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Show Ernie Pyle's Slant on the War: Taken to War Like Galley Slaves, GIs Stage Gala Show , American Soldiers Were Quick To Adjust Themselves to Algeria By Ernie Pyle (Editor's Note): This dispatch was written and first published when Pyie was with the GIs during the landing at Algeria. He is now on his way to cover the Pacific war zones. IN ALGERIA. I came to Africa by troop transport, in convoy. con-voy. Our convoy carried an enormous number of troops, and we had a heavy escort, although no matter how much escort you have it never seems enough to please you. It was a miserable English day when we sailed cold, with a driving driv-ing rain. Most of us just lay in our bunks, indifferent even to the traditional tradi-tional last glance at land. The ship seemed terribly crowded, and some complained bitterly of the food, and didn't eat for days. The worst trouble was a lack of hot water. British standards of sanitation sani-tation are so different dif-ferent from ours that the contrast is sometimes shocking. The water for washing wash-ing dishes was only tepid, ana Ernie Pyle there was no soap. As a result the dishes got greasy. In our cabin we had water only twice a day 7 to 9 in the morning, morn-ing, and 5:30 to 6:30 in the evening. It was unheated, so we shaved in cold water. We correspondents knew where we were going. Some of the officers knew, and the rest could guess. But some of the soldiers thought we were going to Russia over the Mur- mansk route, and some thought it v.e. Norway, and some Iceland. A few sincerely believed we were returning re-turning to America. It wasn't until the fifth day out, when the army distributed booklets on how to conduct con-duct ourselves in North Africa, that everybody knew where we were going. The troops were warned about smoking or using flashlights on deck at night, and against throwing cigarets or orange peels overboard. It seems a sub commander can spot a convoy, hours after it has passed, by such floating debris. One night a nurse came on deck with a brilliant flashlight guiding her. An officer screamed at her so loudly and viciously that I thought at first he was doing it in fun. He bellowed: "Put out that light, you blankety-, blankety-, blank blank! Haven't you got any j sense at all?" 1 Then I realized he meant every word of it. One little light might have killed us all. I was sorry he didn't kick her pants for good measure. Smoking was prohibited in the dining din-ing room. There was a bar with soft drinks, but no liquor was sold. As someone wisecracked, "We catch it both ways. We can't smoke because it's a British ship, and we can't buy liquor because it's an American Ameri-can trooper." GIs Show Talent. The trip no sooner started than rehearsals for an enlisted men's variety show began. They dug up an accordionist, a saxophonist, a trumpeter, a violinist, two banjo players, a dancer, a tenor, a cowboy cow-boy singer and several pianists. They rehearsed every afternoon. The big night came a couple of nights before we got to Gibraltar. They put on two shows that night, for the enlisted men only. Word got around, and the officers and nurses wanted to see the show, so the night we were approaching Gibraltar they put it on again. The show went over terrifically. There was genuine talent in it, and serious music as well as the whiz-bang whiz-bang stuff. But the hero of the evening eve-ning was a hairy corporal Joe Comita of Brooklyn who did a strip-tease burlesque of Gypsy Rose Lee. His movements were pure genius. Gypsy herself couldn't have been more sensuous. Joe twirled and stripped, twirled and stripped. And then when he was down to his long, heavy GI underwear he swung to tile front of the stage, lifted his veil, and kissed a front-row colonel on top of his bald head. The whole show was marvelously good. But there was something more to it than just that: There was the knowledge, deep in everybody's mind, that this was our night of danger. The radio had just brought word that Germany's entire U-boat pack was concentrated in the approaches to Gibraltar. More than 50 subs were said to be waiting for us. I doubt that there was a soul on board who expected the night tc pass without an attack. And in that environment the boys from down below went through their performances buoyantly. We sat with life preservers on and water wa-ter canteens at our belts. We laughed and cheered against a background of semi-conscious listening lis-tening for other sounds. As the show ended a major said to me: "That's wonderful, those boys doing this when they're being taken to war like galley slaves down there in the hold. When you think of people at home squawking their heads off because be-cause they can only have 20 gallons of gasoline it makes your blood boil." At Last Fighting. From now onward, stretching for months and months into the future, life is completely changed for thousands thou-sands of American boys on this side of the earth. For at last they are in there fighting. The jump from camp life into front-line living is just as great as the original jump from civilian life into army. Only those who served in the last war can conceive of the makeshift, deadly urgent, always-moving-onward complexion of front-line existence. And existence is exactly the word; it is nothing more. The last of the comforts are gone. From now on you sleep in bedrolls under little tents. You wash whenever and wherever you can. You carry your food on your back when you are fighting. ' You dig ditches for protection from bullets and from the chill north wind off the Mediterranean. Mediter-ranean. There are no more hot-water hot-water taps. There are no post exchanges where you can buy cigarets. There are no movies. When you speak to a civilian you have to wrestle with a foreign language. lan-guage. You carry just enough clothing cloth-ing to cover you and no more. You don't lug any knickknacks at all. When our troops made their first landings in North Africa they went four days without even blankets, just catching a few hours' sleep on the ground. Everybody either lost or chucked aside some of his equipment. Like most .troops going into battle for the first time, they all carried too much at first. Gradually they shed it. The boys tossed out personal gear from their musette bags and filled them with' ammunition. The countryside for 20 miles around ' Oran was strewn with overcoats, field jackets and mess kits as the soldiers moved on the city. Arabs will be going around for a whole generation clad in odd pieces of American army uniforms. At the moment our troops are bivouacked for miles around each of three large centers of occupation occupa-tion Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. Al-giers. They are consolidating, fitting in replacements, making repairs spending a few days taking a deep breath before moving on to other theaters of action. They are camped in every conceivable con-ceivable way. In the city of Oran some are billeted in office buidings, hotels and garages. Some are camping camp-ing in parks and big, vacant lots on the edge of town. Some are miles away, out in the country, living on treeless stretches of prairie. The American soldier is quick in adapting himself to a new mode of living. Outfits which have been here only three days have dug vast networks net-works of ditches three feet deep in the bare brown earth. They have rigged up a light here and there with a storage battery. They have gathered boards and nwi floors and sideboards for their tents to keep out the wind and sand. They have hung out their washing, and painted their names over the tent flaps. You even see a soldier sitting on his "front step" of an evening playing a violin. |