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Show Ernie Pyles Slont on the War: Wounded Fight to Return Early to Battle Fronts Exhausted and Wounded GIs Carry On Beyond All Human Endurance By Ernie Pyle ( Editors Note): Pyle retells some of his experiences while he was with the Doughd rest in New Mexico. boys during the Sicily campaign. He is now taking a long-neede- SOMEWHERE IN SICILY. It was flabbergasting to lie among a tentful of wounded soldiers recently and hear them cuss and beg to be sent right back into the$i fight. Of course not all of them "do. Somehow this stark announcement It depends on the severity of hit me like a hammer. He didnt their wounds, and on their indi- say, Im going to pray for you to vidual personalities, just as it get well, he just said he was going would in peacetime. But I still say to say a prayer, and it was obvious that at least a third of the moder- he meant the final prayer. It was ately wounded men ask if they cant as though he had said, Brother, be Returned to you may not know it, but your goose duty immedi- is cooked. He said a short prayer, and ately. the weak, gasping man tried in When I took vain to repeat the words after sick I was with the 45th division, made up largely of men from Oklahoma and west Texas. You dont realize how different certain parts of our country are from others until you see their men set off in a frame, as it were, in some strange faraway place like this. The men of Oklahoma are drawling and They are not smart-aleckSomething of the purity of the soil seems to be in them. Even their cussing is simpler and more profound than the torrential obscenities of Eastern city men. An General view showing the wrecked Oklahoman of the plains tois straight and direct. He is slow criticize Challenger streamlined train, which and hard to once but he is anger, resulted in the death of 12 persons someof of convinced the wrong and in the injury of at least 100. brother, watch out. Seven cars were derailed, three thing, These wounded men of Oklahoma miles from Colfax, Calif. have got madder about the war than anybody I have seen on this side of the ocean. They werent so mad Wives of before they got into action, but now to them the Germans across the hill are all devils. soft-spoke- n. s. An old Italian farmer joyfully shows children one of the sacks of wheat that have been shipped to Italy by Allied government (right). The woman and baby, refugees from St. Nazaire, France, receive their share of food. Left, shows the unloading and checking of food in Italy, intended for the civilian population. Winners In This Corner the Winners ; It was these ?nen from the farms, ranches and sijiall towns of Oklahoma who poured through my tent with their wounds. I lay there and listened for what each one would say first. One fellow, seeing a friend, called out, I think Im gonna make her. Meaning he was going to puU through. Another said, Have they got beds in the hospital? Lord how I want to go to bed. Another said, Im hungry, but I cant eat anything. I keep getting sick at my stomach. Another said, as he winced from their probing for a deeply buried piece of shrapnel in his leg, Go ahead, youre the doc. I can stand it. Another said, Ill have to write Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, up- the old lady tonight and tell her she per; and Mrs. Harry S. Truman, missed out on that $10,000 again. wife of the newly elected vice presiAnother, who was put down beside me, said, Hi, Pop, how dent of the United States. Unlike you getting along? I call you the first lady of the land, Mrs. Truman takes little part in politics or youre grayPop because headed. You dont mind, do in public life activities. Mrs. F. D. R. you? says she is ready for new term. I told him I didnt care what he called me. He was friendly, but you can tell from Stars his forward attitude that he was not from Oklahoma. It turned out he was from New Jersey. One big blond Oklahoman had slight flesh wounds in the face and the back of his neck. He had a patch on his upper lip which prevented his moving it, and made him mantalk in a grave, straight-face- d ner that was comical. Ive never seen anybody so mad in my life. He went from one doctor to another trying to get somebody to sign his card returning him to duty. The doctors explained patiently that if he returned to the front his wounds would get infected and he would be a burden on his company. They tried to entice him by telling him there would be nurses back in the hospital. But he said, To hell with the nurses, I want to get back to fightin. j for Franklin D. Another term in the White House has been assuredS. Truman, right, Roosevelt, who together with his running mate, Harry the Democrats se17 than less received a total of 432 electoral votes, cured in 1940. Truman, senator from Missouri, gained a d Ms is head of the committee investigating war expenditures. Dewey soldie unlesslate tes, electoral 99 running mate secured a total of P rotes change the picture, which is not considered likely y Jbservers. Too Late for Treasure Hunt on Her Flag Another gold star has been added to the service flag of Mrs. Alben Borgstrom, Tremonton, Utah, mothV er of Marine Pvt. Boyd Borgstrom, t show, Rudolph Wkkdtf J of was discharged by marine comwho to dig up a bonanza program, and Wickel mander, when first three brothers the ruest on a quiz brother-in-laHenry u were killed in action. to find that Jose H. Roy and his liycar-uiabove. shown as , already had the money, - iSJSi w, Dying men were brought into our tent, men whose death rattle silenced the conversation and made all the rest of us grave. When a man was almost gone the surgeons would put a piece of gauze over his face. He could breathe through it but we couldnt see his face well. Twice within five minutes chaplains came running. One of these occasions haunted me for hours. The man was still The chaplain knelt down beside him and two ward boys squatted alongside. The chaplain said: John, Im going to say a prayer for you. semi-conscio- him. When he had finished the chaplain said, John, youre doing fine, youre doing fine. Then he rose and dashed off on other business, and the ward boys went about their duties. The dying man was left utterly alone, just lying there on his litter on the ground, lying in an aisle, because the tent was full. Of course it couldnt be otherwise, but the awful aloneness of that man as he went through the last few minutes of his life was what tormented me. I felt like going over and at least holding his hand while he died, but it would have been out of order and I didnt do it. I wish now I had. Outside of the occasional peaks of bitter fighting and heavy casualties that highlight military operation, I believe the outstanding trait in any campaign is the terrible weariness that gradually comes over everybody. Soldiers become exhausted in mind and in soul as well as physi-caUThey acquire a weariness that is mixed up with boredom and lack of all gaiety. To lump them all together, you just get damn sick of it all. The infantry reaches a stage of exhaustion that is incomprehensible to you folks back home. The men in the First division, for instance, were in the lines 28 days walking and fighting all that time, day and night. After a few days of such activity, soldiers pass the point of known human weariness. From then on they go into a sort i of second-win- d daze. They keep going largely because the other fellow does and because yon cant really do anything else. Have you ever in your life worked so hard and so long that you dont remember how many days it was since you ate last or didnt recognize your friends when you saw them? I never have either, but in the First division, during that long, hard fight around Troina, a company runner came slogging up to a certain captain and said, excitedly, Ive got to find Captain Blank right away. Important message. The captain said, But I am Captain Blank. Dont you recognize me? And the runner said, Ive got to find Captain Blank right away. And he went dashing off. They had to run to catch him. y. Men in battle reach that stage and still go on and on. As for the rest of the army supply troops, truck drivers, hospital men, engineers they too become exhausted but not so inhumanly. With them and with us correspondents its the ceaselessness, the endlessness of everything that finaUy worms its way through you and gradually starts to devour you. Its the perpetual dust choking you, the hard ground wracking your muscles, the snatched food sitting ill on your stomach, the heat and the flies and dirty feet and the constant roar of engines and the perpetual moving and the never settling down and the go, go, go, night and day, and on through the night again. Eventually it all works itself into an emotional tapestry' of one dull, dead pattern yesterday is tomorrow and Troina is Randazzo and when will we ever stop and Im so tired. Ive noticed this feeling has begun to overtake the war correspondents themselves. It is true that we dont fight on and on like the infantry, that we are usually under fire only briefly and that, indeed, we live better than the average soldier. Yet our lives are strangely consuming in that we do live primitively and at the same time must delve into ourselves and do creative writing. TT ir |
