killed within 200 yards of me. Yet a bomb that far away isn’t even considered in your neighborhood. It must be within 50 feet before you start telling big stories about your escape.

One of the most vivid remembrances I have of the raid is of a flight of little birds roosting in the cactus patch. That horrible melee and shooting scares the wits out of them. They start flying hysterically in all directions.

Birds don’t like bombs either

Time and again I duck instinctively from flying bomb fragments – only to realize later that it is the little silver birds, darting frantically back and forth amidst the cactus bushes.

I went through another dive-bombing attack during the Sidi Bouzid battle. That part of the desert is flat as a polished tabletop, with not a hole or ditch anywhere. So, I psychopathically lay down behind an old dead bush about 12 inches high.

I remember only two things during the few minutes they were over us. One was getting my breath in little short jerks – almost panting – though lying flat on my back, looking up at the planes, and not exerting myself on any way. The other was my feeling of indignation and frustration that dozens of enemy planes could fly smack overhead, not more than 500 feet, with the sky around them absolutely speckled with tracer bullets and not a single plane be brought down.

Our Air Corps contends that dive bombing is relatively harmless and that, as soon as our troops get seasoned, we will be knocking them off so fast they will stop it. True, dive bombing does not kill as many people as you would think. But the great damage is psychological. The sound and sight of a dive bomber peeling off from formation, and heading right down at you, is one of the most nerve-shattering episodes of war.

It takes guts, and plenty, not to run or not to turn your head at the last moment. Maybe our troops eventually will get hardened to it.

As for me, I’m too old to change my ways, and my way is just to lie there scared stiff.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 8, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (March 7, by wireless)
Little cameos of war:

Most of the preliminary battles between Axis and American troops in Tunisia during the past two months have been for possession of mountain passes leading to eastern Tunisia. In one of these battles, our men had worked their way up to the mouth of a pass on one side and the Italians had done the same on the other side. There they lay, well dug in, not more than 200 yards apart. They were separated by previously laid minefields over which neither dared to pass. So, they just stayed there, each side waiting for the other to act.

The Italians began sending over notes to the Americans. I’ve heard many stories of such happenings in the last war, but it is rare in this one. The Italians would send over a note telling the Americans they were badly outnumbered and didn’t have a chance and had better surrender right now. The Americans sent back a note saying:

Go to hell, you lousy spaghetti eaters. We’ll tear your ears off before this is over.

The reason I’m telling this story is that these notes, with perfect incongruousness, were carried back and forth through the mine fields by a small Arab boy who happened to wander past and took on the job for a few francs!

The other day we drove past a big bivouac of supply trucks on the desert a few minutes after some German planes had dive-bombed and strafed them. The soldiers all took to foxholes and nobody was hurt, but three trucks were set afire. The soldiers got two fires out immediately, but the third was hopeless, for it was a big truck loaded with scores of five-gallon tins of gasoline. These would explode and scatter flaming debris.

Tin can’s war journey

Then, suddenly, there was a bigger explosion and one lone gasoline tin went shooting straight up into the air. That can rose majestically to a height of about four hundred feet, gradually slowed down until it seemed to pause motionless for a moment in the sky, then came plunging straight down. Its explosive flight had been so straight up and down that when it fell it grazed the side of the truck not five feet from where it had started.

Some little thing like that – the uncanny straightness of a tin can’s war journey – often stays in your mind for ages after the memory of horror or bravery has dimmed and passed.

Another time, Don Coe of the United Press and I stayed all night at a forward command post a few miles back from a pass where fighting was going on.

We were in a big farmyard. Trucks and jeeps were parked around the edge of the lot under trees. We picked out a vacant spot and threw our bedrolls on the ground. We rolled our jeep in front of us to keep trucks from running over us in the blackout while we slept.

There is something good about sleeping outdoors. For a long time, we lay back, rolled tight in our blankets, looking straight up into the sky. There were millions of stars, and every few seconds one of them would fall. A couple of times stars went shooting horizontally across the heavens. The sky at night is a majestic and inspiring thing, yet we had to come to far-off Africa and sleep on the ground in order to see and feel it.

The general calls early

After a while, we went to sleep. The next thing I knew a gruff voice was saying:

What the hell is this jeep doing out here in the open like this?

I peeked one eye out and saw that it was just daylight, and the voice was no less than that of the general, out on an early-morning inspection prowl. Whereupon I shut my eye and let Don handle the situation.

The general made a few more choice remarks before Don got his sleepy head out of the blankets. Then, all of a sudden, the general said:

Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was you. Forget it. Everything’s all right.

I lay very still, pretending to be asleep, and chuckling to myself. Later in the day, the general apologized to me too, but I was sorry he did and told him so, for we had done something very thoughtless which endangered other people as well as ourselves. And the fact that we were correspondents instead of soldiers didn’t excuse us.

But at least we learned our lesson. We won’t leave jeeps showing after daylight again.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 9, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

The Tunisian front – (March 8, by wireless)
After living with our troops at the Tunisian front for some weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the two dominant things in their minds are hatred of the cold and fear of attack from the air. I have already written a great deal about the cold. You can sympathize there, for you all know what it feels like to be cold. But you don’t know – can never know, without experiencing it – the awful feeling of being shot at by speeding enemy planes.

If our soldiers are meticulous about any one thing, it is about watching the sky. Nobody has to tell them to be cautious. After just one attack, caution becomes a sort of reflex action. You never let a plane pass without giving it a good looking over. The sound of a motor in the sky is a sign to stop whatever you are doing long enough to make sure.

Of course, aerial attack is at its worst in actual battle, when Stukas are diving on our troops; that is a nightmare. But it’s not only in battle that they get it. They get it also in bivouacs, and on the roads. They are subject to it all the time – not in great or blanket amounts, to be sure, but the danger is always there, like a snake hidden somewhere along your path.

As a result, camouflage becomes second nature to you. Near the front you never park a jeep without putting it under a tree. If there are no trees, you leave it on the shady side of a building or wall. If there is no cover at all you throw your camouflage net over it.

‘German pilots sneak up’

As you near the front you fold your windshield down over the hood and slip a canvas cover over it so it won’t glint and attract a pilot’s eye.

German pilots liked to sneak up from behind, and it’s incredible how difficult it was to spot a hostile plane. Once some Army friends of mine never knew there was a plane within miles until one swooped overhead and 20-millimeter shells splattered on all sides of them.

Every day somebody got strafed on the roads, yet it was really the tiniest fraction of one per cent of our men that ever saw a German plane when on a trip. I drove hundreds of miles over central Tunisian roads in convoy but saw relatively few strafings and they occurred far up the road.

Hate strafing planes

It’s the stealthiness of the thing, the knowledge that this sudden peril is always possible, that gets you. There are thousands of Americans over here who are calm under ground fire but hate strafing planes. Soldiers in camp lost no time in hitting their slit trenches and soldiers on the road flow out of their vehicles like water every time a plane is seen. Nine times out of ten it turns out to be one of our planes, but if you waited to make sure, you might be too late. More than once I’ve quickly slowed down and then realized the approaching plane was only a soaring bird.

As you drive along roads in the frontal area you meet hundreds of vehicles, from jeeps to great wrecker trucks, and every one of the hundreds of soldiers in them will be scanning the sky as though they were lookouts on a ship at sea.

The other day, a friend and I were coming back from the frontlines in our jeep and met a great convoy of supply trucks making a suffocating cloud of dust. Our first intimation of danger was the sound of ack-ack shells exploding in the sky behind us. We stopped in nothing flat, and piled out. I remember looking back and saying:

There’s two dozen of them coming right at us!

We ran out across the fields about 50 yards to a small ditch, and stopped there to look again. My two dozen enemy planes were actually just the black puffs of our ack-ack shells. We couldn’t see the planes at all. That shows how deceptive your senses are when you get excited.

Collapsible foxholes

You learn to hate absolutely flat country where there are no ditches to jump into or humps to hide behind. We even make jokes about carrying collapsible foxholes for such country.

In camp I’ve seen soldiers sitting in their slit trenches, completely oblivious of the presence of anyone around them, and cuss the German planes and root for our ack-ack to get one, just as though they were at a football game.

The commandant of one outfit which has been at the front for two months told me they had been strafed and dive-bombed so much they couldn’t hear a motor anymore without jumping. I know one American outfit that was attacked by Stukas 23 times in one day. A little of that stuff goes a long way.

If we have ack-ack to shoot back, it lessens the soldiers’ fear greatly; and if our own fighters are in the sky, then the men feel almost no uneasiness at all.

Yes, the cold and the Stukas are the bugaboos of the average guy over here. Before long now, the cold will disappear, and we all hope the Stukas would take the hint also.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 10, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward airdrome in North Africa – (March 9)
Once more I’m with the House of Jackson – the bomber crew I wrote about in England and again elsewhere in Africa. We follow each other around so much that our reunions are getting to be commonplace.

They were out on a mission when I arrived at their remote airdrome. So, I went out to their plane’s parking place, and was waiting when they came back. The first man to drop out of the plane was Lt. Malcolm Andresen, of Hixton, Wisconsin, the navigator. We are good friends, and I hadn’t seen him for weeks, but he just grinned and said, “Hi, Ernie,” and didn’t even shake hands, as though I’d been there all the time.

The House of Jackson is still perking, but the inevitable perils and shiftings of war are starting to whittle her down. Her skipper was Capt. Jack Taylor, of Wollaston, Massachusetts. Now he has been promoted to ground work in an operations job, and takes the faithful old plane on its mission only once in a while.

He hates office work; just isn’t the type. But when I asked him if he didn’t chafe at being on the ground so much, he said:

Hell no. If I never go on another mission, it’ll suit me all right.

But later I noticed he was begging the squadron leader to let him go on one.

The bombardier is temporarily out of the crew too. He got a piece of flak in his left hand, and now goes around proudly with his arm in a sling. He is Lt. Joe Wolff, of Omaha. He’ll be flying again in a few days, but the boys kid him about maybe he’ll get a ticket home, now that he’s wounded. Joe laughes too, but he wishes they weren’t just kidding.

One man of crew killed

There is no laughter about the ball-turret gunner. For he is dead. He is the one who loved his ball turret so much he even wanted to be in it while the plane took off; loved it so much he wouldn’t let anybody else get inside it.

His death was a brave one. When the Germans came over the airdrome one night, this gunner jumped from the trench, where he was safe, and dashed to the nearest Fortress and began shooting at the enemy planes from the upper turret. A bomb landed nearby, and a small fragment tore through the side of the plane and went through his heart.

I was on the field that night, and the rest of the crew were asking their officers if they could take up a collection and send his body home. It is impossible, but they will mark his grave well, and maybe after the war his body can be arranged.

That night, Lt. Andresen asked me if I could say something in the column about how wonderful the ball-turret gunner had been, and how he had died, so his folks could read it. But I had to tell him it was impossible, because I can’t give his name.

There is a censorship rule which forbids us mentioning the name of a casualty until after his family has been notified by the War Department. The rule is good, I think, but there’s no way for us over here ever to know when the War Department has sent its telegram. Consequently, the rule really forbids us even mentioning casualties at all.

So, all I can do is tell the little incident, and someday the other members of the crew will write to this brave gunner’s family and tell them how he died.

The gunner was Sgt. John D. Wadkins, of Coolidge, Arizona. Ernie Pyle gave his name is a confidential postscript to this dispatch, for use of the War Department confirmed that the next of kin has been notified. This the department has done.

Fliers have ‘special’ language

The Air Forces have a language all their own. One old Air Force expression has increased in popularity over here until now it substitutes for about 50% of ordinary verbs. The expression is ‘'sweating out.” You “sweat out” a mission, or you “sweat out” the weather, or you “sweat out” a promotion. It means you wait, or you fight, or you do anything hard that takes some time.

Another much used expression is “rugged.” When you’ve been living in mud, that was “rugged.” When the flak over Bizerte has been especially bad, that was a “rugged” trip. Anything extraordinarily tough is “rugged.”

In the village near our airdrome, there is a terribly crippled Arab kid, about 10 or 12 years old, I’d judge. He can’t walk, and crawls on his stomach all over town through the dirt and filth.

And what have our soldiers done? Why, they’ve taken the wheels off a battery carrier at the airdrome, and made a little wheeled platform for the kid to lie on, so he can roll along the streets instead of crawl.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 11, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Ernie Pyle and “That Girl” remarried yesterday, by proxy – all the way from Africa to New Mexico.

On the central Tunisian front – (March 10)
The other night I was sitting in the room of Lt. Col. Sam Gormly, a Flying Fortress commander from Los Angeles. We were looking over a six-weeks-old copy of an American picture magazine, the latest to reach us. It was full of photos and stories of the war; dramatic tales from the Solomons, from Russia, and right from our own African front. The magazine fascinated me and, when I had finished, I felt an animation about the war I hadn’t felt in weeks.

For in the magazine the war seemed romantic and exciting, full of heroics and vitality. I know it really is, and yet I don’t seem capable of feeling it. Only in the magazine from America can I catch the real spirit of the war over here.

One of the pictures was of the long concrete quay where we landed in Africa. It gave me a little tingle to look at it. For some perverse reason it was more thrilling to look at the picture, than it was to march along the dock itself that first day. I said:

I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Here we are right at the front, and yet the war isn’t dramatic to me at all.

It’s just hard work

When I said that, Maj. Quint Quick of Bellingham, Washington, rose up from his bed onto his elbow. Quick is a bomber squadron leader and has been in as many fights as any bomber pilot over here. He is admired and respected for what he’s been through. He said:

It isn’t to me either. I know it should be, but it isn’t. It’s just hard work, and all I want is to finish it and get back home.

So, I don’t know. Is war dramatic, or isn’t it? Certainly, there are great tragedies, unbelievable heroics, even a constant undertone of comedy. It is the job of us writers to transfer all that drama back to you folks at home. Most of the other correspondents have the ability to do it. But when I sit down to write, here is what I see instead: Men at the front suffering and wishing they were somewhere else, men in routine jobs just behind the lines bellyaching because they can’t get to the front, all of them desperately hungry for somebody to talk to besides themselves, no women to be heroes in front of, damned little wine to drink, precious little song, cold and fairly dirty, just toiling from day to day in a world full of insecurity, discomfort, homesickness, and a dulled sense of danger.

The drama and romance are here, of course, but they’re like the famous falling tree in the forest – they’re no good unless there’s somebody around to hear. I know of only twice that the war will be romantic to the men over here. Once when they see the Statue of Liberty, again on their first day back in the hometown with the folks.

And speaking of drama, I’ve just passed up my only opportunity of being dramatic in this war. It was a tough decision either way.

Too old for heroics

As you’ve seen, correspondents at last are allowed to go along on bombing missions. I am with a bomber group that I’d known both in England and elsewhere in Africa, and many of them are personal friends by now. They asked if I cared to go along on a mission over the hot spot of Bizerte.

I knew the day of that invitation would come, and I dreaded it. Not to go, brands you as a coward. To go might make him a slight hero, or a dead duck. Actually, I never knew what I’d say until the moment came. When it did come, I said this:

No, I don’t see any sense in my going. Other correspondents have already gone, so I couldn’t be the first anyhow. I’d be in the way, and if I got killed my death would have contributed nothing. I’m running chances just being here without sticking my neck out and asking for it. No, I think I won’t go. I’m too old to be a hero.

Fliers agree with him

The reaction of the fliers astounded me. I expected them to be politely contemptuous of anyone who declined to do just once what they did every day. But their attitude was exactly the opposite, and you could tell they were sincere and not just being nice.

One of them said:

Anybody who goes, when he doesn’t have to, is a plain damned fool.

Another pilot said:

If I were in your shoes, I’d never go on another mission.

A bombardier with his arm in a sling from flak said:

You’re right. A correspondent went with us. It wasn’t any good. He shouldn’t have done it.

To hell with vanity

A lieutenant colonel, who had just got back from a mission, said:

There are only two reasons on earth why anybody should go. Either because he has to, or to show other people he isn’t afraid. Some of us have to show we’re not afraid. You don’t have to. You decided light.

I put this all down with such blunt immodesty because some of you may have wondered when I’m going along to describe a bombing mission for you, and if not, why not. I’m not going, and the reason is that I’ve rationalized myself into believing that for one in my position, my sole purpose in going would be to perpetuate my vanity. And I’ve decided to hell with vanity.

[NormanStewart]

Ernie Pyle and ‘That Girl’ are rewed by proxy

He’s in Africa; she’s in New Mexico as ceremony is performed

“That Girl” and Ernie Pyle were remarried yesterday in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The marriage was by proxy.

Ernie was at the front with U.S. forces in Africa when the ceremony occurred. His former (and now his present) wife, was in Albuquerque.

Ernie – roaming reporter for the Pittsburgh Press and many other newspapers – has been writing from Africa dispatches which have attracted worldwide attention.

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, his former wife has been working for the government.

Traveled world together

For many years they had traveled around the country and the world, and in Ernie’s columns she had often been mentioned as “That Girl.” Then came a divorce.

The Pyles had a home in Albuquerque. You may remember Ernie’s columns about how it was built, and how he took time off to build a fence around the yard. It was the only home the Pyles had had for years – because Ernie’s job was to travel, and they never lit long enough to have a regular address.

Divorced last April

Ernie and his wife, Geraldine Siebolds Pyle, were divorced last April.

The marriage was performed by Judge Neil McNerney, E. H. Shaffer, editor of the Albuquerque Tribune and close friend of Mr. Pyle, acted as Mr. Pyle’s agent through authority granted by the judge advocate of the Army in North Africa.

And hundreds of newspapermen who know Ernie and Gerrie – including a whole host of our paper – offer congratulations. And are happy.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 12, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward Tunisian airdrome – (March 11)
Everything around a fighter-bomber airdrome is important, but I know of nothing more important than the repair section. It’s vastly different from airplane shops or garages back home, where nothing more than a little inconvenience resulted from the long layup of a plane or car. Out here there are just so many planes. With us and Germany teeter-tottering for air superiority over Africa, every single one is as precious as though it were made of gold. Every plane out of action is temporarily the same as a plane destroyed.

It is the job of the repair section to take the shot-up planes and get them back into the air a little faster than is humanly possible. And that is what they are doing.

At our desert airdrome this section is in charge of Maj. Charles E. Coverley, of Palo Alto, California. His nickname is “Erk,” and he was one of my fellow travelers from England.

His right arm is a quiet mechanical genius named Walter Goodwin, of Grove City, Pennsylvania – a Regular Army sergeant, just promoted on the field to warrant officer. The men worship him and every officer on the field accepts his judgment on plane damage as final.

It’s a crazy idea, but it works

The repair section operates under a theory that seems outlandish after coming from the peacetime business world. Its motto is to give away everything it can. Instead of hoarding their supplies and yelling that they’re snowed-under with work, they go around the field accepting every job imaginable, fulfilling every pilot’s request, donating from their precious small stock of spare parts to any line mechanic that asks for something. For only by doing it that way do planes get back into the air a few hours sooner.

In the repair section are 250 master craftsmen. They are happy and sincere and proud. I’ve never seen greater willingness to work beyond all requirements than these men show.

Let me give you an example of how the section works. After a recent little to-do with the enemy, 14 of our planes were found to be damaged. Some needed only skin patches; others had washtub holes through the wings and were almost rebuilding jobs. Maj. Coverley and the squadron engineers surveyed the situation all morning, driving in a jeep from one plane to another. I rode with them, and when noon came and not a plane had been moved over to the repair area, I thought to myself this is a mighty slow way to win a war. But I changed my mind a little later.

It takes that long to estimate all the damage, plan out your program, distribute your men and machines over the huge field, and get things rolling. But once rolling…

Two months’ work in 3 days

Two days later I checked on their progress. Five of those wrecked planes were ready for missions that first evening. Three more were delivered the following day. On the third day four more were just about finished. That made 12. The other two had been turned into salvage, for spare parts.

Under peacetime conditions at home, it would have taken perhaps two months even in the finest shops to get all those planes back into the air. But here they were fighting again within three days. You can do the impossible when you have to.

This field operates with a dearth of spare parts, as probably do all our fields at the far ends of the earth. So, the field provides its own spare parts by scrapping the most badly damaged planes, and using the good parts that are left. This happens to about one of every 15 planes that are shot up. These condemned planes are towed to the engineering section, and there they gradually disappear. Finally, they are skeletons – immobile, pathetic, skeletons, picked bare by the scavenging mechanics.

They hope inspectors never come

These salvage planes are nicknamed “hangar queens.” Five of them are sitting on the line now. As you know, every bomber has a name painted on its nose. One of these hangar queens is called Fertile Myrtle. Another is Special Delivery. And a third is Little Eva, which happens also to be the nickname of a friend of mine in Albuquerque.

The Little Eva of Albuquerque spends her life raising flowers and being nice to other people; the Little Eva of Africa has given her life that other planes may fly on to help end the war.

You’d be touched by the sight of the repair shops here. All plane work is done right outdoors.

The only shops are tents where small machine work is done. The tents are three-sided, with one end open. The floor is sand. When the wind blows the men have to wear goggles. Beside every tent, almost within one-jump distance, is a deep slit trench to dive into when the enemy bombers come. Theirs is real war work, and you can’t say they’re much safer than the airmen themselves, for they are subject to frequent bombing.

They say their main hope is that no experts from the factories back home show up to look things over. The experts would tell them a broken wing can’t be fixed this way; a shattered landing gear can’t be fixed that way. But these birds know damned well it can be, for they’re doing it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 13, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward Tunisian airdrome – (March 12)
You may remember my writing last summer about a bunch of American fighter pilots training in Ireland. They were the first fliers to arrive in Ireland, and their comment on the Irish weather was:

When you can see the hills, it’s going to rain; when you can’t see the hills, it’s raining.

Well, I’ve just smacked into this same bunch down here in Africa. They’ve sure been through the mill in the past six months. Already one squadron is veteran enough that some are due to go home soon, and they’ve all been moved back to take a rest.

For five weeks, they lived and fought in a special kind of hell on the Tunisian front. Their field was bombed on an average of every two hours. The pilots took to the air at a moment’s notice, several times a day. They averaged between four and five hors in the air daily, and practically all of it was fighting time.

They started with 21 planes and 22 pilots. They lost six planes and three pilots. But on their scoreboard, they are credited with 11 victories, two probables, and 14 damaged.

Plane is junk; pilot unhurt

They had enough thriller-diller experiences to fill a book. Lt. Ed Boughton of New York had a typical one. His plane was shot all to pieces and the glass canopy that shuts him into the seat was damaged so he couldn’t get it open. Consequently, he couldn’t jump, and simply had to land the plane or die.

Miraculously, he got it back to the field and crash-landed it. The plane was nothing but junk – Lt. Boughton wasn’t hurt. When they finally got him out, they discovered that the jammed canopy had probably saved his life. For his parachutes was shot half away, and if he’d jumped, he would have fallen like a plummet.

The squadron commander is Maj. James S. Coward of Erwin, Tennessee. Lt. Col. Graham West of Portland, Oregon, is the executive officer of the whole group, but spent the entire time at the front with this one squadron. He is still with them, seeing that they rest as hard as they fought.

West’s nickname is “Windy.” He and Jim Coward are typical of the Air forces. They are both young, both extremely pleasant to be around, both high in rank for their age. When I saw “Windy” West last July in Ireland he was a captain. A few moments out to denote the passage of time, and he shows up in Africa as a lieutenant colonel.

West is a black-haired, black-mustached fellow who could easily be called “dashing,” although he’d no doubt resent it. His clothes are always spick-and-span, and so is his mustache. He plays good poker and is always hurrying somewhere. He has been in the Army eight years, and if the Army hadn’t got him, the theater should have.

I went into his room one morning. He was standing in the middle of the floor, drinking a cup of coffee he had brewed on his own little French burner. He was fully dressed on the upper half – shirt, tie, flying jacket and everything.

A Capt. Kidd of the air

But on the lower half he had nothing but shorts and leather boots. Jaunty flying boots that flared at the top. He was a picture of Capt. Kidd – a modern Capt. Kidd of the air.

When they were at the front everybody had to live out in the open. It was wet and cold at the start, wet and cold at the end.

The ground crew of 85 men really went through hell. For they were bombed by day, miserably wet and cold by night, and constantly overworked. When the pilots flew their Spitfires back to a desert airdrome for their much-deserved rest, their main concern was for their ground crews, who had been left up front to care for the replacement squadron.

I heard at least a half a dozen pilots say:

We’re all right. We can use the rest, but we’re not in bad shape. It’s those ground men that really need it and deserve it.

So “Windy” West went to work, and a few days later six big transports flying in formation landed at our field, and out of them climbed the 85 weary ground men. Replacements had arrived for them. They have begun their rest. And all’s well that ends well.

[Chewbacca]

@NormanStewart

They had enough thriller-diller experiences to fill a book. Lt. Ed Boughton of New York had a typical one. His plane was shot all to pieces and the glass canopy that shuts him into the seat was damaged so he couldn’t get it open. Consequently, he couldn’t jump, and simply had to land the plane or die.

Miraculously, he got it back to the field and crash-landed it. The plane was nothing but junk – Lt. Boughton wasn’t hurt. When they finally got him out, they discovered that the jammed canopy had probably saved his life. For his parachutes was shot half away, and if he’d jumped, he would have fallen like a plummet.

Cool story, plane is junk, Pilot walks away is the survivor mindset. Never sacrifice yourself to rescue a plane

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 15, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

A forward Tunisian airdrome – (March 14)
There was one bunch that was die most traveled squadron of American Flying Fortress crews in existence. The guys were such confirmed sightseers they all wanted to go into die tourist business when the war is over.

This squadron actually took its present formation in India last spring, from crews that already had fought on several fronts. For nearly a year now it has been shifted hither and yon like the thistle. It is still subject to striking out for some weird new place before dawn tomorrow. Here is where these men have fought – the Philippines, Java, Australia, Burma, China, India, Palestine, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Tripoli, and Tunisia.

Some of them started out a year ago by flying across the Pacific, and if they can just fight their way across the Atlantic now, they’ll have been around the world. And that isn’t just a dream either, for some of them have so many missions under their belts they’ll undoubtedly get to go home soon.

In Burma the squadron was based only 60 miles from the Japs. In India they lived through the dreadful summer heat that killed one man and put 15 out of 150 of them in the hospital with heat prostration. But through it all they kept sightseeing.

They like Palestine first

They’re authorities on the Holy Land. They’ve seen the pyramids of Egypt and the Taj Mahal of India. They’ve been to such places as Cyprus, Syria, and Lebanon. They’ve lived in luxury in India, with half a dozen servants apiece, and they’ve lived on the ground under tents in the midst of suffocating sandstorms.

Of all the places they’ve been, they like Palestine best. When they start talking about Palestine you can’t get them stopped. They say it’s just like California – fresh and green and strictly up-to-date. They say the most modern hotels in the world are there.

They’ve been through so much heat that the chill of North Africa made them suffer badly. Their losses have been heavy, but they’ve wreaked such devastation they’ve lost track of the figures. The total of shipping they’ve sunk got beyond them in October, when they were operating over the Mediterranean out of Egypt.

They’ve bombed Greece, Crete, and the Dodecanese Islands. They have the credit for stopping Rommel’s supply lines just before the British 8th Army started its drive last fall. They say the German flak thrown up over Tobruk and Benghazi was the most deadly they’ve ever known, even surpassing the hail of metal that floats above Bizerte.

The leader of this squadron is Capt. J. B. Holst, of Savannah, Georgia. The boys say that practically the entire population of Savannah went into the Air Force is right here on this front now. Lt. Donald Wilder, one of the squadron’s bombardiers, rattled off at least a dozen Savannah boys he’d met here since arriving from Egypt.

Lt. Clarence E. Summers, of Lincoln, Nebraska, says that if all die Savannah boys are here, then apparently all the Phi Gam fraternity members are too. He was eating the other night with six fliers he hadn’t known before, and five of them turned out to be Phi Gams.

Some of the navigators on these well-traveled ships had navigated as much as 200,000 miles since they left home. They’ve already been on missions far beyond the total that might eventually be set up for “posting” our flying crews for a rest.

Monkey flies with them

Probably the oldest and most experienced pilot in the squadron is Capt. James Anderson, of Dahlonega, Georgia. He has 35 missions under his belt – not little short missions, but mostly 10-hour ones. Lt. Grady H. Jones, of Bremen, Georgia, his navigator, has been on 37 missions. That’s far more than the bomber boys who came from England have made.

This much-traveled outfit found the going not too tough here over Tunisia. They say:

This is the first time in our whole year’s action we’ve ever had fighter escorts. Fighters are a luxury to us.

For an international touch, they have a pet monkey. Sgt. Pittard of Athens, Georgia, got it in India, and it has flown all the way with them. It has 300 flying hours to its credit.

It just wanders around the plane during flight, making itself at home. When they get high where it gets cold, the monkey burrows itself between two parachute cushions to keep warm. If somebody comes along and lifts one cushion, the monkey frowns and squeals and motions for them to put the cushion back and go away.

The monkey is smart. She can tell Americans from Englishmen, Arabs, French or Indians. She doesn’t like anybody but Americans. I’m an American but she better not start to like me. I know all about monkeys, and I detest them. Even heroic monkeys.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 16, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Algiers, Algeria – (March 15)
The staff of the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, now being published in Africa, as well as in England, is probably the most compact little family among all our troops abroad. By sticking together and using their noodles, they’ve just about whipped the miseries of African life.

There are 18 of them. Their big boss is Lt. Col. Egbert White, a gray-haired, lovable man who speaks quietly and makes sure that the boys under him are well cared for. Col. White, incidentally, spent a week at the front recently, wandered around until he got behind the German lines, and got himself shot at.

The actual working editor of Stars and Stripes in Africa is Lt. Bob Neville, who was promoted recently from sergeant. Like all others who have been commissioned in the field, he’s had a terrible time getting himself an officer’s uniform. Col. White gave him a blouse, which fits perfectly. A correspondent gave him a cap. He bought a pair of pants from another officer. He picked up his bars here, there, and everywhere. He cut the stripes off his overcoat and pretends it’s from Burberry’s. But, as somebody has already said, the rules at the front are pretty elastic, and how you look doesn’t matter much.

The Stars and Stripes has its editorial offices in the Red Cross building, a beautiful brand-new structure of six stories in downtown Algiers. It’s just as modem as New York, except the acoustics engineer was insane, and if you drop a pin on the first floor, it sounds on the fifth floor like New Year’s Eve in a boiler shop.

They’ve licked the cold too

The staff of the Stars and Stripes works and lives in this building. On the top floor, they have a huge front room, which serves as both dormitory and clubroom. At first, they were sleeping on the hard tile floor. Later, the Red Cross dug up French iron cots for them, so now they’re almost as comfortable as at home.

They have big steel cupboards to use as shelves, and a large table where they write letters and play cards. There’s always a huge basket of tangerines sitting on the table. The windows are blackened out so they can have lights at night. They’ve bought an oil stove, so they have the unspeakable winter climate whipped and tied.

A dozen of the staff write and edit the paper, half a dozen do the mechanical work. They have made an arrangement with a local newspaper for using its composing room. But the American soldiers do all their own mechanical work.

There are four linotype operators on the staff. The boss is Pvt. Irving Levinson, of Stamford, Connecticut. He is a good-natured genius at getting work done in a foreign country.

He has to get out a paper in a French composing room in which not a soul speaks English, and Irv speaks not a word of French. But his native good humor works so well that within two weeks all the French printers were addressing him by the familiar “tu,” they were having him out to their homes for dinner, and the paper was coming out regularly.

Pvt. Wentzel has permanent job

Two of the other lino operators were Pfc. William Gigente, of Brooklyn, and Cpl. Edward Roseman, of Pleasantville, New Jersey. The fourth is Pvt. Jack Wentzel of Philadelphia, and his is the funniest case of all. He hasn’t run a linotype since he joined the staff of Stars and Stripes. He’s been too busy cooking.

Pvt. Wentzel never cooked a meal in his life, outside of helping his mother a little when he was a kid. But the Stars and Stripes decided to set up its own mess right in its own building, and by drawing straws or something. Pvt. Wentzel became the cook.

Before many meals passed, the staff discovered they had a culinary wizard in their midst. Wentzel sort of liked it himself. So, by acclamation they made him permanent cook.

Now the three other linotype operators work overtime, doing his composing-room work for him, so he can remain as cook. As they say, it isn’t quite in line with union rules, but right now they don’t happen to be under union jurisdiction.

At any rate, the staff contributes to the mess fund out of their own pockets, for various local delicacies in addition to the Regular Army rations. So, they wind up with what is unquestionably the best Army mess in the Algiers area. The food is so good that Lt. Neville and Capt. Harry Harchar, the circulation manager, who are supposed to eat at some officers’ mess, eat most of their meals with the men instead.

The whole shebang is about the nearest thing in spirit to a genuine newspaper office back home that I can conceive of.

[1nt17cs152.ritvik]

WELL… youtube made the song private.

[NormanStewart]

Well crap, here’s another link

Bing Sings "Road to Morocco"

[Chewbacca]

Lol, cool video clip

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 17, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In North Africa –
The Arab kids that swarm the roads around the Army camps and nearby villages are a friendly bunch.

It takes them only a few hours to learn the worldwide habit of begging from Americans. I’ll bet our soldiers aren’t two days in a new place until every kid in town is able to say in English “chewing gum, chocolate, cigarette, goodbye, okay.” They pester you to death for these tidbits, and the soldiers keep giving them away as long as they have any.

The Arab kids seem to have more sense than the pestering child-natives of many countries. Instead of being dumb and surly, they have a nice spark of life about them. If you say you have no chewing gum and smile at them, they’ll smile back and then stand around good-naturedly just smiling at you. Their favorite word is “okay.” Even some of the grownups have adopted it. They yell it at every passing American. You can’t walk down the road nowadays without being walled in by a surging melody of hundreds of “okays” coming at you from all sides.

Once in a while you see a light-skinned, clean-gowned, almost sheik-like Arab. But mostly their clothes are unwashed, and their long gowns an unbelievable mass of patches.

At first the Arabs were allowed to roam the airdromes, and they helped the crews fill the planes’ big tanks from the countless five-gallon tins.

There are quite a few carriages for hire in the desert towns and soldiers take rides in lieu of anything better to do. If I were an Arab, I know how I’d make a small fortune.

Passing up easy money

I’d get about 10 camels, and rent them out to soldiers to take rides on. I’d also get a camera and take pictures of soldiers on camelback, and sell them for 100 francs apiece. Apparently, no Arab has thought of it, but somebody is passing up an opportunity of making about 10,000 bucks awfully easily.

The horse carriages are fancy. The driver sits on a high box up front and is often dressed in bright clothes. One of these carriages the other evening provided the funniest sight I’ve seen since leaving America. It was just before dusk and the air-raid signal swept across our airdrome by dinner bell and rifle shot. I was standing way out on the field, when suddenly there came dashing out from behind the palm trees one of these Arab carriages.

The driver had brought some soldiers to the field, had heard the alarm and being touchy about raids, as Arabs are, had decided to get the hell out of there in a hurry.

Currier & Ives touch

He was standing up in his box, coattails flying, whipping his horses for all he was worth. The team was in a dead run. The buggy was bouncing and swaying over the rough desert trail. The horses were going so hard their bodies were stretched out, their flying feet almost level with their noses, and one was a little ahead of the other, just as on the racetrack.

With the carriage’s red wheels and the driver’s red coat for color, the scene looked exactly like a Currier & Ives print. The poor, frightened man’s pathetic hurry was so comical that we all stopped and laughed till he was out of sight, still going like mad.

Queer little incidents happen in war. Mechanics on the Flying Fortresses kept discovering empty machine-gun shells in the engine nacelles. Where they came from was a mystery. Finally, it dawned on somebody. Planes were dumping the empties in midair after shooting them, and they were being carried back by the slipstream, right through the propellers of the following planes, and lodging in the nacelles. You’d think it would damage the propellers, but apparently it doesn’t.

Gunner ‘wounded’ in pants pocket

And speaking of freaks, a Fortress gunner came home the other day with the corner of his pants pocket torn, apparently by a piece of flak, although it must have been fairly spent, for he didn’t know when it hit. Later, he put his hand in his pocket and discovered the metal fragment nestling there right in his pocket.

Practically all of our soldiers in North Africa have slept on the ground ever since they got here. The other day, I overheard one boy tell about going to Algiers on leave, and sleeping all night in a hotel bed. He said:

I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning with a splitting headache, just because the damn bed was so soft and I never did get back to sleep.

[NormanStewart]

Great song too. If I were in a desert environment (I have, a few times), that’d be the first song I’d sing.

[Chewbacca]

Lol, I could sing. Today The Netherlands was hit by Sahara sand. The cars have yellow dust on them.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 18, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

In North Africa –
The other night I met Lt. Col. William Clark, a great, tall, gaunt man from Princeton, New Jersey. Since the war started, he has been in Australia, Africa, and twice in England. He was in France in the last war, and personally I think he‘s having the time of his life in this one. Col. Clark is a bigshot back home. He’s judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. He’s the guy who declared the Prohibition Amendment unconstitutional. It’s beyond his powers, however, to create much drinkin’ likker in this part of the world.

Judge Clark is liaison officer with the British Army in Tunisia, right up where everything is hottest. He asked me if I’d put his name in the paper so his family would know he was all right. I said sure, and asked him what he wanted me to say about him.

He said:

Oh, just say you met the damned old fool.

The average American soldier has been without eggs for a long time, and I for one can testify that we miss them very much. The problem has been alleviated somewhat here on the desert. It seems the Arabs have eggs, so we go around and buy them up. We foolish Americans have already raised the price to five francs apiece (about seven cents), but what do we care? Everybody has too much money anyhow, and when you reach our state, an egg is practically golden.

Two egg orgies in a week

I’ve been on two egg orgies within a week. One night Maj. Austin Berry, of Belding, Michigan, bought 29 eggs from an Arab. Maj. Berry is a young squadron leader, and he has an appetite. We took the eggs to an Army kitchen and had them scrambled. Then Maj. Charles E. Coverley, Capt. Jack Traylor, Maj. Berry and myself ate all 29 eggs at one sitting, with nothing else whatever to go with them. That’s an average of better than seven eggs apiece. True, I woke up at 2 a.m. with a historic stomach-ache, but what of it?

Undeterred, I tried it again three days later. Two of my Flying Fortress friends came past about 11 in the morning, and we went to the village market and scoured around sort of speakeasy-like until we found a guy with some eggs. We bought two dozen.

My fellow gourmands were Lt. Bill Cody, of 1001 Oakwood Ave., Wilmette, Illinois, a bomber pilot, and Lt. Bob Wollard, of Clovis, New Mexico, a bombardier. We had the cook hard-boil them and then we went to my quarters and gorged ourselves. The three of us ate 24 eggs and 20 tangerines in half an hour flat. I’m getting this all down on paper quickly before the spasms set in.

Way back in Oran, a soldier was telling me a funny experience he had. He was WO Luke Corrigan, of 816 Hemlock St., Scranton, Pennsylvania. It seems that a large bunch of American nurses were headed for the front and had to be outfitted in short order.

He meets Scranton neighbor

Now Corrigan is in charge of one of the Army’s big warehouses, so it was his job to outfit the nurses. But Army warehouses, it seems, don’t carry such things as slips, step-ins, brassieres, and what not. So, Corrigan had to get himself an interpreter and go blushing all over Oran buying up dozens of those feminine items.

He completed his mission, and dashed to the train just before departure time. One nurse saw what he had, and grabbed at a box. Then others grabbed. The boxes flew open, and the first thing Corrigan knew he looked like a Christmas tree very much bedecked with panties, undies, and other pink unmentionables. He was very ill at ease. And just at that moment, he heard a familiar voice saying:

Well, Luke, I’ll have to write home and tell your mother how you’re fighting the war.

He turned around and it was a Scranton girl who lives just a few blocks from him at home. Her name was Helen Jeffers and she was a nurse too. Luke has been in the Army two years and in all that time Helen Jeffers is the only person from home he’s ever run into. And she had to find him like that.

All ain’t fair in peace or war.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 19, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

North Africa –
We had hardly got off the ground when a mechanic came back and said the pilot wanted me to come up front.

So, I crawled over a huge stack of boxes, bundles, spare tires and bedding rolls lashed to the floor of the plane, and worked any way up into the pilot’s compartment. The co-pilot’s seat was empty. The captain motioned me into it.

He said:

I thought you might like to see how it looks from up here.

And so, for the next hour and a half, I had the unusual privilege of seeing about 200 miles of Africa from the front of an airplane, up where the view is worth $8.80 a seat.

We were in what the Army calls a C-47, but which flying people at home know as the Douglas DC-3, which all laymen know as one of the great silver airliners that ply all the airlines of America in peacetime – and even today, I suppose. But over here they’re no longer silver; they’re a drab brown, and covered with mud at that. The soft easy seats are gone; on each side is just a long tin bench, with pan-like depressions for parachutists to sit on wearing their chutes.

No longer is there a carpet on the floor, and a hostess at the back. Now the bare floor is covered with mud, and the hostess becomes a sergeant who hasn’t shaved for two weeks.

Airliners absolutely wonderful

For today these once luxurious airliners are the workhorses of war. They are absolutely wonderful. They are making a saga for themselves over here. They are flying anywhere, at any time, doing impossible jobs under impossible conditions.

They run a daily schedule between all our big headquarters in North Africa. They run in big fleets carrying supplies and men right to the front. They carry everything from jeeps to generals. They pay little attention to danger, and little more to weather. They are doing in a way what the spectacular TACA airline did in the jungles of Central America.

These C-47s are over here by the hundred. Their pilots are sometimes looked upon patronizingly by the combat fliers, but it’s an unfair attitude and they sure have the acclaim of everybody else.

In the last few years, I had got to the point, after 15 years of flying, where I wouldn’t get into a plane unless it was on one of the regularly-scheduled airlines. Yet today I climb in with these fellows and flew around over the mountains and deserts of a strange continent with almost the same feeling of safety I used to have on the airlines.

My skipper on this special trip was Capt. Bill Lively, from Birmingham, Alabama. He already has 1,100 hours in the air, which is a lot for a young Army pilot. He says they used to fly real low over here, just for fun. But the Arabs got to throwing rocks and shooting at them, so now they keep at a respectable altitude.

Ours was the lead plane of a formation of three Douglases, with two Spitfires as escort. The Douglases flew very close together, and the Spitfires ranged above and to the side of us, sometimes crossing over and wandering around for good looks into the sky. Every now and then the pilot would look around to check on them.

Time to knock on wood

I asked Capt. Lively:

Have you ever been shot at?

He peered all around the cockpit. He asked:

Where’s some wood?

He finally found some back of his seat, and knocked on it. He said:

Never yet.

Some of the others have though. I asked:

This is one of the best airplanes in the world, isn’t it?

Capt. Lively said:

It’s got my money. You’ve got a big load with 26,000 pounds gross, but I’ve taken off 32,000 out of a field only about half as long as we’d look at back home. I don’t think there’s anything these planes won’t do. If a Civil Aeronautics inspector came over here, he’d go nuts.

We flew over bare, rugged mountains, through passes where the going was rough, out over the desert, over oases and lonely little adobe villages, over dry lakes and dust storms. We never saw anything more exciting than an occasional lone Arab working his fields.

When we finally got to where we were going, Capt. Lively asked me to have lunch with him and his crew. So, he dug underneath the benches where we’d been sitting, and got out about 15 cans of soup, beans, sausages, jam and pears. Next came two big loaves of bread, and then a little stove that sounds like a blowtorch when you light it. Within 15 minutes, we were dining in style out of mess kits, with sand blowing into our mouths, and a pet monkey some pilot had brought from Burma sitting and staring at us. That’s the way you live on the desert. As soon as we’d finished, they got back into the plane and flew off across the mountains.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 20, 1943)

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

On the North African desert –
Most of the American fighting so far in North Africa has been in the mountains, and Americans have seen little of the real desert. But they will sooner or later, so I jumped at the chance to go along on a sortie far into the Sahara, just to see what it would be like.

There were 15 of us in two big ten-wheeled trucks. We took our bedding rolls and enough rations for five days. The purpose of the trip was to salvage the parts from some airplanes that had made crash landings in the desert. Our trip was to take us within 20 miles of German outposts. We weren’t much afraid of being captured, but we were afraid of being strafed by German planes.

We started one morning, and made a French desert garrison at lunchtime. We got out tins of corned beef, sweet potatoes, peas, orange marmalade and hardtack. The French soldiers built a fire out of twigs between two rocks for us to heat water for tea. They cleared off a table in one of their barracks rooms, and did every little thing for us they could.

Cigars bring smiles

For months I’ve been carrying around some cigars I got on the boat coming from England, waiting for a propitious moment to give them away. So, when we left, I gave some to the French soldiers, and you could see the delight on their faces. They all lit up right away, and puffed and held the cigars off and looked at them approvingly, as though they were diamonds.

After we left, our soldiers kept talking about how nice the French were to us, and how they didn’t have much but whatever they had they’d give the best to us. The Americans liked the French, and everywhere you go, the French are grand to Americans.

That French garrison gave us one of its Arab enlisted men as a guide. He was a picturesque figure, rather handsome in his white turban, blue sash and khaki smock. He carried a long knife and a long-barreled rifle. He spoke no English whatever, and no French that we could understand. He said “wah” to everything we asked him.

He knew the way all right, but the communication system between him and us needed some improvement. All we ever got out of him was “wah.” We finally nicknamed him “Wah,” and before the trip was over, we were all saying “wah” when we meant “yes.”

It’s not like the movies

What we saw of the Sahara wasn’t exactly like what we see in the movies, but that’s maybe because we didn’t go far enough into it. The Sahara, you know, is more than 1,000 miles wide, and we were into it no more than 200 miles.

We saw nothing more spectacular than what you’ll find in the more remote parts of our own Southwest. Certainly, it was beautiful. At one point it was so utterly flat and bare that you could have landed anywhere and said:

This is an airport.

At other places it had dry river beds, very wide, their bottoms strewn with rocks. This surprised us, for what is a river doing on a desert? Again, the country would be rolling, and covered with a scrub-like vegetation.

Scenes make Ernie homesick

Parts of it were so exactly like the valley around Palm Springs, California, even down to the delicate smoke-tree bush, that it made you homesick. And one bare, tortured mountain could have been the one behind El Paso. Only once did we see a place with no vegetation at all, where the yellow sand was drifted movielike in great rippled dunes.

At long intervals we would come to what is known locally as an oasis. I used to think an oasis was three palm trees with a ragged guy crawling toward them, his parched tongue hanging out. But in this part of the desert an oasis is a village or a city. It doesn’t have three palm trees; it has tens of thousands of them, forests of them, which make their owners rich from the bounteous crop of dates.

It has big adobe buildings like the Indian pueblos, and narrow streets and irrigation ditches, and hundreds of children running around. It is a big community, and getting to an oasis is like getting to Reno after Death Valley.