Show with ernie pyle at the front brave medics carry on un under der heavy nazi shelling while hundreds are hit ernie has charmed life and escapes by ernie pyle ON THE WESTERN FRONT the afternoon was tense tei full of caution and dire little mi might 9 ht have beens and I 1 was wa wandering up a dirt lane where the infantrymen squatting alongside in a ditch waiting their turn to advance th were w always squat like that when close to the front they sudden suddenly ly german shills shells started banging around us I 1 jumped into a ditch between a couple of soldiers and squatted shells were clipping the hedge tops right over our heads and x 9 crashing into the next pasture then suddenly one exploded not with a crash but with a ring as though struck a high toned bell the ernie pyle debris of burned wadding and dirt came showering down over us my head rang and my right ear hear anything the shell sha had struck behind us 20 feet away we had been savea saved by the earthen bank of the hedgerow it was the next day before my ear returned to normal A minute later a soldier crouching next in line a couple of feet away turned to me and asked are you a war correspondent I 1 said I 1 was and he said 1 I want to shake your hand and he reached around the bush and we s shook hook hands au all either of us said it occur to me until later bater that it was a sort of unusual experience and I 1 was so addled by the close explosions that I 1 forgot to put down his name A few minutes later a friend of mine col oma bates of gloster GI oster miss came past and said he was hunting our new battalion command post it was supposed to be in a farmhouse about a hundred yards from us so I 1 got up and went with him we find it at first we lost about five minutes walking around in orchards looking for it that was a blessed five minutes for when we got within 50 yards of the house it got a direct shell hit which killed 0 one e several officer and wounded several men the germans now rained shells around our little area you walk 10 feet without hitting the ground they came past our heads so quickly you take time to fall forward I 1 found the quickest way down was to flop back and sideways in a little while the seat of my pants was plastered thick with wet red clay and my hands were scratched from hitting rocks and briars to break quick falls nobody ever fastens the chin straps on his helmet in the front lines for the blasts from nearby bursts have been known to catch helmets and break peoples necks consequently when you squat quickly you descend faster than your helmet and you leave it in midair above you of course in a fraction of a second it follows you down and hits you on the head and settles sideways over your ear and down over your eyes it makes you feel silly once more shells drove me into a roadside ditch I 1 squatted t there her ejust just a bewildered guy in brown part of a thin line of other bewildered guys as far up and down the ditch as you could see it was really frightening our own shells were changing wha nging ov overhead and hitting just beyond the german shells tore through the orchards around us there was machins machina gunning all around and bullets zipped through the trees above us I 1 could tell by their shoulder patches that the soldiers near me were from a division to our right and I 1 wondered what they were doing there then I 1 heard one of them say this is a fine foul up for you I 1 knew that lieutenant was getting lost hell were service troops and here we are right in the front lines grim as the moment was I 1 had to laugh to myself at their pitiful plight 0 0 0 I 1 left a command post in a farmhouse and started to another about 10 minutes away when I 1 got there they said the one I 1 had just left had been hit while I 1 was on the way A solid armor piercing sheu bell had gone right through a window and a man I 1 knew hafl had his hi leg cut off that evening the other officers took tok the tig big steel slug mug over to the hospital so h he would have a souvenir when I 1 got to another battalion command post later in the day they were just ready to move A serl set geant had been forward about halt hale a mile in a jeep and picked out a farmhouse he said it was the cleanest nicest one he had been in for a long time so we piled into several jeeps and drove up there it had been only about 20 minutes since the sergeant had left but when we got to the new house it there A shell had hit it in the last 2 20 minutes and set it afire and it had burned to the ground so we drove up the road a little farther and picked out another one we had been there about half an hour when a shell struck in an orchard 50 yards in front of us in a few minutes our litter bearers came past carrying a captain he was the surgeon of our adjoin ing battalion and he had been looking in the orchard for a likely place to move his first aid station A shell hit right beside him the way war is on an afternoon that is tense and full of might have for some of us awful realities for others it just depends on what your number is I 1 dont believe in that number business at all but in war you sort of let your belief hover around ait I 1 it for its about all you have left one afternoon I 1 went lent with our battalion medics to pick up wounded men who had been carried back to some shattered houses just behind our lines and to gather some others right off the battlefield the battalion surgeon was capt lucien strawn from morgantown Morgan towa town W va he drives his jeep himself and goes right into the lines with his aideen we drive forward about a mile is in our two jeeps so loaded with litter bearers they were even riding on the hood finally we had to stop and wait until a bulldozer filled a new shell cr crater a ter in the midd middle I 1 e of the road we had gone only about a hundred yards beyond the crater when we ran i nto into some infantry they stopped us and said be careful where youre going the germans are only yards up the road he captain strawn said get to the wounded men that way so he turned around to try another way A side road led off at an angle village we had bad from a shattered just passed thi through rough he decided to try to get up that road but when we got there the road it and it blown across had a house I 1 forward we went blocked was deep let little on foot and found two bomb craters also impassable walked back so captain strawn asked the bulldozer bulldoze ir and to the I 1 ol of us ahead driver if he wo would uld go thing aad clear the road the first to close how H w the dri driver ver asked was the front is it well at least la the doctor said TO rig bt lan are it any closer chosei r than you agree eed driver so the dozer now ahead of us to clear the road soldier a while we w were ere waiting egg two C came ame over and s showed us backyard back yara of he had just foun found 1 in the w aint a jumbled house deft there standing in wu the untouched house left 11 ere town i and some 0 of f the houses still smoking insi inside de ve at the far edge edg e of wrecked the ked town w farm arec partly it came to a w had two germans was house hous that other and the wounded one was we ran we just staying with lurn him the litter an d jeeps into the yard the field went on across and bearers the doctor took hi his an scissors fn open to his clothes J chere e began cutting wounded dd any t if he was woun t see waln except in the arm at lie he his fabb st s orrill h sick wre he had been ile he WS wa s and then rolled over sad sack |