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Show Ernie Pyle's Slant on the War: Lack of Experience at First Slowed Up Allies American Algerian Troops Were Green and Officers Unseasoned By Ernie Pyle (Editor's Note): "his dispatch was written and first published when Pyle was with the G.I.s at the Algerian front. He is now on his way to cover the boys in the Pacific war zones. ORAN, ALGERIA. Men who bring our convoys from America, some of whom have just recently arrived, tell me the people at home don't have a correct impression of things over here. They say people at home think the North African campaign is a walkaway and will be over quickly; that our losses have been prac-' prac-' ' i tically nil; that S . i. the French here '' ,' ' ; '--I love us to death, f 4- 't and that au Ger" ! '4 i man influence has t '" ' I : been cleaned out. ' r-f If yu think t ' w "4 that, it is because I V 'A we newspaper-men newspaper-men jlere nave Ernie Pyle failed at getting the finer points of the situation over to you. Because this campaign at first was as much diplomatic as military, the powers that be didn't permit our Itchy typewriter fingers to delve into things internationally, which were ticklish enough without that. I believe be-lieve misconceptions at home must have grown out of some missing part of the picture. It would be very bad for another an-other wave of extreme optimism to sweep over the United States. So maybe I can explain a little bit about why things over here, though all right for the long run, are not all strawberries strawber-ries and cream right now. In Tunisia, for instance, we seem to be stalemated for the moment. The reasons are two. Our army is a green army, and most of our Tunisian Tuni-sian troops are in actual battle for the first time against seasoned troops and commanders. It will take us months of fighting to gain the experience our enemies start with. In the second place, nobody knew exactly how much resistance the French would put up here, so we had to be set for full resistance. That meant, when the French capitulated in three days, we had to move eastward atonce, or leave ' the Germans unhampered to build a big force in Tunisia. So we moved several hundred miles and, with the British, began fighting. But we simply didn't have enough stuff on hand to knock the Germans out instantly. Nobody is to blame for this. I think our army is doing wonderfully both in fighting fight-ing with what we have and in getting get-ting more here but we are fighting an army as tough in spirit as ours, vastly more experienced, and more easily supplied. Our losses in men so far are not appalling, by any means, but we are losing men. The other day an American ship brought the first newspaper from horre I had seen since the occupation, and it said only 12 men were lost in taking Oran. The losses, in fact, were not great, but they were a good many twelves times 12. Wounded to England. Most of our convalescent wounded have been sent to England. Some newly arrived Americans feel that, if more of the wounded were sent home, it would put new grim vigor into the American people. We aren't the sort of 'people from whom wounded men have to be concealed. The biggest puzzle to ns who are on the scene is our policy of dealing with Axis agents and sympathizers In North Africa. We have taken into custody only the most out - and - out Axis agents, such as the German armistice missions and a few others. That done, we have turned the authority of arrest back to the French. The procedure is that we investigate investi-gate and they arrest. As it winds up, we investigate period. Our policy is still appeasement. It stems from what might be called the national hodgepodge of French emotions. Frenchmen today think and feel in lots of different directions. direc-tions. We moved softly at first, in order to capture as many French hearts as French square miles. Now that phase is over. We are here in full swing. We have left in office most of the small-fry officials put there by the Germans before we came. We are permitting fascist societies to continue con-tinue to exist. Actual sniping has been stopped, but there is still sabotage. The loyal French see this and wonder what manner of people we are. They are used to force, and-expect us to use it against the common com-mon enemy, which includes the French Nazis. Our enemies see it, laugh, and call us soft. Both sides are puzzled by a country coun-try at war which still lets enemies run loose to work against it. There are an astonishing number num-ber of Axis sympathizers among the French in North Africa. Not a majority, of course, but more than you would imagine. This in itself is a great puzzle to me. I can't fathom the thought processes of a Frenchman French-man who prefers German victory vic-tory and perpetual domination rather than a temporary occupation occu-pation resulting in eventual French freedom. But there are such people, and they are hindering us, and we over here think you folks at home should know three things: That the going will be tough and probably long before we have cleaned up Africa and are ready-to ready-to move to bigger fronts. That the French are fundamentally behind us, but that a strange, illogical stratum is against us. And that our fundamental policy still is one of soft-gloving snakes in our midst. Nurses are Tops. The American nurses over here and there are lots of them have turned out just as you would expect: wonderfully. Army doctors, and patients, too, are unanimous in their praise for them. Doctors tell me that in that first rush of casualties they were calmer than the men. One hospital unit had a nurse they were afraid of. She had seemed neurotic and hysterical on the way down. The head doctor detailed another an-other nurse just to watch her all through the hectic first hours of tending the wounded. But he needn't have. He admits now she was the calmest of the lot. The head of one hospital, a colonel who was a soldier in the last war, worked in the improvised impro-vised hospitals set up at Arzow to tend the freshly wounded. He says not a soul in the outfit out-fit cracked up or got flustered. "You're so busy you don't think about its being horrible," he says. "You aren't yourself. Actually you seem to become somebody else. And after it's over, you're thrilled by it. Gosh, I hope I'm not stuck in a base hospital. I want to get on to the front." The Carolina nurses of the evacuation evacu-ation hospital about which I've been writing have taken it like soldiers. For the first 10 days they had to live like animals, even using open ditches for toilets, but they never complained. At this tent hospital one nurse .is always on duty in each tentful of 20 men. She had medical orderlies to help her. In bad weather the nurses wear army overalls. But Lieut. Col. Rollin Bauchspies, the hospital commandant, wants them to put on dresses once in a while, for he says the effect on the men is astounding. The touch of femininity, the knowledge that a woman is around, gives a wounded man courage and confidence and a feeling of security. And the more feminine she looks, the better. Only about 100 of the hospital's 700 patients are wounded men. The others are just sick with ordinary things, such as flu, appendicitis, sprains. They've got a whole tentful of mumps, and a few cases of malaria and dysentery. At the far end of the hospital, behind an evil-looking barricade of barbed wire, is what Colonel Bauchspies Bauch-spies calls "Casanova park." Back there are 150 soldiers with venereal disease. "What's the barbed wire for?" I asked. "They wouldn't try to get out anyhow." "It's just to make them feel like heels." the colonel said. |