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Show With Ernie Pyle at the Front Gen. Eddy Commands One Of Best Combat Divisions Commander Dares Enemy Fire to Be With His Fighting Troops By Ernie Pyle IN NORMANDY. One of the favorite generals among the war correspondents is Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, commander command-er of the Ninth division. . c 'We like him because he is absolutely honest with us, because be-cause he is sort of old-shoe and easy to talk with, and because we think he is a mighty good general. We have known him in Tunisia and Sicily, and now here in France. Like his big chief, Lieut. Gen. Omar Bradley, General Eddy looks more like a schoolteacher than a soldier. He Is a big, tall man but he wears glasses TTPrrl and his ees have Y'S? A a sort 01 suint r,; Vj He talks like a fvjV"'; 11 Middle Western- fvVx,'1, j' er, which he is. iV(Mf IIe stm ciaims t ')'J ChIcas as nome although he has j I ficer for 28 years. L..LJJJ IIe was wounded Ernie Pyle in toe last war-He war-He is not a glib talker, but he talks well and laughs easily. In spite of being a professional soldier he despises war, and like any ordinary soul is appalled by the waste and tragedy of it. He wants to win it and get home just as badly as anybody else. When the general is in the field he lives in a truck that used to be a machine shop. They have fixed it up nicely for him with a bed, a desk, cabinets, and rugs. His orderly or-derly is an obliging, dark-skinned sergeant who is a native of Ecuador. Some of h'.s officers sleep in foxholes, fox-holes, but the general sleeps in his truck. One night, however, while I was with his division, it got too hot even for him. Fragments from shells bursting nearby started hitting hit-ting the top of the truck, so he got out. The general has a small mess in a tent separate from the rest of the division staff. This is because be-cause he has a good many visiting vis-iting generals, and since they talk business while they eat they must have some privacy. Usually he stays at his desk during dur-ing the morning and makes a tour of regimental and battalion command com-mand posts during the afternoon. Usually he goes to the front in an unarmed jeep, with another jeep right behind him carrying a machine ma-chine gunner and rifleman on the alert for snipers. His drivers say when they start out: "Hold on, for the general doesn't spare the horses when he's traveling." travel-ing." He carries a portable telephone in his jeep, and if he suddenly wants to talk with any of his units he just stops along the road and plugs into one of the wires that are lying on the ground. General Eddy especially likes to show up in places where his soldiers wouldn't expect to see him. He knows that it helps the soldiers' spirits to see their commanding general gen-eral right up at the front where it is hot. So he walks around the front with his long stride, never ducking or appearing to be concerned at all. One day I rode around with him on one of his tours. At one command com-mand post we were sitting on the grass under a tree, looking at maps, with a group of officers around us. Our own artillery was banging nearby, but nothing was coming our way. Then, like a flash of lightning, here came a shell just over our heads, so low it went right through the treetops, it seemed. It didn't whine, it swished. Everybody, including in-cluding full colonels, flopped over and began grabbing grass. The shell exploded in the next orchard. General Eddy didn't move. He just said: "Why, that was one of our shells." And since I had known General Eddy for quite a while, I was bold enough to say: "General, if that was one of ours all I can say is that this is a hell of a way to run a war. We're fighting fight-ing toward the north, and that shell was going due south." The general just laughed. The general also likes to get up at four o'clock in the morning once in a while and go poking around into message centers and mess halls, giving the boys a start. It was one of these night meanderings that produced his favorite war story. It was In Africa. They were in a new bivouac. It was raining cats and dogs, and the ground was knee-deep knee-deep in mud. The tent pegs wouldn't stay in and the pup tents kept coming com-ing down. Everybody was wet and miserable. So, late at night the general started out on foot around the area, just because he felt so sorry for all the kids out there. As he walked he passed a soldier trying to redrive the stake that held down the front of his pup tent. The soldier was using his steel helmet as a hammer, and he was having a bad time of it Every now and then he would miss the stake with the helmet and would squash mud all over himself. He was cussing and fuming. The general was using his flashlight, flash-light, and when the soldier saw the light he called out: "Hey, Bud, come and hold that light for me, will you?" So General Eddy obediently squatted squat-ted down and held the light while the soldier pounded and spattered mud, and they finally got the peg driven. Then, as they got up, the general said: "Soldier, what's your name?" The startled soldier gasped, leaned forward and looked closely, then blurted out: "Goddelmighty!" During the Cherbourg Peninsula campaign I spent nine days with the Ninth Infantry division the division di-vision that cut the peninsula, and ' one of the three that overwhelmed the great port of Cherbourg. I The Cherbourg campaign is old stuff by now, and you are no longer 1 particularly interested in it. But the Ninth division has been in this war for a long time and will be in ' it for a long time to come. So I 1 would like to tell you some things : about it. I The Ninth is one of onr best divisions. divi-sions. It landed in Africa and it fought through Tunisia and Sicily. ' Then it went to England last fall, I and trained all winter for the inva- sion of France. It was one of the ; American divisions in the invasion j that had previous battle experience, j The Ninth did something in this ! campaign that we haven't always 1 done in the past. It kept tenaciously i on the enemy's neck. When the Germans Ger-mans would withdraw a little the Ninth was right on top of them. It never gave them a chance to reassemble re-assemble or get their balance. The Ninth moved so fast it got to be funny. I was based at the division command post, and we struck our tents and moved forward six times in seven days. That works the daylight out of the boys who take down and put up the tents. I overheard one of the boys saying: "I'd rather be with Ringling Brothers." Usually a division headquarters is a fairly safe place. But with the Ninth it was different. Something ! was always happening. j They had a bad shelling one night j and lost some personnel. Every now i and then snipers would pick off somebody. In all the time I was ! with them we never had an uninterrupted uninter-rupted night's sleep. Our own big guns were all around us and they would fire all night. Usually German Ger-man planes were over too, droning around in the darkness and making us tense and nervous. Oue night I was sitting In a - tent with Capt. Lindscy Nelson of Knoxville, when there was a loud explosion, then a shrill whine through the treetops over our heads. But we didn't jump, or hit the dirt. Instead I said: "I know what that is. That's the rotating band oil one of our shells. As an old artilleryman I've heard lots of rotating bands. Sometimes they sound like a dog howling. There's nothing to be afraid of." "Sure," said Captain Nelson, "that's what it was, a rotating band." But our harmless rotating band, we found a few minutes later, was a jagged, red-hot, foot-square fragment frag-ment of steel from a 240-mm. German Ger-man shell which had landed a hundred hun-dred yards away from us. It's wonderful won-derful to be a wise guy. |