"Steinbeck, John - Once There Was A War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steinbeck John)THE WAY IT WAS “THE LIEUTENANT
WALKED SLOWLY up the hill
toward the German positions. He carried his
white flag over his head, and his white
flag was a bath towel. Last night when
he had argued for the privilege of
going up and trying to kid the Jerry into
surrender he hadn’t known it would be like
this. He hadn’t known how lonely and
exposed he would be. The lieutenant
knew that if he were hit and not killed he
would hear the shot after he was hit, but
if he were hit in the head he wouldn’t
hear or feel anything. He
hoped, if it happened, it would happen that
way ...” One of the
Unforgettable Stories John Steinbeck Tells in Once
There Was a War Books by John Steinbeck CUP OF GOLD THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN TO A GOD UNKNOWN TORTILLA FLAT OF MICE AND MEN THE RED PONY THE GRAPES OF WRATH CANNERY ROW THE WAYWARD BUS THE PEARL BURNING BRIGHT EAST OF EDEN SWEET THURSDAY THE SHORT REIGN OF PIPPIN IV Published by Bantam
Books ONCE THERE WAS A WAR by JOHN STEINBECK Bantam Books • New York THIS LOW-PRICED BANTAM BOOK printed
in completely new type, especially designed for easy reading, contains the
complete text of the original, hard-cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN
OMITTED. ONCE THERE WAS A WAR A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc. PRINTING HISTORY Viking edition published September 1958 Books Abridged edition published March 1959 Serialized the NEW
YORK HERALD TRIBUNE Syndicate June-December 1943 Bantam edition published January 1960 All rights reserved Copyright © 1943, 1958, by John Steinbeck Published simultaneously in the United States and
Canada Bantam
Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the
words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the U. S.
Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Printed in the United
States of America. Bantam Books, Inc., 25 West 45th St., New York 36, N. Y. ContentsONCE THERE WAS
A WAR: AN INTRODUCTION THE CAREER OF
BIG TRAIN MULLIGAN IntroductionONCE THERE WAS A WAR: AN INTRODUCTIONONCE UPON A TIME there was a war, but so long ago and so
shouldered out of the way by other wars and other kinds of wars that even
people who were there are apt to forget. This war that I speak of came after
the plate armor and longbows of Crйcy and Agincourt and just before the little
spitting experimental atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I attended a part of that war, you might say
visited it, since I went in the costume of a war correspondent and certainly
did not fight, and it is interesting to me that I do not remember very much
about it. Reading these old reports sent in with excitement at the time brings
back images and emotions completely lost. Perhaps it is right or even necessary to forget
accidents, and wars are surely accidents to which our species seems prone. If
we could learn from our accidents it might be well to keep the memories alive,
but we do not learn. In ancient Greece it was said that there had to be a war
at least every twenty years because every generation of men had to know what it
was like. With us, we must forget, or we could never indulge in the murderous
nonsense again. The war I speak of, however, may be memorable
because it was the last of its kind. Our Civil War has been called the last of
the “gentlemen’s wars,” and the so-called Second World War was surely the last
of the long global wars. The next war, if we are so stupid as to let it happen,
will be the last of any kind. There will be no one left to remember anything.
And if that is how stupid we are, we do not, in a biologic sense, deserve
survival. Many other species have disappeared from the earth through errors in mutational
judgment. There is no reason to suppose that we are immune from the immutable
law of nature which says that over-armament, over-ornamentation, and, in most
cases, over-integration are symptoms of coming extinction. Mark Twain in A
Connecticut Yankee uses the horrifying and possible paradox of the victor’s
being killed by the weight of the vanquished dead. But all this is conjecture, no matter how
possible it may be. The strange thing is that my dim-remembered war has become
as hazy as conjecture. My friend Jack Wagner was in the First World War. His
brother Max was in the Second World War. Jack, in possessive defense of the war
he knew, always referred to it as the Big War, to his brother’s disgust. And of
course the Big War is the war you knew. But do you know it, do you remember it, the
drives, the attitudes, the terrors, and, yes, the joys? I wonder how many men
who were there remember very much. I have not seen these accounts and stories
since they were written in haste and telephoned across the sea to appear as
immediacies in the New York Herald Tribune and a great many other
papers. That was the day of the Book by the War Correspondent, but I resisted
that impulse, believing or saying I believed that unless the stories had validity
twenty years in the future they should stay on the yellowing pages of dead
newspaper files. That I have got them out now is not for my first reason given
at all. Reading them over after all these years, I realize not only how much I
have forgotten but that they are period pieces, the attitudes archaic, the
impulses romantic, and, in the light of everything that has happened since,
perhaps the whole body of work untrue and warped and one-sided. The events set down here did happen. But on
rereading this reportage, my memory becomes alive to the other things, which
also did happen and were not reported. That they were not reported was partly a
matter of orders, partly traditional, and largely because there was a huge and
gassy thing called the War Effort. Anything which interfered with or ran
counter to the War Effort was automatically bad. To a large extent judgment
about this was in the hands of the correspondent himself, but if he forgot
himself and broke any of the rules, there were the Censors, the Military
Command, the Newspapers, and finally, most strong of all in discipline, there
were the war-minded civilians, the Noncombatant Commandos of the Stork Club, of
Time Magazine and The New Yorker, to jerk a correspondent into
line or suggest that he be removed from the area as a danger to the War
Effort. There were citizens’ groups helping with tactics and logistics; there
were organizations of mothers to oversee morals, and by morals I mean not only
sexual morals but also such things as gambling and helling around in general.
Secrecy was a whole field in itself. Perhaps our whole miasmic hysteria about
secrecy for the last twenty years had its birth during this period. Our
obsession with secrecy had a perfectly legitimate beginning in a fear that
knowledge of troop-ship sailings would and often did attract the wolf packs of
submarines. But from there it got out of hand until finally facts available in
any library in the world came to be carefully guarded secrets, and the most
carefully guarded secrets were known by everyone. I do not mean to indicate that the
correspondent was harried and pushed into these rules of conduct. Most often he
carried his rule book in his head and even invented restrictions for himself in
the interest of the War Effort. When The Viking Press decided to print these
reports in book form, it was suggested that, now that all restrictions were
off, I should take out the “Somewhere in So-and-So” dateline and put in the
places where the events occurred. This is impossible. I was so secret that I
don’t remember where they happened. The rules, some imposed and some self-imposed,
are amusing twenty years later. I shall try to remember a few of them. There
were no cowards in the American Army, and of all the brave men the private in
the infantry was the bravest and noblest. The reason for this in terms of the
War Effort is obvious. The infantry private had the dirtiest, weariest, least
rewarding job in the whole war. In addition to being dangerous and dirty, a
great many of the things he had to do were stupid. He must therefore be
reassured that these things he knew to be stupid were actually necessary and
wise, and that he was a hero for doing them. Of course no one even casually
inspected the fact that the infantry private had no choice. If he exercised a
choice, he was either executed immediately or sent to prison for life. A second convention was that we had no cruel or
ambitious or ignorant commanders. If the disorganized insanity we were a part
of came a cropper, it was not only foreseen but a part of a grander strategy
out of which victory would emerge. A third sternly held rule was that five million
perfectly normal, young, energetic, and concupiscent men and boys had for the
period of the War Effort put aside their habitual preoccupation with girls.
The fact that they carried pictures of nude girls, called pin-ups, did not
occur to anyone as a paradox. The convention was the law. When Army Supply
ordered X millions of rubber contraceptive and disease-preventing items, it had
to be explained that they were used to keep moisture out of machine-gun barrels—and
perhaps they did. Since our Army and Navy, like all armies and
navies, were composed of the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the cruel,
the gentle, the brutal, the kindly, the strong, and the weak, this convention
of general nobility might seem to have been a little hard to maintain, but it
was not. We were all a part of the War Effort. We went along with it, and not
only that, we abetted it. Gradually it became a part of all of us that the
truth about anything was automatically secret and that to trifle with it was to
interfere with the War Effort. By this I don’t mean that the correspondents
were liars. They were not. In the pieces in this book everything set down
happened. It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies. When General Patton slapped a sick soldier in a
hospital and when our Navy at Gela shot down fifty-nine of our own troop
carriers, General Eisenhower personally asked the war correspondents not to
send the stories because they would be bad for morale at home. And the
correspondents did not file the stories. Of course the War Department leaked to
a local newsman and the stories got printed anyway, but no one in the field
contributed to that bit of treason to the War Effort. Meanwhile strange conventional stories were
born and duly reported. One of the oddest concerned the colonel or general in
the Air Force whose duty required that he stay in reluctant comfort on the
ground and who ate his heart out to be with his “boys” out on mission over Germany
among the red flak. It was hard, stern duty that kept him grounded, and much
harder than flying missions. I don’t know where this one started, but it
doesn’t sound as though it came from enlisted personnel. I never met a bomber
crew which wouldn’t have taken on this sterner duty at the drop of a hat. They
may have been a little wild, but they weren’t that crazy. Reading over these old reports, I see that
again and again sentences were removed by censor. I have no idea what it was
that was removed. Correspondents had no quarrel with censors. They had a tough
job. They didn’t know what might be brought up against them. No one could
discipline them for eliminating, and so in self-preservation they eliminated
pretty deeply. Navy censors were particularly sensitive to names of places,
whether they had any military importance or not. It was the safest way. Once
when I felt a little bruised by censorship I sent through Herodotus’s account
of the battle of Salamis fought between the Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C.,
and since there were place names involved, albeit classical ones, the Navy
censors killed the whole story. We really tried to observe the censorship
rules, even knowing that a lot of them were nonsense, but it was very hard to
know what the rules were. They had a way of changing with the commanding
officer. Just when you thought you knew what you could send, the command
changed and you couldn’t send that at all. The correspondents were a curious, crazy, and
yet responsible crew. Armies by their nature, size, complication, and command
are bound to make mistakes, mistakes which can be explained or transmuted in
official reports. It follows that military commanders are a little nervous
about reporters. They are restive about people breathing down their necks,
particularly experts. And it was true that many of the professional war
correspondents had seen more wars and more kinds of wars than anybody in the
Army or Navy. Capa, for example, had been through the Spanish War, the
Ethiopian War, the Pacific War. Clark Lee had been at Corregidor and before
that in Japan. If the regular Army and Navy didn’t much like the war
correspondents there was nothing they could do about it, because these men were
the liaison with the public. Furthermore many of them had become very well
known and had enormous followings. They were syndicated from one end of the
nation to the other. Many of them had established their methods and their
styles. A few had become prima donnas, but not many. Ernie Pyle was so popular
and so depended on by readers at home that in importance he much outranked most
general officers. To this hard-bitten bunch of professionals I
arrived as a Johnny-come-lately, a sacred cow, a kind of tourist. I think they
felt that I was muscling in on their hard-gained territory. When, however,
they found that I was not duplicating their work, was not reporting straight
news, they were very kind to me and went out of their way to help me and to
instruct me in the things I didn’t know. For example, it was Capa who gave me
the best combat advice I ever heard. It was, “Stay where you are. If they
haven’t hit you, they haven’t seen you.” And then Capa had to go and step on a
land mine in Viet-Nam, just when he was about to retire from the whole
terrible, futile business. And Ernie Pyle got it between the eyes from a sniper
on the trip he planned as his weary last. All of us developed our coy little tricks with
copy. Reading these old pieces, I recognize one of mine. I never admitted
having seen anything myself. In describing a scene I invariably put it in the
mouth of someone else. I forget why-1 did this. Perhaps I felt that it would be
more believable if told by someone else. Or it is possible that I felt an
interloper, and eavesdropper on the war, and was a little bit ashamed of being
there at all. Maybe I was ashamed that I could go home and soldiers couldn’t.
But it was often neither safe nor comfortable being a correspondent. A great
part of the services were in supply and transport and office work. Even combat
units got some rest after a mission was completed. But the war correspondents
found that their papers got restive if they weren’t near where things were
happening. The result was that the correspondents had a very high casualty
rate. If you stayed a correspondent long enough and went to the things that
were happening, the chances were that you would get it. In reading these
reports I am appalled at how many of the reporters are dead. Only a handful of
the blithe spirits who made the nights horrible and filled the days with
complaints, remain living. But to get back to the conventions. It was the
style to indicate that you were afraid all the time. I guess I was really
afraid, but the style was there too. I think this was also designed to prove
how brave the soldiers were. And the soldiers were just exactly as brave and as
cowardly as anyone else. We edited ourselves much more than we were
edited. We felt responsible to what was called the home front. There was a
general feeling that unless the home front was carefully protected from the
whole account of what war was like, it might panic. Also we felt we had to
protect the armed services from criticism, or they might retire to their tents
to sulk like Achilles. The self-discipline, self-censorship among the
war correspondents was surely moral and patriotic but it was also practical in
a sense of self-preservation. Some subjects were taboo. Certain people could
not be criticized or even questioned. The foolish reporter who broke the rules
would not be printed at home and in addition would be put out of the theater by
the command, and a correspondent with no theater has no job. We knew, for instance, that a certain very
famous general officer constantly changed press agents because he felt he
didn’t get enough headlines. We knew the commander who broke a Signal Corps
sergeant for photographing his wrong profile. Several fine field officers were
removed from their commands by the jealousy of their superiors because they
aroused too much enthusiasm in their men and too much admiration from the
reporters. There were consistent sick leaves which were gigantic hangovers,
spectacular liaisons between Army brass and WAACs, medical discharges for
stupidity, brutality, cowardice, and even sex deviation. I don’t know a single
reporter who made use of any of this information. Apart from wartime morals, it
would have been professional suicide to have done it. The one man who jumped
the gun and scooped the world on the armistice was ruined in his profession,
and his career was terminated. Yes, we wrote only a part of the war, but at
the time we believed, fervently believed, that it was the best thing to do. And
perhaps that is why, when the war was over, novels and stories by ex-soldiers,
like The Naked and the Dead, proved so shocking to a public which had
been carefully protected from contact with the crazy hysterical mess. We had plenty of material anyway. There was a
superabundance of heroism, selflessness, intelligence, and kindness to write
about. And perhaps we were right in eliminating parts of the whole picture.
Surely if we had sent all we knew, and couched in the language of the field,
the home front would have been even more confused than we managed to make it.
Besides, for every screaming egotist there was a Bradley, and for every
publicity-mad military ham there were great men like Terry Allen and General
Roosevelt, while in the ranks, billeted with the stinking, cheating,
foul-mouthed goldbricks, there were true heroes, kindly men, intelligent men
who knew or thought they knew what they were fighting for and took all the rest
in their stride. Professionally the war correspondents, I
believe, were highly moral and responsible men, many of them very brave men,
some of them completely dedicated men, but in the time after the story was
filed I guess we were no better and no worse than the officers and enlisted
men, only we had more facilities than the services, either commissioned or
enlisted. We carried simulated ranks, ranging from captain to lieutenant colonel,
which allowed us to eat at officers’ mess, where enlisted men could not go, but
we also had access to the enlisted men, where officers could not go. I remember
an officers’ dance in North Africa, a dull, cold little affair with junior
officers mechanically dancing with commissioned nurses to old records on a
wind-up phonograph, while in nearby barracks one of the finest jazz combos I
ever heard was belting out pure ecstasy. Naturally we correspondents happily
moved to the better music. Rank surely has its privileges, but with us it
sometimes amounted to license. When our duty was done and our stories on the
wire, we discovered and exchanged every address where black-market meat,
liquor, and women could be procured. We knew the illegal taxis. We chiseled,
stole, malingered, goldbricked, and generally made ourselves as comfortable as
we could. I early learned that a pint of whisky to a transportation sergeant
would get me on a plane ahead of a general with crash orders from the General
Staff. We didn’t steal much from the Army. We didn’t have to. It was given to
us. Besides we were up against experts in the Army. I remember a general in
supply morosely reading a report of missing materiel from a supply depot and
exploding, “The American soldier is the worst thief in the world. You know
what’s going to happen? When they steal everything we’ve got, they’ll start
stealing from the Germans, and then God help Hitler.” And I remember on a
destroyer at sea when every sidearm of every officer, 45s and carbines, suddenly
disappeared, and although the ship was searched from stem to stern, even the
fuel and water tanks explored, not one single weapon was ever found. There was
a kind of a compulsion to steal. Prisoners were frisked for watches, cameras,
and sidearms (the trade goods of the GIs) with professional skill. But the
correspondents didn’t steal much—first, as I said, because they didn’t have to,
and second, because we moved about so much that we couldn’t take things with
us. Heaven knows how many helmets, bedding rolls, and gas masks I was issued. I
rarely got them where I was going, and I never got them back. In the cellars of
London hotels today there must be trunks of loot left there fifteen years ago
by correspondents and never claimed. I personally know of two such caches. For what they are worth, or for what they may
recapture, here they are, period pieces, fairy tales, half-meaningless
memories of a time and of attitudes which have gone forever from the world, a
sad and jocular recording of a little part of a war I saw and do not believe, unreal
with trumped-up pageantry, so that it stands in the mind like the battle
pictures of Crйcy and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg. And, although all wax is a
symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal, still there was in these
memory-wars some gallantry, some bravery, some kindliness. A man got killed,
surely, or maimed, but, living, he did not carry crippled seed as a gift to his
children. Now for many years we have suckled on fear and
fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and
deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are
poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear,
faceless, stupid sarcomic terror. The pieces in this volume were written under
pressure and in tension. My first impulse on rereading them was to correct, to
change, to smooth out ragged sentences and remove repetitions, but their very
raggedness is, it seems to me, a parcel of their immediacy. They are as real as
the wicked witch and the good fairy, as true and tested and edited as any other
myth. There was a war, long ago—once upon a time. EnglandTROOPSHIPSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 20, 1943—The
troops in their thousands sit on their equipment on the dock. It is evening,
and the first of the dimout lights come on. The men wear their helmets, which
make them all look alike, make them look like long rows of mushrooms. Their
rifles are leaning against their knees. They have no identity, no personality. The
men are units in an army. The numbers chalked on their helmets are almost like
the license numbers on robots. Equipment is piled neatly—bedding rolls and
half-shelters and barracks bags. Some of the men are armed with Springfield or
Enfield rifles from the First World War, some with M-1s, or Garands, and some
with the neat, light clever little carbines everyone wants to have after the
war for hunting rifles. Above the pier the troopship rears high and
thick as an office building. You have to crane your neck upward to see where
the portholes stop and the open decks begin. She is a nameless ship and will be
while the war lasts. Her destination is known to very few men and her route to
even fewer, and the burden of the men who command her must be almost unendurable,
for the master who loses her and her cargo will never sleep comfortably again.
He probably doesn’t sleep at all now. The cargo holds are loaded and the ship
waits to take on her tonnage of men. On the dock the soldiers are quiet. There is
little talking, no singing, and as dusk settles to dark you cannot tell one man
from another. The heads bend forward with weariness. Some of these men have
been all day, some many days, getting to this starting point. There are several ways of wearing a hat or a cap.
A man may express himself in the pitch or tilt of his hat, but not with a
helmet. There is only one way to wear a helmet. It won’t go on any other way.
It sits level on the head, low over eyes and ears, low on the back of the neck.
With your helmet on you are a mushroom in a bed of mushrooms. Four gangways are open now and the units get
wearily to their feet and shuffle along in line. The men lean forward against
the weight of their equipment. Feet drag against the incline of the gangways.
The soldiers disappear one by one into the great doors in the side of the troopship. Inside the checkers tabulate them. The numbers
chalked on the helmets are checked again against a list. Places have been
assigned. Half of the men will sleep on the decks and the other half inside in
ballrooms, in dining rooms where once a very different kind of people sat and
found very important things that have disappeared. Some of the men will sleep
in bunks, in hammocks, on the decks, in passages. Tomorrow they will shift. The
men from the deck will come in to sleep and those from inside will go out. They
will change every night until they land. They will not take off their clothes
until they land. This is no cruise ship. On the decks, dimmed to a faint blue dusk by
the blackout lights, the men sink down and fall asleep. They are asleep almost
as soon as they are settled. Many of them do not even take off their helmets.
It has been a weary day. The rifles are beside them, held in their hands. On the gangways the lines still feed into the
troopship—a regiment of colored troops, a hundred Army nurses, neat in their
helmets and field packs. The nurses at least will have staterooms, however
crowded they may be in them. Up No. 1 Gangway comes the headquarters complement
of a bombardment wing and a company of military police. All are equally tired.
They find their places and go to sleep. Embarkation is in progress. No smoking is
allowed anywhere. Everyone entering the ship is triply checked, to make sure
he belongs there, and the loading is very quiet. There is only the shuffle of
tired feet on the stairways and quiet orders. The permanent crew of military
police know every move. They have handled this problem of traffic before. The tennis courts on the upper deck are a
half-acre of sleeping men now—men, feet, and equipment. MPs are everywhere, on
stairs and passages, directing and watching. This embarkation must go on
smoothly, for one little block might well lose hours in the loading, just as
one willful driver, making a wrong turn in traffic, may jam an avenue for a
long time. But in spite of the shuffling gait, the embarkation is very rapid.
About midnight the last man is aboard. In the staff room the commanding officer sits
behind a long table, with telephones in front of him. His adjutant, a tired
blond major, makes his report and places his papers on the table. The CO nods
and gives him an order. Throughout the ship the loudspeakers howl.
Embarkation is complete. The gangways slide down from the ship. The iron doors
close. No one can enter or leave the ship now, except the pilot. On the bridge
the captain of the ship paces slowly. It is his burden now. These thousands are
in his care, and if there is an accident it will be his blame. The ship remains against the pier and a light
breathing sound comes from deep in her. The troops are cut off now and gone
from home, although they are not a hundred steps from home. On the upper decks
a few men lean over the rails and look down on the pier and away at the city
behind. The oily water ripples with the changing tide. It is almost time to go.
In the staff room, which used to be the ship’s theater, the commanding officer
sits behind his table. His tired, blond adjutant sits beside him. The phone
rings, the CO picks it up, listens for a moment and hangs up the receiver. He
turns to the adjuntant. “All ready,” he says. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 21, 1943—The
tide is turning now and it is after midnight. On the bridge, which towers above
the pier buildings, there is great activity. The lines are cast off and the
engines reversed. The great ship backs carefully into the stream and nearly
fills it to both banks. But the little tugs are waiting for her and they bump
and persuade her about until she is headed right and they hang beside her like
suckling ships as she moves slowly toward the sea. Only the MPs on watch among
the sleeping soldiers see the dimmed-out city slipping by. Down deep in the ship, in the hospital, the
things that can happen to so many men have started to happen. A medical major has
taken off his blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He is washing his hands in
green soap, while an Army nurse in operating uniform stands by, holding the
doctor’s white gown. The anonymous soldier, with the dangerous appendix, is
having his stomach shaved by another Army nurse. Brilliant light floods the
operating table. The doctor major slips into his sterile gloves. The nurse
adjusts the mask over his nose and mouth and he steps quickly to the sleeping
soldier on the table under the light. The great troopship sneaks past the city and
the tugs leave her, a dark thing steaming into the dark. On the decks and in
the passages and in the bunks the thousands of men are collapsed in sleep. Only
their faces show under the dim blue blackout lights—faces and an impression of
tangled hands and feet and legs and equipment. Officers and military police
stand guard over this great sleep, a sleep multiplied, the sleep of thousands.
An odor rises from the men, the characteristic odor of an army. It is the smell
of wool and the bitter smell of fatigue and the smell of gun oil and leather.
Troops always have this odor. The men lie sprawled, some with their mouths
open, but they do not snore. Perhaps they are too tired to snore, but their
breathing is a pulsing, audible thing. The tired blond adjutant haunts the deck like a
ghost. He doesn’t know when he will ever sleep again. He and the provost
marshal share responsibility for a smooth crossing, and both are serious and
responsible men. The sleeping men are missing something tremendous,
as last things are usually missed. The clerks and farmers, salesmen, students,
laborers, technicians, reporters, fishermen who have stopped being those
things to become an army have been trained from their induction for this
moment. This is the beginning of the real thing for which they have practiced.
Their country, which they have become soldiers to defend, is slipping away into
the misty night and they are asleep. The place which will fill their thoughts
in the months to come is gone and they did not see it go. They were asleep.
They will not see it again for a long time, and some of them will never see it
again. This was the time of emotion, the moment that cannot be replaced, but
they were too tired. They sleep like children who really tried to stay awake to
see Santa Claus and couldn’t make it. They will remember this time, but it will
never really have happened to them. The night begins to come in over the sea. It is
overcast and a light rain begins to fall. It is good sailing weather because a
submarine could not see us 200 yards away. The ship is a gray, misty shape,
slipping through a gray mist and melting into it. Overhead a Navy blimp watches
over her, sometimes coming in so close that you can see the men in the little
underslung cabin. The troopship is cut off now. She can hear but
cannot speak. Her outgoing radio will not be used at all unless she is hit or
attacked. For the time of her voyage no one will hear of her. Submarines are in
the misty sea ahead, and of the men on board very many have never seen the
ocean before and the sea itself is dark and terrifying enough without the
lurking things, and there are other matters besides the future fighting that
frighten a local boy—new things, new people, new languages. The men are beginning to awaken now, before the
call. They have missed the moment of parting. They awaken to—destination
unknown, route unknown, life even for an hour ahead unknown. The great ship
throws her bow into the Atlantic. On the boat deck two early-rising mountain boys
are standing, looking in wonder at the incredible sea. One of them says, “They
say she’s salty clear down to the bottom.” “Now you know that ain’t so,” the other says. “What you mean, it ain’t so? Why ain’t it so?” The other speaks confidently. “Now, son,” he
says, “you know there ain’t that much salt in the world. Just figure it out for
yourself.” SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 22, 1943—The
first morning on a troopship is a mess. The problem of feeding thousands of men
in such close quarters is profound. There are two meals a day, spaced ten
hours apart. Mess lines for breakfast form at seven and continue until ten.
Dinner lines start at five in the afternoon and continue until ten at night.
And during these times the long, narrow corridors are lined with men, three
abreast, carrying their field kits. On the first day the system does not take
effect. There are traffic jams and thin tempers. At ten in the morning a
miserable private in chemical warfare whines to a military policeman, who is
keeping the lines shuffling along. “Please, mister. Get me out of this line. I
have had three breakfasts already. I ain’t hungry no more. Every time I get out
of one line I get shoved into another one.” Men cannot be treated as individuals on this
troopship. They are simply units which take up six feet by three feet by two
feet, horizontal or vertical. So much space must be allotted for the physical
unit. They are engines which must be given fuel to keep them from stopping. The
products of their combustion must be taken care of and eliminated. There is no
way of considering them as individuals. The second and third day the method
begins to work. The line flows smoothly and on time, but that first day is a
mess. The men are rested now and there is no room to
move about. They will not be able to have any exercise during this voyage.
There are too many feet. The major impression on a troop ship is of feet. A
man can get his head out of the way and his arms, but, lying or sitting, his
feet are a problem. They sprawl in the aisles, they stick up at all angles.
They are not protected because they are the part of a man least likely to be
hurt. To move about you must step among feet, must trip over feet. There are big, misshapen feet; neat, small
feet; shoes that are polished; curl-toed shoes; shoestrings knotted and
snarled, and careful little bows. You can read character by the feet and shoes.
There are perpetually tired feet, and nervous, quick feet. To remember a
troopship is to remember feet. At night on a blacked-out ship, you must creep
and feel your way among acres of feet. The men begin to be restless now. It is hard to
sit still and do nothing. Some have brought the little pocket books and others
go to the ship’s library and get books. Detective stories and short stories.
They take what they can get. But there are many men who do not consider reading
a matter of pleasure and these must find some other outlet for their interests. Several months ago Services of Supply, in
reporting the items supplied to the soldiers’ exchanges, included several
hundreds of thousands of sets of dice, explaining that parcheesi was becoming
increasingly popular in the Army. Those who remember parcheesi as a rather
dumpy game may not believe this if they have not seen it, but it is so. The
game has been streamlined to a certain extent but there is no doubt of its
popularity. The board with its string pockets has disappeared in the interest
of space. Parcheesi is now played on an Army blanket. It is a spirited, healthy game, and seems to
hold the attention of the players. Some tournaments of parcheesi continue for
days. One, indeed, never stopped during the whole crossing. Another game which
is very popular in the Army is cassino. Its most common forms are stud cassino
and five-card-draw cassino. It is gratifying to see that our new Army has gone
back to the old-fashioned virtues our forefathers lied about. The ship is very heavily armed. From every
point of observation the guns protrude. This troopship could fight her way
through considerable opposition. On the decks, in addition to the lifeboats,
are hundreds of life rafts ready to be thrown into the sea. These boats and
rafts are equipped with food and water and medicine and even fishing tackle. Now the men who slept on the decks last night
move inside, as the inside men move out. The wind is fresh. The soldiers take
the shelter halves and begin to build ingenious shelters. Some erect single
little covers between stanchions and rails, while others, pooling their canvas,
are able to make windproof caves among the life rafts. In these they settle
down to read or to play parcheesi or cassino. The sea is calm and that is good,
for great numbers of the men have never been on any kind of boat. A little
rough weather will make them seasick and then there will be an added problem
for the worried and tired permanent force on the boat. The decks cannot be flushed, for there is no
place for the men to go while it is being done. There are many delicate
problems on such a ship. If another ship should be sighted, the men must not
crowd to one side, for that would throw too great a weight on one side of the
ship and might even endanger her. Our cargo is men and it must be shifted with
care. Every day there is boat drill. The alarm
sounds, and after the first day of pandemonium the men go quietly to their
stations. There are so many problems to be faced on a troopship. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 23, 1943—A
troopship is a strange community and it reacts as a community. It is unique,
however, in that it is cut off from all the world and that it is in constant
danger of being attacked and destroyed. No matter how casual the men seem, that
last fact is never very far from their minds. In the water any place may be the
submarine and any moment may come the blast that sends the great ship to the
bottom. Thus the gunners never relax, the listening
devices are tense and occupied. Half the mind listens and waits all the time
and in the night small sounds take on a large importance. At intervals the
guns are fired to see that they are in perfect condition. The gunnery officer
never relaxes. On the bridge the captain sleeps very rarely and takes his
coffee in his hand. Under such a strain the human brain reacts
curiously. It builds its apprehensions into realities and then repeats those
realities. Thus a troopship is a nest of rumors, rumors that go whisking from
stem to stern, but the most curious thing is that on all troopships the rumors
are the same. Some generalized picture takes shape in all of them. The story
starts and is repeated, and everyone, except perhaps the permanent crew,
believes each for a few hours before a new one takes its place. It might be
well to set down some of the rumors so that when heard they will be recognized
for what they are, the folklore of a troopship. The following are heard on every troopship,
without exception; further, they are believed on every troopship: 1. This morning we were sighted by a submarine.
It could not catch us, but it radioed its fellows and now a pack is assembling
ahead of us to intercept us and sink us. This rumor is supposed to come from
the radio officer, who heard the submarine calling its brothers. The pack will
close in on us tonight. All of these rumors are said to come from a responsible
officer. 2. This morning a submarine surfaced, not
knowing we were near. We had every gun trained on her, ready to blow her out of
the water, because we heard her in our listening devices. She saw us as she
broke water and signaled just in time that she was one of ours. It is not explained
how it happens that she did not hear us in her listening devices, and if the
question arises it is explained that probably her listening devices were out of
order. 3. Some terrible and nameless thing has happened
among the officers (this rumor is only among the enlisted men). The crime they
have committed is not mentioned, but it is known that a number of officers are
under detention and will be court-martialed. This rumor may be pure wishful
thinking. 4. Both the officers’ post exchanges and the
enlisted men’s post exchanges sell a water pop in brown bottles. The soldiers
know very well that what is in their bottles is pop, but the rumor runs through
the ship that the brown bottles in the officers’ lounge contain beer. Some
little discontent arises from this until it is forgotten in a new rumor. 5. The front end of the ship is weak and only
patched up. On the last voyage she cut a destroyer (sometimes a cruiser) in two
and they patched her up and sent her out anyway. She is perfectly all right,
unless we run into heavy weather, in which case she is very likely to fall to
pieces. Since men are not allowed on the forepeak, because the gun crews are
there, they cannot look over and see whether or not this is true. 6. Last night the German radio announced that
this ship had been sunk. The Germans often do this, fishing for information. While
parents, wives, and friends do not know exactly what ship we are on, they know
about when we were alerted and they will be frantic and there is no way of
telling them that we are all right, for no messages are permitted to go out.
The soldiers go about worrying to think of the worry of their people. 7. Some kind of epidemic has broken out on the
ship. The officers are keeping it quiet to prevent a panic. They are burying
the dead secretly at night. As the days go by and the men grow more
restless and the parcheesi games have fallen off because the sinews of the game
have got into a few lean and hungry hands, the rumors grow more intense.
Somewhere in mid-ocean a big patrol plane flies near to us and circles
protectively, and the rumor springs up that she has signaled the captain to
change course. Something terrific is going on somewhere and we are changing
our destination. Since we change our course every thirty seconds
anyway, there is no telling by watching the wake where we are going. So the
rumors go. It would be interesting if the ship’s officers would post a list of
rumors the men are likely to hear. It would certainly eliminate some apprehensions
on the part of the men, and it would be interesting to see whether then a whole
new list of fresh, unused rumors would grow up. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 24, 1943—A
small USO unit is aboard this troopship, girls and men who are going out to
entertain troops wherever they may be sent. These are not the big names who go
out with blasts of publicity and maintain their radio contracts. These are
girls who can sing and dance and look pretty and men who can do magic and
pantomimists and tellers of jokes. They have few properties and none of the
tricks of light and color which dress up the theater. But there is something
very gallant about them. The theater is the only institution in the world which
has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough
and devoted people to keep it alive. An accordion is the largest piece of
property the troupe carries. The evening dresses, crushed in suitcases, must be
pressed and kept pretty. The spirit must be high. This is trouping the really
hard way. The theater is one of the largest mess halls.
Soldiers are packed in, sitting on benches, standing on tables, lying in the
doorways. A little platform on one end is the stage. Tonight the loudspeaker is
out of order, but when it isn’t it blares and distorts voices. The master of
ceremonies gets up and faces his packed audience. He tells a joke—but this
audience is made up of men from different parts of the country and each part
has its own kind of humor. He tells a New York joke. There is a laugh, but a
limited one. The men from South Dakota and Oklahoma do not understand this
joke. They laugh late, merely because they want to laugh. He tries another joke
and this time he plays safe. It is an Army joke about MPs. This time it works.
Everybody likes a joke about MPs. He introduces an acrobatic dancer, a pretty
girl with long legs and the strained smile acrobats develop to conceal the fact
that their muscles are crying with tension. The ship is rolling slowly from
side to side. All of her work is dependent on perfect balance. She tries each
part of her act several times and is thrown off balance, but, seriously, she
tries again until, in a pause in the ship’s roll she succeeds, and legs are
distorted properly for the proper two seconds. The soldiers are with her. They
know the difficulty. They want her to succeed and they cheer when she does.
This is all very serious. She leaves the stage under whistles and cheers. A blues singer follows. Without the
loudspeakers she can hardly be heard, for her voice, although sweet, has no volume.
She forces her voice for volume and loses her sweetness, but she is pretty and
young and earnest. A girl accordion-player comes next. She asks
for suggestions. This is to be group singing and the requests are for old
songs—“Harvest Moon,” “Home on the Range,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” The
men bellow the words in all pitches. There is no war song for this war. Nothing
has come along yet. The show continues—a pantomimist who acts out the physical
examination of an inductee and does it so accurately that his audience howls.
A magician in traditional tail coat manipulates colored silks. In all the acts the illusion does not quite
come off. The audience helps all it can because it wants the show to be good.
And out of the little acts, which are not quite convincing, and the big
audience which wants literally to be convinced, something whole and good comes,
so that when it is over there has been a show. One of the men in the unit has been afraid. He
has not slept since the ship sailed. He is afraid of the ocean and of
submarines. He has lain in his bunk, listening for the blast that will kill
him. He is probably very brave. He does his act when he is terrified. It is
foolish to say he should not be afraid. He is afraid, and that is something he
cannot control, but he does his act, and that is something he can control. Up on the deck in the blackness the colored
troops are sprawled. They sit quietly. A great bass voice sings softly a bar of
the hymn “When the Saints Go Marching In.” A voice says, “Sing it, brother!” The bass takes it again and a few other voices
join him. By the time the hymn has reached the fourth bar an organ of voices is
behind it. The voices take on a beat, feeling one another out. The chords begin
to form. There is nothing visible. The booming voices come out of the darkness.
The men sing sprawled out, lying on their backs. The song becomes huge with
authority. This is a war song. This could be the war song. Not the
sentimental wash about lights coming on again or bluebirds. The black deck rolls with sound. One chorus
ends and another starts, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Four times and on
the fifth the voices fade away to a little hum and the deck is silent again.
The ship rolls and metal protests against metal. The ship is silent again. Only
the shudder of the engine and the whisk of water and the whine of the wind in
the wire rigging break the silence. We have not yet a singing Army nor any songs
for a singing Army. Synthetic emotions and nostalgias do not take hold because the
troops know instinctively that they are synthetic. No one has yet put words and
a melody to the real homesickness, the real terror, and the real ferocity of
the war. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 25, 1943—We
are coming close to land. The birds picked us up this morning and a big flying
boat circled us and then darted away to report us. There has been no trouble at
all, and if, on the bridge, the enemy has been reported, we do not know it. The
word sifts down from the bridge that we shall land tonight. The soldiers line
the rails and report every low-hanging cloud as a landfall. Now that we are
near and the lines of our approach are narrow, the danger is greater. The ship
swerves and turns constantly. These waters are the most dangerous of all. The men are reading a little booklet that has
been distributed, telling them how to get along with the English. The book
explains language differences. It suggests that in England a closet is not a
place to hang clothing, that the word “bloody” should be avoided, that a
garbage can is a dust bin, and it warns that the English use many common words
with a meaning different from what we assign to them. Many of our men find this
very funny and they go about talking a curious gibberish which they imagine is
a British accent. A light haze shrouds the horizon, and out of it
our Spitfires drive at us and circle like angry bees. They come so close that
we hear the fierce whistle of their wings. For a long time they circle us and
then go away, and others take their place. In the afternoon land shows through the haze
and, as we get closer, the neat houses and the neat country, orderly and old.
The men gaze at it in wonder. It is the first foreign place most of them have
ever seen and each man says it looks like some place he knows. One says it
looks like California in the springtime of a wet year. Another recognizes
Vermont. The men crowd to the portholes and the rails. The troopship moves into a harbor and drops her
anchor. She is surrounded on all sides by shipping and by naval units. The men
will go ashore in lighters, but not yet, for disembarkation is, if anything,
more complicated than embarkation. Men can easily be lost or mixed with the
wrong units. The night comes and in the staff room officers
gather and wait until they are assigned the transportation for their men. It
takes a good part of the night. At an exact time each unit must be in an exact
place, where a lighter will be waiting to take them on. The troop trains will
be waiting ashore. It has been a perfect crossing. No trouble, no sickness, no
attack. The ship’s officers show the strain. They haven’t slept much. After a
few voyages they must be relieved. The responsibility is too great for a man to
bear for too long a stretch. In the morning the lighters come in and hug the
sides of the troopship. The big iron doors open and the troops move out and
take their places on the decks of the little boats. The portholes high above
are filled with heads looking down. Men for a later debarkation. The little
boat moves off, puffs up the bay among the tugs and the destroyers and the
anchored freighters. The soldiers are self-conscious in a new place. They
regard this new land skeptically as one must when he is not sure of himself.
The little boat puffs up to the dock, which has mysteriously become a quay,
pronounced “key,” which is, of course, ridiculous. Now as the lighter ties up an astonishing thing
happens. A band of pipers marches out in kilts, with bagpipes and drums and the
swingy march of pipers. The harsh skirling cuts through the air. The most
military, the most fighting music in the world. Our men crowd the rail. The
band approaches, drums banging, pipes squealing and, as they draw abreast, the
soldiers break into a great cheer. They may not like the harsh music; it takes
time to like it; but something of the iron of the music goes into them. The
pipers wheel and march back and away. It was a good thing to do. Our men, in
some deep way, feel honored. The music has stirred them. This is a different
war from the one of training camps and strategy at post exchanges. From the deck of the lighter the men can see
the roofless houses, the burned-out houses. The piles of rubble where the
bombs have fallen. They have seen pictures of this and have read about it, but
that was pictures and reading. It wasn’t real. This is different. It isn’t like
the pictures at all. On the quay, the Red Cross is waiting with caldrons of
coffee, with mountains of cake. They have been serving since dawn and they will
serve until long after dark. The gangplank to the lighter is fixed now. The
men, carrying their heavy barrack bags, packs on their backs and rifles slung
over their shoulders, struggle up the steep gangway to the new country. And in
the distance they can hear the sound of the pipes greeting another lighter-load
of troops. A PLANE’S NAMEA BOMBER STATION, June 26, 1943—The
bomber crew is getting back from London. The men have been on a
forty-eight-hour pass. At the station an Army bus is waiting, and they pile in
with other crews. Then the big bus moves through the narrow streets of the
little ancient town and rolls into the pleasant green country. Fields of wheat
with hedgerows between. On the right is one of the huge vegetable gardens all
cut up into little plots where families raise their own produce. Some men and
women are working in the garden now, having ridden out of town on their
bicycles. The Army bus rattles over the rough road and
through a patch of woods. In the distance there are a few squat brown buildings
and a flagstaff flying the American flag. This is a bomber station. England is Uttered
with them. This is one of the best. There is no mud here, and the barracks are
permanent and adequate. There is no high concentration of planes in any one
field. Probably no more than twenty-five Flying Fortresses live here, and they
are so spread out that you do not see them at once. A raider might get one of
them, but he would not be likely to get more than one. No attempt is made to camouflage the buildings
or the planes—it doesn’t work and it’s just a lot of work. Air protection and
dispersal do work. Barbed wire is strung along the road, coils of it, and in
front of the administration building there is a gate with a sentry box. The
bus pulls to a stop near the gate and the men jump down, adjusting their gas
masks at their sides. No one is permitted to leave the place without his gas
mask. The men file through the gate, identify themselves, and sign In back on
the post. The crews walk slowly to their barracks. The room is long and narrow and unpainted.
Against each side wall are iron double-decker bunks, alternating with clothes
lockers. A long rack in the middle between the bunks serves as a hanger for
whiter coats and raincoats. Next to it is the rack of rules and submachine
guns of the crew. Each bunk is carefully made, and to the foot of
each are hung a helmet and a gas mask. On the walls are pinup girls. But the
same girls near each bunk—big-breasted blondes in languorous attitudes, child
faces, parted shiny lips and sleepy eyes, which doubtless mean passion, but
always the same girls. The crew of the Mary Ruth have their
bunks on the right-hand side of the room. They have had these bunks only a few
weeks. A Fortress was shot down and the bunks were emptied. It is strange to
sleep in the bed of a man who was at breakfast with you and now is dead or a
prisoner hundreds of miles away. It is strange and necessary. His clothes are
in the locker, to be picked up and put away. His helmet is to be taken off the
foot of the bunk and yours put there. You leave his pin-up girls where they
are. Why change them? Yours would be the same girls. This crew did not name or come over in the Mary
Ruth. On the nose of the ship her name is written, and under it “Memories
of Mobile.” But this crew does not know who Mary Ruth was, nor what
memories are celebrated. She was named when they got her, and they would not
think of changing her name. In some way it would be bad luck. A rumor has swept through the airfields that
some powerful group in America has protested about the names of the ships and
that an order is about to be issued removing these names and substituting the
names of towns and rivers. It is to be hoped that this is not true. Some of the
best writing of the war has been on the noses of bombers. The names are highly
personal things, and the ships grow to be people. Change the name of Bomb
Boogie to St. Louis, or Mary Ruth of Mobile Memories to Wichita,
or the Volga Virgin to Davenport, and you will have injured the
ship. The name must be perfect and must be approved by every member of the
crew. The names must not be changed. There is enough dullness in the war as it
is. Mary Ruth’s crew sit on their bunks and
discuss the hard luck of Bomb Boogie. Bomb Boogie is a hard-luck
ship. She never gets to her target. Every mission is an abortion. They bring
her in and go over her and test her and take her on test runs. She is perfect
and then she starts on an operational flight, and her engines go bad or her
landing gear gives trouble. Something always happens to Bomb Boogie. She
never gets to her target. It is something no one can understand. Four days ago
she started out and never got as far as the coast of England before one of her
engines conked out and she had to return. One of the waist gunners strolls out, but in a
minute he is back. “We’re alerted for tomorrow,” he says. “I hope it isn’t
Kiel. There was a hell of a lot of red flak at Kiel.” “The guy with the red beard is there,” says
Brown, the tail gunner. “He looked right at me. I drew down on him and my guns
jammed.” “Let’s go eat,” the turret gunner says. NEWS FROM HOMEBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, June 28, 1943—The
days are very long. A combination of summer time and daylight-saving time keeps
them light until eleven thirty. After mess we take the Army bus into town. It
is an ancient little city which every American knows about as soon as he can
read. The buildings on the narrow streets are Tudor, Stuart, Georgian, and even
some Norman. The paving stones are worn smooth and the flagstones of the sidewalks
are grooved by apes of strollers. It is a town to stroll in. American soldiers,
Canadian, Royal Air Force men, and many of Great Britain’s women soldiers walk
through the streets. But Britain drafts its women and they are really in the
Army, driver-mechanics, dispatch riders, trim and hard in their uniforms. The crew of the Mary Ruth ends up at a
little pub, overcrowded and noisy. They edge their way in to the bar, where the
barmaids are drawing beer as fast as they can. In a moment this crew has found
a table and they have the small glasses of pale yellow fluid in front of them.
It is curious beer. Most of the alcohol has been taken out of it to make
munitions. It is not cold. It is token beer—a gesture rather than a drink. The bomber crew is solemn. Men who are alerted
for operational missions are usually solemn, but tonight there is some burden
on this crew. There is no way of knowing how these things start. All at once a
crew will feel fated. Then little things go wrong. Then they are uneasy until they
take off for their mission. When the uneasiness is running it is the waiting
that hurts. They sip the flat, tasteless beer. One of them
says, “I saw a paper from home at the Red Cross in London.” It is quiet. The
others look at him across their glasses. A mixed group of pilots and ATS girls
at the other end of the pub have started a song. It is astonishing how many of
the songs are American. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to,” they sing. And the
beat of the song is subtly changed. It has become an English song. The waist gunner raises his voice to be heard
over the singing. “It seems to me that we are afraid to announce our losses. It
seems almost as if the War Department was afraid that the country couldn’t take
it. I never saw anything the country couldn’t take.” The ball-turret gunner wipes his mouth with the
back of his hand. “We don’t hear much,” he says, “it’s a funny thing, but the
closer you get to action the less you read papers and war news. I remember
before I joined up I used to know everything that was happening. I knew what
Turkey was doing. I even had maps with pins and I drew out campaigns with
colored pencils. Now I haven’t looked at a paper in two weeks.” The first man went on, “This paper I saw had
some funny stuff in it. It seemed to think that the war was nearly over.” “I wish the Jerries thought that,” the tail
gunner says. “I wish you could get Goering’s yellow noses and them damned flak
gunners convinced of that.” “Well anyway,” the waist gunner says, “I looked
through that paper pretty close. It seems to me that the folks at home are
fighting one war and we’re fighting another one. They’ve got theirs nearly won
and we’ve just got started on ours. I wish they’d get in the same war we’re in.
I wish they’d print the casualties and tell them what it’s like. I think maybe
that they’d like to get in the same war we’re in if they could get it to do.” The tail gunner comes from so close to the
border of Kentucky he talks like a Kentuckian. “I read a very nice piece in a
magazine about us,” he says. “This piece says we’ve got nerves of steel. We
never get scared. All we want in the world is just to fly all the time and get
a crack at Jerry. I never heard anything so brave as us. I read it three or
four times to try and convince myself that I ain’t scared.” “There was almost solid red flack over Bremen
last Thursday,” the radio man says. “Get much more and we can walk home over
solid flak. I hate that red flak. We sure took a pasting Thursday.” “Well, we didn’t get any,” says Henry Maurice
Grain, one of the gunners. “We got the nose knocked out of our ship, but that
was an accident. One of the gunners in a ship high on ahead tossed out some
shell casings and they came right through the nose. They’ve got her nearly
fixed up now.” “But anyway,” the first man says doggedly, “I
wish they’d tell them at home that the war isn’t over and I wish they wouldn’t
think we’re so brave. I don’t want to be so brave. Shall we have another beer?” “What for?” says the tail gunner. “This stuff
hasn’t got even enough character for you to dislike it, I’m going back to wipe
my guns. Then I won’t have to do it in the morning.” They stand up and file slowly out of the pub.
It is still daylight. The pigeons are flying about the tower of an old Gothic
church, a kind of architecture especially suited to nesting pigeons. The hotel taken over by the Red Cross is
crowded with men in from the flying fields which dot the countryside. Our bus
drives up in front and we pile in. The crew looks automatically at the sky. It
is clear, with little puffs of white cloud suspended in the light of a sun that
has already gone down. “Looks like it might be a clear day,” the radio
man says. “That’s good for us and it’s good for them to get at us.” The bus rattles back toward the field. The tail
gunner muses. “I hope old Red Beard has got a bad cold,” he says. “I didn’t
like the look in his eye last time.” (Red Beard is an enemy fighter pilot who comes
so close that you can almost see his face.) SUPERSTITIONBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, June 30, 1943—It
is a bad night in the barracks, such a night as does not happen very often. It
is impossible to know how it starts. Nerves are a little thin and no one is
sleepy. The tail gunner of the other outfit in the room gets down from his
upper bunk and begins rooting about on the floor. “What’s the matter?” the man on the lower bunk
asks. “I lost my medallion,” the tail gunner says. No one asks what is was, a St. Christopher or a
good-luck piece. The fact of the matter is that it is his medallion and he has
lost it. Everyone gets up and looks. They move the double-decker bunk out from
the wall. They empty all the shoes. They look behind the steel lockers. They
insist that the gunner go through all his pockets. It isn’t a good thing for a
man to lose his medallion. Perhaps there has been an uneasiness before. This
sets it. The uneasiness creeps all through the room. It takes the channel of
being funny. They tell jokes; they rag one another. They ask shoe sizes of one
another to outrage their uneasiness. “What size shoes you wear, Brown? I get
them if you conk out.” The thing runs bitterly through the room. And then the jokes stop. There are many little
things you do when you go out on a mission. You leave the things that are to be
sent home if you have an accident. You leave them under your pillow, your
photographs and the letter you wrote, and your ring. They’re under your pillow,
and you don’t make up your bunk. That must be left unmade so that you can slip
right in when you get back. No one would think of making up a bunk while its
owner is on a mission. You go out clean-shaven too, because you are coming
back, to keep your date. You project your mind into the future and the things
you are going to do then. In the barracks they tell of presentiments they
have heard about. There was the radio man who one morning folded his bedding
neatly on his cot and put his pillow on top. And he folded his clothing into a
neat parcel and cleared his locker. He had never done anything like that
before. And sure enough, he was shot down that day. The tail gunner still hasn’t found his
medallion. He has gone through his pockets over and over again. The brutal talk
goes on until one voice says, “For God’s sake shut up. It’s after midnight.
We’ve got to get some sleep.” The lights are turned out. It is pitch black in
the room, for the blackout curtains are drawn tight. A man speaks in the
darkness. “I wish I was in that ship by now.” He knows that he will be all
right when the mission starts. It’s this time of waiting that hurts, and
tonight it has been particularly bad. It is quiet in the room, and then there is a
step, and then a great clatter. A new arrival trying to get to his bunk in the
dark has stumbled over the gun rack. The room breaks into loud curses. Everyone
curses the new arrival. They tell him where he came from and where they hope he
will go. It is a fine, noisy outburst, and the tension goes out of the room.
The evil thing has gone. You are conscious, lying in your bunk, of a
droning sound that goes on and on. It is the Royal Air Force going out for the
night bombing again. There must be hundreds of them—a big raid. The sound has
been going on all evening and it goes on for another hour. Hundreds of
Lancasters, with hundreds of tons of bombs. And, when they come back, you will
go out. You cannot call the things that happen to
bombing crews superstition. Tension and altitude do strange things to a man. At
30,000 feet, the body is living in a condition it was not born to withstand. A
man is breathing oxygen from a tube and his eyes and ears are working in the
reduced pressure. It is little wonder, then, that he sometimes sees things
that are not there and does not see things that are there. Gunners have fired
on their own ships and others have poured great bursts into empty air, thinking
they saw a swastika. The senses are not trustworthy. And the sky is treacherous
with flak. The flak bursts about you and sometimes the fragments come tearing
through your ship. The fighters stab past you, flaring with their guns. And, if
you happen to see little visions now and then, why, that’s bound to happen. And
if on your intensified awareness, small incidents are built up with meanings,
why, such things always happen under tension. Ghosts have always ridden through
skies and if your body and nerves are strained with altitude, too, such things
are bound to happen. The barrack room is very silent. From a corner
comes a light snore. Someone is talking in his sleep. First a sentence mumbled
and then, “Helen, let’s go in the Ferris wheel now.” There is secret sound from the far wall, and
then a tiny clink of metal. The tail gunner is still feeling through his
pockets for his medallion. PREPARATION FOR A RAIDBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 1, 1943—In
the barracks, a brilliant white light flashes on, jerking you out of sleep. A
sharp voice says, “All right, get out of it! Briefing at three o’clock,
stand-by at four-twenty. Better get out of it now.” The crew struggles sleepily out of their bunks
and into clothes. It is 2:30 a.m. There hasn’t been much sleep for anyone. Outside the daylight is beginning to come. The
crew gropes its way through sleepiness and the semidarkness to the guarded
door, and each goes in as he is recognized by the guard. Inside there are rows of benches in front of a large
white screen, which fills one wall. Some of the crews are already seated. The
lights go out and from a projector an aerial photograph is projected on the
screen. It is remarkably clear. It shows streets and factories and a winding
river, and docks and submarine pens. An Intelligence officer stands beside the
screen and he holds a long pointer in his hand. He begins without preliminary.
“Here is where you are going,” he says, and he names a German city. “Now this squadron will come in from this
direction,” the pointer traces the road, making a black shadow on the screen.
The pointer stops at three long, narrow buildings, side by side. “This is your
target. They make small engine parts here. Knock it out.” He mentions times and
as he does a sergeant marks the times on a blackboard. “Standby at such a
time, take-off at such a time. You will be over your target at such a time, and
you should be back here by such a time.” It is all on the minute—5:52 and 9:43.
The incredible job of getting so many ships to a given point at a given time
means almost split-second timing. The Intelligence officer continues: (Next three
sentences cut by censor.) “Good luck and good hunting.” The lights flood on.
The pictured city disappears. A chaplain comes to the front of the room. “All
Catholics gather at the back of the room,” he says. The crews straggle across the way to the mess
hall and fill their plates and their cups, stewed fruit and scrambled eggs and
bacon and cereal and coffee. The Mary Ruth’s crew is almost gay. It
is a reaction to the bad time they had the night before. All of the tension is
broken now, for there is work and flying to be done, not waiting. The tail
gunner says, “If anything should happen today, I want to go on record that I
had prunes for breakfast.” They eat hurriedly and then file out, washing
their dishes and cups in soapy water and then rinsing them in big caldrons near
the door. Dressing is a long and complicated business.
The men strip to the skin. Next to their skins they put on long light woolen
underwear. Over that they slip on what looks like long light-blue-colored
underwear, but these are the heated suits. They come low on the ankles and far
down on the wrists, and from the waists of these suits protrude electric plugs.
The suit, between two layers of fabric, is threaded with electric wires which
will carry heat when the plug is connected to the heat outlet on the ship. Over
the heated suit goes the brown cover-all. Last come thick, fleece-lined heated
boots and gloves which also have plugs for the heat unit. Next goes on the Mae
West, the orange rubber life preserver, which can be inflated in a moment. Then
comes the parachute with its heavy canvas straps over the shoulders and between
the legs. And last the helmet with the throat speaker and the earphones
attached. Plugged in to the intercommunications system, the man can now
communicate with the rest of the crew no matter what noise is going on about
him. During the process the men have got bigger and bigger as layer on layer of
equipment is put on. They walk stiffly, like artificial men. The lean waist
gunner is now a little chubby. They dress very carefully, for an exposed place
or a disconnected suit can cause a bad frostbite at 30,000 feet. It is
dreadfully cold up there. It is daylight now and a cold wind is blowing.
The men go back to the armament room and pick up their guns. A truck is waiting
for them. They stow the guns carefully on the floor and then stiffly hoist
themselves in. The truck drives away along the deserted runway. It moves into a
side runway. Now you can see the ships set here and there on the field. A
little group of men is collected under the wings of each one. “There she is,” the ball-turret man says. “I
wonder if they got her nose repaired.” It was the Mary Ruth that got her
nose smashed by cartridge cases from a ship ahead. The truck draws up right
under the nose of the great ship. The crew piles out and each man lifts his gun
down tenderly. They go into the ship. The guns must be mounted and carefully
tested. Ammunition must be checked and the guns loaded. It all takes time.
That’s why the men were awakened so long before the take-off time. A thousand
things must be set before the take-off. THE GROUND CREWBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 2, 1493—The
ground crew is still working over the Mary Ruth. Master Sergeant Pierce,
of Oregon, is the crew chief. He has been long in the Army and he knows his
engines. They say of him that he owns the Mary Ruth but he lends her to
the skipper occasionally. If he says a flight is off, it is off. He has been
checking the engines a good part of the night. Corporal Harold is there, too. He has been
loading bombs and seeing that the armament of the ship is in condition. The
ground crew scurry about like rabbits. Their time is getting short. They have
the obscure job, the job without glory and without publicity, and the ships
could not fly without them. They are dressed in coveralls and baseball caps. The gunners have mounted their guns by now and
are testing the slides. A ground man is polishing the newly mended nose,
rubbing every bit of dirt from it, so that the bombardier may have a good sight
of his target. A jeep drives up, carrying the officers—Brown,
Quenin, Bliley, and Feerick. They spill a number of little square packets on
the ground, one for each man. Captain Brown distributes them. They contain
money of the countries near the target, concentrated food, and maps. Brown
says, “Now, if we should get into any trouble don’t go in the direction of——because
the people haven’t been very friendly there. Go toward——you’ll find plenty of help
there.” The men take the packets and slip them in pockets below the knees in
their coveralls. The sun is just below the horizon now and there
are fine pink puff clouds all over the sky. The captain looks at his watch. “I
guess we better get going,” he says. The other Brown, the tail gunner, runs
over. He hands over two rings, a cameo and another. “I forgot to leave these,”
he says. “Will you put them under my pillow?” The crew scramble to their places
and the door is slammed and locked. The waist doors are open, of course, with
the guns peering out of them, lashed down now, but immediately available. The
long scallop of the cartridge belts drapes into each one. The captain waves from his high perch. His
window sits right over the ship’s name—Mary Ruth, Memories of Mobile.
The engines turn over and catch one at a time and roar as they warm up. And
now, from all over the field, come the bursting roars of starting engines. From
all over the field the great ships come rumbling from their dispersal points
into the main runways. They make a line Like giant bugs, a parade of them,
moving down to the take-off stretch. The captain signals and two ground-crew men
dart in and pull out the chocks from in front of the wheels and dart out again.
The Mary Ruth guns her motors and then slowly crawls out along her
entrance and joins the parade. Along the runway the first ship whips out and
gathers speed and takes the air, and behind her comes another and behind
another and behind another, until the flying line of ships stretches away to
the north. For a little while the squadron has disappeared, but in a few
minutes back they come over the field, but this time they are not in a line.
They have gained altitude and are flying in a tight formation. They go roaring
over the field and they have hardly passed when another squadron from another
field comes over, and then another and another. They will rendezvous at a given
point, the squadrons from many fields, and when the whole force has gathered
there will be perhaps a hundred of the great ships flying in Vs and in Vs of
Vs, each protecting itself and the others by its position. And this great
flight is going south like geese in the fall. There is incredible detail to get these
missions off. Staff detail of supply and intelligence detail, deciding and
briefing the targets, and personnel detail of assigning the crews, and
mechanical detail of keeping the engines going. Bomb Boogie went out
with the others, but in a little while she flutters back with a dead motor. She
has conked out again. No one can know why. She sinks dispiritedly to the
ground. When the mission has gone the ground crews
stand about looking lonesome. They have watched every bit of the take-off and
now they are left to sweat out the day until the ships come home. It is hard to
set down the relation of the ground crew to the air crew, but there is
something very close between them. This ground crew will be nervous and anxious
until the ships come home. And if the Mary Ruth should fail to return
they will go into a kind of sullen, wordless mourning. They have been working
all night. Now they pile on a tractor to ride back to the hangar to get a cup
of coffee in the mess hall. Master Sergeant Pierce says, “That’s a good ship.
Never did have any trouble with her. She’ll come back, unless she’s shot to
pieces.” In the barracks it is very quiet; the beds are unmade, their blankets
hanging over the sides of the iron bunks. The pin-up girls look a little
haggard in their sequin gowns. The family pictures are on the tops of the steel
lockers. A clock ticking sounds strident. The rings go under Brown’s pillow. WAITINGBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 4, 1943—The
field is deserted after the ships have left. The ground crew go into barracks
to get some sleep, because they have been working most of the night. The flag
hangs limply over the administration building. In the hangars repair crews are
working over ships that have been Injured. Bomb Boogie is brought in to
be given another overhaul and Bomb Boogie’s crew goes disgustedly back
to bed. The crews own a number of small dogs. These
dogs, most of which are of uncertain or, at least, of ambiguous breed, belong
to no one man. The ship usually owns each one, and the crew is very proud of
him. Now these dogs wander disconsolately about the field. The life has gone
out of the bomber station. The morning passes slowly. The squadron was due over
the target at 9:52. It was due home at 12:43. As 9:50 comes and passes you have
the ships in your mind. Now the flak has come up at them. Perhaps now a swarm
of fighters has hurled itself at them. The thing happens in your mind. Now, if
everything has gone well and there have been no accidents, the bomb bays are
open and the ships are running over the target. Now they have turned and are
making the run for home, keeping the formation tight, climbing, climbing to
avoid the flak. It is 10 o’clock, they should be started back—10:20, they
should be seeing the ocean by now. The crew last night had told a story of the
death of a Fortress, and it comes back to mind. It was a beautiful day, they said, a picture
day with big clouds and a very blue sky. The kind of day you see in
advertisements for air travel back at home. The formation was flying toward
St. Nazaire and the air was very clear. They could see the little towns on the
ground, they said. Then the flak came up, they said, and some Messerschmitts
parked off out of range and began to pot at them with their cannon. They didn’t
see where the Fortress up ahead was hit. Probably in the controls, because
they did not see her break up at all. They all agree that what happened seemed to
happen very slowly. The Fortress slowly nosed up and up until she tried to
climb vertically and, of course, she couldn’t do that. Then she slipped in slow
motion, backing like a falling leaf, and she balanced for a while and then her
nose edged over and she started, nose down, for the ground. The blue sky and the white clouds made a
picture of it. The crew could see the gunner trying to get out and then he did,
and his parachute fluffed open. And the ball-turret gunner—they could see him
flopping about. The bombardier and navigator blossomed out of the nose and the
waist gunners followed them. Mary Ruth’s crew was yelling, “Get out, you
pilots.” The ship was far down when the ball-turret gunner cleared. They
thought the skipper and the co-pilot were lost. They stayed with the ship too
long and then—the ship was so far down that they could hardly see it. It must
have been almost to the ground when two little puffs of white, first one and
then the second, shot out of her. And the crew yelled with relief. And then the
ship hit the ground and exploded. Only the tail gunner and ball-turret man had
seen the end. They explained it over the intercom. Beside the no. 1 hangar there is a little mound
of earth covered with short, heavy grass. At 12:15 the ground men begin to
congregate on it and sweat out the homecoming. Rumor comes with the crew chief
that they have reported, but it is rumor. A small dog, which might be a gray
Scottie if his ears didn’t hang down and his tail bend the wrong way, comes to
sit on the little mound. He stretches out and puts his whiskery muzzle on his
outstretched paws. He does not close his eyes and his ears twitch. All the
ground crews are there now, waiting for their ships. It is the longest set of
minutes imaginable. Suddenly the little dog raises his head. His
body begins to tremble all over. The crew chief has a pair of field glasses. He
looks down at the dog and then aims his glasses to the south. “Can’t see
anything yet,” he says. The little dog continues to shudder and a high whine
comes from him. And there they come. You can just see the dots
far to the south. The formation is good, but one ship flies alone and ahead.
“Can you see her number? Who is she?” The lead ship drops altitude and comes in
straight for the field. From her side two little rockets break, a red one and a
white one. The ambulance, they call it the meat wagon, starts down the runway.
There is a hurt man on that ship. The main formation comes over the field and
each ship peels to circle for a landing, but the lone ship drops and the wheels
strike the ground and the Fortress lands like a great bug on the runway. But
the moment her wheels are on the ground there is a sharp, crying bark and a
streak of gray. The little dog seems hardly to touch the ground. He streaks
across the field toward the landed ship. He knows his own ship. One by one the
Fortresses land and the ground crews check off the numbers as they land. Mary
Ruth is there. Only one ship is missing and she landed farther south, with
short fuel tanks. There is a great sigh of relief on the mound. The mission is
over. DAY OF MEMORIESLONDON, July 4, 1943—All the day there
have been exercises and entertainments for the troops on leave in London.
Everything that can be done for a guest has been done. There was a hay ride
this morning. There have been exercises and dances and speeches, excursions to
points of interest. The British and the Canadians and the others have been
extra friendly. The bands in the parks played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and
“Dixie” and “Home, Sweet Home.” Everything has been done that can be done and
this is a city of the most abject homesickness. The speaker said in clipped and concise
English, “We welcome you again on this day that is dear to you.” And the minds
were on the red-necked politician, foaming with enthusiasm and bourbon whisky,
screaming the eagle on a bunting-covered platform while his audience longed for
the watermelon and potato salad to come. The conductors of parties said, “We are going
to the Tower of London. It is in a sense the cradle of English
civilization”—the fat man’s race, the three-legged race, the squeals of women
running with eggs in tablespoons, the smell of barbecuing meat on a deep pit. The band played beautifully in Trafalgar Square
a dignified and compelling march—and Coney Island, in its welter of squalling
children, the smell of ice cream and peanuts and water-soaked cigar butts, the
surf, one-third water and two-thirds people, fighting their way through the
grapefruit rinds, the squeak and bellow of honky-tonk music. Soldiers have paraded in London, men who
marched like clothed machines, towering men, straight as their own rifles and
their hands swinging—at home, the knights of this and that in wilted
ostrich-plumed hats, in uniforms out of the moth-balls again, knights who were
butchers last evening, and clerks and tellers of the local bank, but knights
now, out of step, shambling after their great banner, their tinsel swords at
all angles over their shoulders, the knights of this and that. The hospitable people of London have served
flan and trifle, biscuits and tea, marmalade, gin and lime, scotch and water,
and beer—hot dogs, with mustard drooling from the lower end and running up your
sleeve. Hamburgers, with raw onions spilling out of the round buns. Popcorn
dripping with butter. The sting of neat whisky and the barrels of beer set on
trestles. Chocolate cakes and deviled eggs, but mostly hamburgers with onions,
and which will have you have, piccalilli or dill or mayonnaise, or all of them? The cool girls dance well and they are pleasant
and friendly. They work hard in the war plants, and it’s a job to get a dress
so neatly pressed. The lipstick is hard to get, and the perfume is the last in
the bottle. Neat and pretty and friendly. At home the sticky kisses in the
rumble seat and the swatting at mosquitoes on a hot, vine-covered porch. And in
the joints the juke box howls and its basses thump the air. When you say
something the girl knows the proper answer. None of it means anything, but it
all fits together. Everything fits together. This is a time of homesickness, and Christmas
will be worse. No grandeur, no luxury, no interest can cut it out. No show is
as good as the double bill at the Odeon, no food is as good as the midnight
sandwich at Joe’s, and no one in the world is as pretty as that blond Margie
who works at the Poppy. When they come home they’ll be a little tiresome
about London for a long time. They will recall exotic adventures and strange
foods. Piccadilly and the Savoy and the White Tower, the Normandie Bar and the
place in Soho will drip from their conversation. They will compare notes
enthusiastically with other soldiers who were here. The cool girls will grow to
strange and romantic adventures. The lonesome little glow will be remembered as
a Bacchic orgy. They will remember things they did not know that they saw—St.
Paul’s against a lead-colored sky and the barrage balloons hanging over it.
Waterloo Station, the sandbags piled high against the Wren churches, the
excited siren and the sneak air raid. But today, July 4, 1943, they wander about in a
daze of homesickness, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the faces and voices
of their own people. THE PEOPLE OF DOVERDOVER, July 6, 1943—Dover, with its
castle on the hill and its little crooked streets, its big, ugly hotels and its
secret and dangerous offensive power, is closest of all to the enemy. Dover is
full of the memory of Wellington and of Napoleon, of the time when Napoleon
came down to Calais and looked across the Channel at England and knew that only
this little stretch of water interrupted his conquest of the world. And later
the men of Dunkerque dragged their weary feet off the little ships and
struggled through the streets of Dover. Then Hitler came to the hill above Calais and
looked across at the cliffs, and again only the little stretch of water stopped
the conquest of the world. It is a very little piece of water. On the clear
days you can see the hills about Calais, and with a glass you can see the clock
tower of Calais. When the guns of Calais fire you can see the flash, while with
the telescope you can see from the castle the guns themselves, and even tanks
deploying on the beach. Dover feels very close to the enemy. Three
minutes in a fast airplane, three-quarters of an hour in a fast boat. Every day
or so a plane comes whipping through and drops a bomb and takes a shot or so at
the balloons that hang in the air above the town, and every few days Jerry
trains his big guns on Dover and fires a few rounds of high explosive at the
little old town. Then a building is hit and collapses and sometimes a few
people are killed. It is a wanton, useless thing, serving no military, naval,
or morale business. It is almost as though the Germans fretted about the
little stretch of water that defeated them. There is a quality in the people of Dover that
may well be the key to the coming German disaster. They are incorrigibly,
incorruptibly unimpressed. The German, with his uniform and his pageantry and
his threats and plans, does not impress these people at all. The Dover man has
taken perhaps a little more pounding than most, not in great blitzes, but in
every-day bombing and shelling, and still he is not impressed. Jerry is like the weather to him. He complains
about it and then promptly goes about what he was doing. Nothing in the world
is as important as his garden and, in other days, his lobster pots. Weather and
Jerry are alike in that they are inconvenient and sometimes make messes.
Surveying a building wrecked by a big shell, he says, “Jerry was bad last
night,” as he would discuss a windstorm. It goes like this—on the Calais hill there is a
flash in the night. Immediately from Dover the sirens give the shelling
warning. From the flash you must count approximately fifty-nine seconds before
the explosion. The shell may land almost anywhere. There is a flat blast that
rockets back from the cliffs, a cloud of debris rising into the air. People
look at their watches. The next one will be in twenty minutes. And at exactly
that time there is another flash from the French coast, and you count seconds
again. This goes on sometimes all night. One hour after the last shell the
all-clear sounds. This does not mean that it is over. Jerry sometimes lobs
another one in, hoping to kill a few more people. In the morning there are wrecked houses; the
dead have been dug out. A little band of men are cleaning the debris out of the
street so that traffic may go by. A policeman keeps the people from coming too
close for fear a brick may fall. That house is probably wrecked and will be
unlivable until the war is over, but the houses all about are hurt. The windows
are all blown out, and there will be no glass until after the war, either. The
people are already sticking paper over the broken windows. Plaster has fallen
in the houses all about. A general house cleaning is in progress. Puffs of
swept plaster come out the doors. Women are on their knees, with pails of
water, washing the floors. The blast of a near shell cleans the chimneys, they
say. The puff of the explosion blows the soot out of the chimney and into the
rooms. There is that to clean up, too. In a front yard
a man is standing in his garden. A flying piece of scantling has broken off a
rose bush. The bud, which was about to open, is wilting on the ground. The man
leans down and picks up the bud. He feels it with his fingers and carries it to
his nose and smells it. He lifts the scantling from the trunk and looks at it
to see whether it may not send out new shoots, and then, standing up, he turns
and looks at the French coast, where five hundred men and a great tube of steel
and high explosive and charts and plans, mathematical formulae, uniforms,
telephones, shouted orders, are out to break a man’s rose bush. A neighbor
passes in the street. “The Boche was bloody bad last night,” he says.
“Broke the yellow one proper,” he says. “And it was just coming on to bloom.” “Ah, well,” the neighbor says, “let’s have a
look at it.” The two kneel down beside the bush. “She’s broke above the graft,”
the neighbor says, “she’s not split. Probably shoot out here.” He points with a
thick finger to a lump on the side of the bush. “Sometimes,” he says,
“sometimes, when they’ve had a shock, they come out prettier than ever.” Across the Channel, in back of the hill that
you can see, they are cleaning the great barrel, studying charts, making
reports, churning with Geopolitik. MINESWEEPERLONDON, July 7, 1943—Day after day the
minesweepers go out. Small boats that in peacetime fished for herring and cod.
Now they fish for bigger game. They are equipped with strange, new fish lines.
The crews are nearly all ex-fishermen and whalers and the officers are from the
same tough breed. Theirs is an unromantic and unpublicized job that must be
done and done very thoroughly. The danger lurks without flags and firing. Very
few decorations are awarded to the minesweeping men. They usually sail out of the harbor in a line,
three boats to sweep and two to drop the buoyed flags, called dans, which mark
the swept channel. Once on the ground to be swept, three of the boats deploy
and travel abreast at exact and set distances from one another. The space
between them is the area that can be reached by their instruments. The little
boats are searching for the two kinds of mines which are usually planted—the
magnetic mines which explode when a ship with its self-created magnetic field
sails over, and the other kind which is exploded by the vibration of a ship’s
engines. The sweepers are equipped with instruments to explode either kind and
to do it at a safe distance from themselves. The three abreast move slowly over the area to
be cleared of mines and behind them the dan ships follow at intervals, putting
out the flags. At the end of their run they turn and come back, overlapping a
little on the old course and the dan ships pick up the flags and set them on
the outer course again. All the boats are armed against airplanes. The
gunners stand at their posts and search the sky constantly, while the radio
operator listens to the spotting instruments on the shore. They take no chances
with the planes. When one comes near them they train their guns in that
direction until they recognize her. And even the friendly planes do not fly too
close. For these men have been bombed and fired on from the air so often that
they will fire if there is any doubt at all. Sticking up out of the water are
the masts of many ships sunk early in the war when the German planes ranged
over the Channel almost with impunity. They do not do it any more. The voice of the radio man comes up through the
speaking tube to the little bridge. “Enemy aircraft in the vicinity,” he says,
and then a moment later, “Red alert.” The gunners swing their guns and the crew
stands by, all eyes on the sky. From the English coast the Typhoons boil out
angrily, fast and deadly ships that fly close to the water. In the distance the
enemy plane is a spot. It turns tail and runs for the French coast. The radio
man calls, “All clear,” and the crew relaxes. On the little bridge the captain directs the
laying down of the colored flags, while his second checks the distance between
the boats. If the dan ship gets too close, a mine may explode under her. With
instruments the distance is checked every few seconds. The little flotilla
moves very slowly, for when it has passed and marked the free channel the
ships with supplies must be able to come through in safety. Suddenly the dan ship is struck by a heavy
blow, the sea about flattens out and shivers, and then a hundred yards ahead a
tower of water and mud bursts into the air with a roar. It seems to hang in the
air for a long time and when it falls back the dan ship is nearly over it. There is a large, dirty place on the ocean,
bottom mud and a black gluey substance, which comes from the explosive. The crew
rush to the side of the ship and search the water anxiously. “No fish,” they
say. “What has happened to the fish? You’d think there would be one or two
killed by the blast.” They have set off one of the most terrible weapons in the
world and they are worried about the fish. The captain marks with great care on his chart
the exact place where the mine was exploded. He takes several sights on the
coast to get the position. Another mine roars up on the other side of the lane.
The second in command takes up the blinker and signals, “Any fish?” and the
answer comes back, “No fish.” The day is long and tedious, sweeping and turning
and sweeping, and when the job is done it is only done until the night, for on
this night the mine layers may creep over from the French coast and sow the
field again with the nasty things, or a plane may fly low in the darkness and
drop the mines on parachutes. The work of the sweepers is never finished. It is late when they turn for home and it is
dark when the little ships file into the harbor and tie up to the pier. Then
the captain and his second relax. The strain goes out of their faces. No matter
how long or uneventful the sweep, the danger is never gone. The gun crew clean
and cover their guns and go to their quarters. The officers climb down to the
tiny wardroom. They kick off their fleece-lined boots and settle back into
their chairs. The captain picks up the work he has been doing for weeks. He is
making a beautifully exact model of—a minesweeper. COAST BATTERYSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, July 8, 1943—The
guns hide in a field of grain and red poppies. You can see the cannon muzzles
protruding and aiming at the sky. The battery is on the south coast, in sight
of France. There was a time when the great flights of German bombers came over
this undefended coast and carried their bomb loads to London and Canterbury.
But the coast is not undefended now. The spotters are all over the hills, the
complicated and delicate listening posts which can hear a plane miles away, and
the spotters are girls. When a strange ship is heard, its position is phoned to
the plotters of position, and the plotters are girls, too. The sighters are
girls. Only the gunners who load and turn the gun itself are men. It is an
amazing institution, the mixed battery, something unique in the history of
armies. The barracks are nearby, one for the girls and
another for the men. The eating hall is common, the recreation room is common,
and the work is common. Twenty-four hours a day the crews are on duty.
They can do what they want within a certain distance from the gun. The girls
read and wash their clothing, sew and cook. The kitchen, a temporary affair, is
built of kerosene tins filled with sand laid like bricks. The new kitchen is
just now being built. The countryside is quiet. The guns are silent.
Suddenly the siren howls. Buildings that are hidden in camouflage belch people,
young men and women. They pour out, running like mad. The siren has not been
going for thirty seconds when the run is over, the gun is manned, the target
spotted. In the control room under ground the instruments have found their
target. A girl has fixed it. The numbers have been transmitted and the ugly
barrels whirled. Above ground, in a concrete box, a girl speaks into a
telephone. “Fire,” she says quietly. The hillside rocks with the explosion of
the battery. The field grass shakes and the red poppies shudder in the blast.
New orders come up from below and the girl says, “Fire.” The process is machine-like, exact. There is no
waste movement and no nonsense. These girls seem to be natural soldiers. They are
soldiers, too. They resent above anything being treated like women when they
are near the guns. Their work is hard and constant. Sometimes they are alerted
to the guns thirty times in a day and a night. They may fire on a marauder ten
times in that period. They have been bombed and strafed, and there is no record
of any girl flinching. The commander is very proud of them. He is
fiercely affectionate toward his battery. He says a little bitterly, “All
right, why don’t you ask about the problem of morals? Everyone wants to know
about that. I’ll tell you—there is no problem.” He tells about the customs that have come into
being in this battery, a set of customs which grew automatically. The men and
the women sing together, dance together, and, let any one of the women be
insulted, and he has the whole battery on his neck. But when a girl walks out
in the evening, it is not with one of the battery men, nor do the men take the
girls to the movies. There have been no engagements and no marriages between
members of the battery. Some instinct among the people themselves has told them
trouble would result. These things are not a matter of orders but of custom. The girls like this work and are proud of it.
It is difficult to see how the housemaids will be able to go back to dusting
furniture under querulous mistresses, how the farm girls will be able to go
back to the tiny farms of Scotland and the Midlands. This is the great exciting
time of their lives. They are very important, these girls. The defense of the
country in their area is in their hands. The manager of the local theater has set aside
two rows of seats this evening for members of the battery who are off duty. The
girls who are to go change from their trousers to neat khaki skirts and
blouses. They spend a good deal of time making themselves pretty. They sit in
the theater, leaning forward with excitement. The film is a little stinker
called War Correspondent, made six thousand miles from any conflict,
where people are not likely ever to see any. It concerns an American war correspondent who
through pure handsomeness, cleverness, bravery, and hokum defeats every
resource of the Third Reich. The Gestapo and the German Army are putty in his
hands. It is a veritable Flynn of a picture. And these girls who have been bombed and
strafed, who have shot enemies out of the sky and then gone back to mending
socks—are these girls scornful? Not in the least. They sit on the edges of
their seats. When the stupid Gestapo men creep up to the hero they shriek to
warn him. This is more real to them than this afternoon, when they fired on a
Focke Wulf 190. The hero who emerges from a one-man Dunkerque, with combed hair
and immaculate dress, is the true, the good, the beautiful. This afternoon the girls were sweaty, dusty,
and they smelled of cordite. That was their job—this is war. And when the film
is done they walk back to their barracks, talking excitedly of the glories of
Hollywood warfare. They go back to their routine job of defending the coast of
England from attack, and as they walk home they sing, “You’d be sooo naice to
come ’ome to, You’d be so naice by a fire.” ALCOHOLIC GOATLONDON, July 9, 1943—His name is Wing
Commander William Goat, DSO, and he is old and honored, and, some say, in
iniquity. But when he joined the RAF wing two years ago he was just able to
totter about on long and knobby legs. For a long time he was treated like any
other recruit—kicked about, ignored, and at times cursed. But gradually his
abilities began to be apparent. He is very good luck to have about. When he is
near, his wing has good fortune and good hunting. Gradually his horns, along
with his talents, developed, until now his rank and his decorations are painted
on his horns in brilliant colors and he carries himself with a shambling strut. He will eat nearly everything. No party nor any
review is complete without him. At one party, being left alone for a few
moments, it is reported that he ate two hundred sandwiches, three cakes, the
arrangements for piano and flute of “Pomp and Circumstance,” drank half a bowl
of punch, and then walked jauntily among the dancers, belching slightly and
regarding a certain lieutenant’s wife, who shall be nameless, with lustful eye. He has the slightly bilious look of the
military of the higher brackets. Being an air-goat, he has rather unique
habits. If you bring an oxygen bottle into view, he rushes to it and demands
it. He puts his whole mouth over the outlet and then, as you turn the valve, he
gently relaxes, grunting happily, and his sides fill out until he nearly bursts.
Just before he bursts he lets go of the nozzle and collapses slowly, but the
energy he takes from the oxygen makes him leap into the air and engage
imaginary goats in horny combat. He also loves the glycol cooling fluid which
is used in the engines of the Typhoons. For hours he will stand under the
barrels, licking the drips from the spouts. He has the confidence of his men. Once when it
was required that his wing change its base of operations quickly, he was left
behind, for in those days it was not known how important he was. At the new
base the men were nervous and Irritable, fearful and almost mutinous. Finally,
when it was seen that they would not relax, a special plane had to be sent to
pick up the wing commander and transport him to the new base. Once he arrived,
everything settled down. The Typhoons had four kills within twenty-four hours.
The nervous tension went out of the air, the food got better as the cook ceased
brooding, and a number of stomach complaints disappeared immediately. Wing Commander Goat lives in a small house
behind the Operations Room. His name and honors are painted over the door. It
is very good luck to go to him and stroke his sides and rub his horns before
going out on operations. He does not go out on operations himself. There is not
room in the Typhoons for him, but if it were possible to squeeze him in he
would be taken, and then heaven knows what great action might not take place. This goat has only truly bad habit. He loves
beer, and furthermore is able to absorb it in such quantities that even the
mild, nearly non-alcoholic English beer can make him tipsy. In spite of orders
to the contrary he is able to seek out the evil companions who will give him
beer. Once inebriated, he is prone to wander about sneering. He sneers at the
American Army Air Force, he sneers at the Labor party, and once he sneered at
Mr. Churchill. The sneer is probably inherent in the beer, since punch has
quite a different effect on him. In appearance this goat is not impressive. He
has a shabby, pinkish fur and a cold, fishlike eye; his legs are not straight,
in fact he is slightly knock-kneed. He carries his head high and his horns,
painted in brilliant red and blue, more than offset any physical oddness. In
every way, he is a military figure. He is magnificent on parade. Eventually he
will be given a crypt in the Air Ministry and will die in good time of that
military ailment, cirrhosis of the liver. He will be buried with full military
honors. But meanwhile Wing Commander William Goat, DSO,
is the luck of his wing, and his loss would cause great unrest and even
despondency. STORIES OF THE BLITZLONDON, July 10, 1943—People who try to
tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and
then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set
and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. Again and again this happens
in conversations. It is as though the mind could not take in the terror and the
noise of the bombs and the general horror and so fastened on something small
and comprehensible and ordinary. Everyone who was in London during the blitz
wants to describe it, wants to solidify, if only for himself, something of that
terrible time. “It’s the glass,” says one man, “the sound in
the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle. That
is the thing I remember more than anything else, that constant sound of broken
glass being swept up on the pavements. My dog broke a window the other day and
my wife swept up the glass and a cold shiver went over me. It was a moment before
I could trace the reason for it.” You are going to dine at a small restaurant.
There is a ruin across the street from the place, a jagged, destroyed stone
house. Your companion says, “On one of the nights I had an engagement to have
dinner with a lady at this very place. She was to meet me here. I got here
early and then a bomb hit that one.” He points to the ruin. “I went out in the
street. You could see plainly, the fires lighted the whole city. That front
wall was spilled into the street. You could see the front of a cab sticking out
from the pile of fallen stone. Thrown clear, right at my feet as I came out of
the door, was one pale blue evening slipper. The toe of it was pointing right
at me.” Another points up at a wall; the building is
gone, but there are five fireplaces, one above another, straight up the wall.
He points to the topmost fireplace, “This was a high-explosive bomb,” he says.
“This is on my way to work. You know, for six months there was a pair of long
stockings hanging in front of that fireplace. They must have been pinned up.
They hung there for months, just as they had been put up to dry.” “I was passing Hyde Park,” says a man, “when a
big raid came over. I went down into the gutter. Always did that when you
couldn’t get a shelter. I saw a great tree, one like those, jump into the air
and fall on its side not so far from me—right there where that scoop is in the
ground. And then a sparrow fell in the gutter right beside me. It was dead all
right. Concussion kills birds easily. For some reason I picked it up and held
it for a long time. There was no blood on it or anything like that. I took it
home with me. Funny thing, I had to throw it right away.” One night, when the bombs screamed and blatted,
a refugee who had been driven from place to place and tortured in all of them
until he finally reached London, couldn’t stand it any more. He cut his throat
and jumped out of a high window. A girl, who was driving an ambulance that
night, says, “I remember how angry I was with him. I understand it a little
now, but that night I was furious with him. There were so many who got it that
night and they couldn’t help it. I shouted at him I hoped he would die, and he
did. “People save such strange things. One elderly
man lost his whole house by fire. He saved an old rocking chair. He took it
everywhere with him; wouldn’t leave it for a moment. His whole family was
killed, but he hung on to that rocking chair. He wouldn’t sit in it. He sat on the
ground beside it, but you couldn’t get it away from him.” Two reporters sat out the blitz in the Savoy
Hotel, playing chess and fortifying themselves. When the bombs came near they
went under the table. “One or the other of us always reached up and cheated a
little,” the reporter says. Hundreds of stories, and all of them end with a
little incident, a little simple thing that stays in your mind. “I remember the eyes of people going to work in
the morning,” a man says. “There was a quality of tiredness in those eyes I
haven’t forgotten. It was beyond a tiredness you can imagine—a desperate kind
of weariness that never expected to be rested. The eyes of the people seemed to
be deep, deep in their heads, and their voices seemed to come from a long
distance. And I remember during a raid seeing a blind man standing on the curb,
tapping with his stick and waiting for someone to take him across through the
traffic. There wasn’t any traffic, and the air was full of fire, but he stood
there and tapped until someone came along and took him to a shelter.” In all of the little stories it is the
ordinary, the commonplace thing or incident against the background of the
bombing that leaves the indelible picture. “An old woman was selling little miserable
sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of
burning buildings made it like day. The air was just one big fat blasting roar.
And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in—a squeaky voice. ‘Lavender!’
she said. ‘Buy Lavender for luck.’ ” The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike.
The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new. LILLI MARLENELONDON, July 12, 1943—This is the story
of a song. Its name is “Lilli Marlene” and it was written in Germany in 1938 by
Norbert Schultze and Hans Leit. In due course they tried to publish it and it
was rejected by about two dozen publishers. Finally it was taken up by a
singer, Lala Anderson, a Swedish girl, who used it for her signature song. Lala
Anderson has a husky voice and is what you might call the Hildegarde type. “Lilli Marlene” is a very simple song. The
first verse of it goes: “Underneath the lanterns, by the barracks square, I
used to meet Marlene and she was young and fair.” The song was as simple as
that. It went on to tell about Marlene, who first liked stripes and then
shoulder bars. Marlene met more and more people until, finally, she met a
brigadier, which was what she wanted all along. We have a song with much the
same amused cynicism. Eventually Lala made a record of the song and
even it was not very popular. But one night the German station in Belgrade,
which sent out programs to Rommel’s Afrika Korps, found that, due to a little
bombing, it did not have many records left, but among a few uninjured disks was
the song “Lilli Marlene.” It was put on the air to Africa and by the next
morning it was being hummed by the Afrika Korps and letters were going in
demanding that it be played again. The story of its popularity in Africa got back
to Berlin, and Madame Goering, who used to be an opera singer, sang the song of
the inconstant “Lilli Marlene” to a very select group of Nazis, if there is
such a thing. Instantly the song was popular and it was played constantly over
the German radio until Goering himself grew a little sick of it, and it is said
that, since inconstancy is a subject which is not pleasant to certain high Nazi
ears, it was suggested that the song be quietly assassinated. But meanwhile
“Lilli Marlene” had got out of hand. Lala Anderson was by now known as the
“Soldiers’ Sweetheart.” She was a pin-up girl. Her husky voice ground out of
portable phonographs in the desert. So far, “Lilli” had been solely a German
problem, but now the British Eighth Army began to take prisoners and among the
spoils they got “Lilli Marlene.” And the song swept through the Eighth Army.
Australians hummed it and fastened new words to it. The powers hesitated, considering
whether it was a good idea to let a German song about a girl who did not have
all the sterling virtues become the favorite song of the British Army, for by
now the thing had crept into the First Army and the Americans were beginning to
experiment with close harmony and were putting an off-beat into it. It wouldn’t
have done the powers a bit of good if they had decided against the song. It was out of hand. The Eighth Army was doing
all right in the field and it was decided to consider “Lilli Marlene” a
prisoner of war, which would have happened anyway, no matter what the powers
thought about it. Now “Lilli” is getting deeply into the American Forces in
Africa. The Office of War Information took up the problem and decided to keep
the melody, but to turn new words against the Germans. Whether this will work
or not remains to be seen. “Lilli Marlene” is international. It is to be
suspected that she will emerge beside the barrack walls—young and fair and
incorruptly inconsistent. There is nothing you can do about a song like
this except to let it go. War songs need not be about the war at all. Indeed,
they rarely are. In the last war, “Madelon” and “Tipperary” had nothing to do
with war. The great Australian song of this war, “Waltzing Matilda,” concerns
itself with sheep-stealing. It is to be expected that some groups in America
will attack “Lilli,” first, on the ground that she is an enemy alien, and,
second, because she is no better than she should be. Such attacks will have
little effect. “Lilli” is immortal. Her simple desire to meet a brigadier is
hardly a German copyright. Politics may be dominated and nationalized, but
songs have a way of leaping boundaries. And it would be amusing if, after all the fuss
and heiling, all the marching and indoctrination, the only contribution to the
world by the Nazis was “Lilli Marlene.” WAR TALKLONDON, July 13, 1943—It is interesting
to see that the nearer one comes to a war zone the less one hears of grand
strategy. There is more discussion of tactics and the over-all picture in the
Stork Club on a Saturday night than in the whole European theater of
operations. This may be, to a certain extent, because of a lack of generals to
give the strategists a social foundation. For that matter, there are more
generals in the Carlton Hotel in Washington at lunch time than in all the rest
of the world. This narrowing point of view may be
geographical. Papers in England are not avidly seized, and as one gets down to
the coast where some action is going on all the time, the discussion of the war
dwindles until it almost disappears. It is further interesting how completely
civilian ferocity disappears from the soldier or the sailor close to action or
in action. In the concrete wardroom over the berths of the
motor torpedo boats the young men gather to drink beer. They are very young
men, but there is an age in their faces that comes of having put their lives
out at stake too often. The dice have rolled right for some of these young men
so far, but a seven has turned up for too many of their friends for them to
take the game or their luck for granted. The little boats are not heavily armed
for defense, but they carry terrible blows in their torpedo tubes. They are the
only lightweights in the world that can deliver a heavyweight punch. For their
own safety they have only their speed and the cleverness of their crews. Tonight they are going out on what the men call
a Thing. A Thing is something bigger than a Scramble, but slightly less large
than The Thing. A Thing is likely to be an attack on a German convoy, slipping
secretly in the night through the Channel, but heavily armed and heavily
guarded and, moreover, hugging the coast so that they are under the shore guns
most of the time. And against them these tiny ships are going to dodge in under
the shellfire, twist and turn in the paths of the tracers, and, finally, shoot
their torpedoes into the largest ship they can find and then race for home. In the wardroom the men speak with a kind of
intense gaiety. You never hear the enemy discussed. By unstated agreement or
because there has just been too much war they do not discuss war. The enemy is
Jerry, or the Boche, and his name is spoken as something disembodied and vague.
Jerry is a problem in navigation, a job, a danger, but not much more
personalized than any other big and dangerous job. The men suffer from strain.
It has been so long applied that they are probably not even conscious of it.
It isn’t fear, but it is something you can feel, a bubble that grows bigger and
bigger in your mid-section. It puffs up against your lungs so that your
breathing becomes short. Sitting around is bad. You have a tendency to think
that everything is very funny. This is the time to bring out the frowsy story
that wouldn’t do so well at any other time. It will get a roar of laughter now. There is a little bar in the wardroom where a
Wren serves the flat beer that no one likes. The beer isn’t good, but everyone
has a glass of it, and it is hard to swallow, because so much of you is taken
up with the big bubble. On the wall there is a clock and the hands
creep slowly, much too slowly, toward the operation time. The waiting is the
terrible part. The weather reports come in, There is wind, but perhaps not
enough to cancel the Thing. Dozens of the little ships are going out. It is an
Allied operation. There are Dutch boats, and Polish boats, and English. The
Poles are great fighters. This is their kind of work. When the little ships
attacked the Scharnhorst, slipping through the Channel, it is said that
a Polish sailor was down on the prow of his torpedo boat, calmly firing at the
great steel battleship with a rifle. The Dutch have a calm, cold courage, and
the British pretend, as usual, it is some kind of a garden party they are going
to. At ten minutes to the time the men start to get
into their suits, complicated coats and trousers of oilskin that tie closely
around the ankles. A towel is wrapped around the neck and the coat buttoned in
tight about it. The little ships are wet. The green water comes over the bow
constantly and there isn’t much cover. In action the men will presumably wear
helmets on their heads, but this is only a presumption. Now they stand about,
padded and wadded, their arms a little out from their sides, held out by the
thick clothing. The leader of this group is a young man of great age. He is
twenty-two and he came from a destroyer to the little MTBs. The big hand of the
clock creeps on to the time of departure. The commander says, almost casually,
and just as it is on the minute, “All ready?” All the young men stride heavily out of the
door, down the steps to the hidden pens where the little stinging fish lie.
There is a roar as engine after engine starts. Now the bubble bursts in your
stomach and you can breathe again. Everything is all right. It’s a good night,
misty and with little visibility. The boats back, one by one, from their berths
and fall into line. A tiny blinker signals from the leader, the great motors
thunder, the boats leap forward, and the white wake Vs out. The green water
comes in over the bow. The crew huddles down, braced against the wind and the
sea—no one has mentioned the war. THE COTTAGE THAT WASN’T THERELONDON, July 14, 1943—The sergeant lay
in the grass and pulled grass and a bit off the tender stems and chewed them.
It was Sunday, and a number of people were lying about, sailors and soldiers
and even a few civilians. Across the path a line of people were fishing in the
Serpentine, sitting on rented chairs, fishing in water that was stirred with
the oars of boats and kicking swans. Each fisherman had his little audience. The sergeant said, “This is a crazy country.
Look at that, there hasn’t been a fish caught there all day, and they go right
on with it. Maybe they’re not after fish. It’s a crazy country, and it’s
getting me nuts, too.” He spat out a little chewed wad of green grass stems.
“I’ve got something bothering me,” he said. “It’s a ghost story. I don’t believe
it happened, and I know it happened. Only I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve been
thinking about it, sniffling around it, and I can’t make any sense out of it. “You see,” he said, “I’m at a little station up
in the country. Not a very big outfit. There is a village about a mile from
camp, and in the evening we walk in and get a couple of glasses of beer and try
to figure out this darts game.” Far up the line of fishermen a man caught a
fish about the size of a sardine and caused so much excitement that he was
surrounded by people in a moment. The sergeant chuckled. “I used to work salmon
in the Columbia River,” he said, and let it go at that. “Well, anyway,” he
said, “it came on toward dark, and I’ve got some paper work to do, so I figured
I’d walk back to camp. The other fellows weren’t ready to go yet. They’re
kidding the barmaid, telling her they know movie stars. So I started out alone. “I’ve been over that little road at least a
hundred times. I know every foot of it, I guess. It’s a narrow, little road,
with hedges on both sides, so you can’t see into the fields. The road is kind
of cut down, like a trench. It’s not a very dark night, at least there is some
starlight, and you can see big clouds, like it was going to rain.” He stopped
and seemed to be considering whether he should go on at all. He was looking
across the Serpentine at the little pavilion where they rent boats, where the line
of people wait all day for their turn to rent a boat. The sergeant made up his mind suddenly. “About
halfway back there was a light out onto the road. There was a little cottage,
kind of, with the hedge coming up to it on both sides. There is a garden in
front, a fence and then this big square window with little panes. Well, the
light is coming out of that window. I looked right through and could see the
room. It was kind of pleasant. There was a lamp on the table, and a fire in a
small fireplace. It was kind of pleasant. It wasn’t a very bright light, but
you could see pretty well. There’s a white cat asleep on the seat of a chair,
and sitting beside the table under the lamp is a woman about fifty, I should
say, and she is sewing on something. I stood there. Peeping-Tommed for a couple
of minutes. It was peaceful and cozy-looking and nice. In a minute I walked on. There was something
bother-big me in the back of my mind. And then I thought, ‘Sure that’s what it
is, no blackout curtains.’ I hadn’t seen a light coming out of the window at
night for ten months—that’s how long I’ve been over. I was going to go back and
tell that woman to pull her blackout curtains in case some country cop came
along. She’d get a stiff fine. I turned around and looked back. I couldn’t see
the cottage, but I could see the light shining out in the road. Well then, I
thought, ‘What the hell, maybe no cop will come by.’ It looked so nice, the
room and the fire that you could look in on. You get awful tired of the blackout.” The sergeant picked up a little twig, dug at a
grass root with it. “I walked along, but there was something that kept ticking
away in my head, something I couldn’t get hold of. It began to sprinkle a
little bit of rain, but not enough to hurt anything. I thought about the work I
had to do, but I couldn’t get away from the feeling that there was something
wrong with something.” He dug out his grass root, and it came up with
a little lump of soil in it. He shook the dirt out of it. “I was just about to
turn into the camp when it plumped into my mind. Now, this is what it is. And
I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t figure it out. There isn’t any cottage
there, just four stone walls all black with fire. Early in the blitz some Jerry
dropped a fire bomb on that cottage.” His fingers were restless. They were trying to
plant the grass roots again in the hole they had come out of. “You see what
worries me about the whole thing is this,” he said. “I just don’t believe stuff
like that.” GROWING VEGETABLESLONDON, July 15, 1943—On the edges of
American airfields and between the barracks of troops in England it is no
unusual thing to see complicated and carefully tended vegetable gardens. No one
seems to know where the idea originated, but these gardens have been constantly
increasing. It is fairly common now that a station furnishes a good part of its
own vegetables and all of its own salad greens. The idea, which had as its basis, probably, the
taking up of some of the free time of men where there were few entertainment
facilities, has proved vastly successful. The gardens are run by the units and
worked by the groups, but here and there a man may go out on his own and try
and raise some strange seed which is not ordinarily seen in this climate. In
every unit there is usually some man who knows about such things who advises on
the planting, but even such men are often at a loss because vegetables are
different here from the vegetables at home. The things that the men want to raise most, in
order of choice, are green corn, tomatoes, and peppers. None of these do very
well in England unless there is a glass house to build up sufficient heat.
Tomatoes are small; there are none of those master beefsteak tomatoes bursting
with juice. It is a short, cool season. Green corn has little chance to mature
and the peppers must be raised under glass. Nevertheless, every care is taken
to raise them. Men who are homesick seem to take a mighty pleasure in working
with the soil. The gardens usually start out ambitiously.
Watermelons and cantaloupes are planted and they have practically no chance of
maturing at this latitude, where even cucumbers are usually raised in glass
houses, but gradually some order grows out of the confusion. Lettuce, peas,
green beans, green onions, potatoes do very well here, as do cabbages and
turnips and beets and carrots. The gardens are lush and well tended. In the
evenings, which are very long now, the men work in the beds. It does not get
dark until eleven o’clock, there are only so many movies to be seen, English
pubs are not exciting, but there does seem to be a constant excitement about
the gardens, and the produce that comes from them tastes much better than that
purchased in the open market. One station has its headquarters in a large
English country house which at one time must have been very luxurious. Part of
the equipment of this place is a series of glass houses, and here the gardens
are exceptional. There has never been any need to exert pressure to get the men
to work in the gardens. They have taken it up with enthusiasm and in many cases
men from the cities, who have never had a garden in their lives, have become enthusiastic.
There is some contact with the normal about the garden, a kind of relationship
with peace. Now and then a garden just coming in to produce
must be deserted as the unit is shifted to another area. But this does not seem
to make any difference. The new unit takes over the garden, and the old one, if
there is none at the new station, starts afresh. The value is in the doing of
it. The morale value of the experiment is very high, so high that it is being
suggested that supply officers should be equipped with an assortment of seeds
as a matter of course. The seed takes up little room and gardening equipment
can be made on the spot or is available nearly everywhere. There is a great difference in the ordinary
preparation of vegetables by the English and by us. The English usually boil
their vegetables to a submissive, sticky pulp, in which the shape and, as some
say, the flavor have long since been overcome. Our cooks do not cook their vegetables
nearly so long, are apt to like them crisp. The English do not use nearly as
many onions as we do and they use practically no garlic at all. The little
gardens are a kind of symbol of revolt against foreign methods. For example, the average English cook regards a
vegetable with suspicion. It is his conviction that unless the vegetable is
dominated and thoroughly convinced that it must offer no nonsense, it is likely
to revolt or to demand dominion status. Consequently, only those vegetables are
encouraged which are docile and capable of learning English ways. The Brussels sprout is a good example of the
acceptable vegetable. It is first allowed to become large and fierce. It is
then picked from its stem and the daylights are boiled out of it. At the end of
a few hours the little wild lump of green has disintegrated into a curious,
grayish paste. It is then considered fit for consumption. The same method is followed with cabbage. While
the cabbage is boiling it is poked and beaten until, when it is served, it has
given up its character and tastes exactly like brussels sprouts, which in turn
taste like cabbage. Carrots are allowed to remain yellow but nothing else of
their essential character is maintained. No one has yet explained this innate fear the
English suffer of a revolt of the vegetables. The easy-going American attitude
of allowing the vegetable a certain amount of latitude short of the ballot is
looked upon by the English as soft and degenerate. In the American gardens
certain English spies have reported they have seen American soldiers pulling
and eating raw carrots and turnips and onions. It is strange to an American that the English,
who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It
is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable. THE SHAPE OF THE WORLDLONDON, July 16, 1943—This is no war,
like other wars, to be won as other wars have been won. We remember the last
war. It was a simple, easy thing. When we had destroyed the Kaiser and a little
military clique, the evil thing was removed and all good things came into flower.
It was not so, but the war was fought on that basis by troops who sang and then
ran home for the millennium. It is said that this is not a singing war and
that is true. The soldiers fight and work under a load of worry. They know
deeply that the destruction of the enemy is not the end of this war. And almost
universally you find among the soldiers not a fear of the enemy but a fear of
what is going to happen after the war. The collapse of retooled factories, the
unemployment of millions due to the increase of automatic machinery, a
depression that will make the last one look like a holiday. They fight under a banner of four unimplemented
freedoms—four words, and when anyone in authority tries to give these freedoms
implements and methods the soldiers hear that man assaulted and dragged down.
It doesn’t matter whether the methods or the plans are good or bad. Any
planning is assorted at home. And the troops feel they are going to come home
to one of two things—either a painless anarchy, or a system set up in their
absence with the cards stacked against them. Ours is not a naive Army. Common people have
learned a great deal in the last twenty-five years, and the old magical words
do not fool them any more. They do not believe the golden future made of words.
They would like freedom from want. That means the little farm in Connecticut is
safe from foreclosure. That means the job left when the soldier joined the Army
is there waiting, and not only waiting but it will continue while the children
grow up. That means there will be schools, and either savings to take care of
illness in the family or medicine available without savings. Talking to many
soldiers, it is the worry that comes out of them that is impressive. Is the
country to be taken over by special interests through the medium of special
pleaders? Is inflation to be permitted because a few people will grow rich
through it? Are fortunes being made while these men get $50 a month? Will they
go home to a country destroyed by greed? If anyone could assure them that these
things are not true, or that, being true, they will not be permitted, then we
would have a singing Army. This Army can defeat the enemy. There is no doubt
about that. They know it and will accomplish it, but they do not want to go
home to find a civil war in the making. The memory of the last depression is
still fresh in their memories. They remember the foreclosed farms, the
slaughtered pigs to keep the prices up, the plowing under of the crops, because
there was not intelligence enough in the leaders to devise a means of
distributing an oversupply of food. They remember that every plan for general
good life is dashed to pieces on the wall of necessary profits. These things cannot be overstated. Anyone who
can reassure these soldiers that such things will not happen again will put a
weapon in their hands of incredible strength. What do the soldiers hear?—that
Mr. Jones is calling Mr. Wallace names; that Mr. Jeffers is fighting with Mr.
Ickes; czars of this and that are fighting for more power and more
jurisdiction. Congress, in a kind of hysteria of immunity
from public criticism, has removed even the machinery of relief which might
take up the impact of a new depression; black markets are flourishing and the
operators are not little crooks, but the best people. The soldiers hear that
the price of living is going up and wages are following them. A soldier is not
a lone man. He usually has a family dependent to a large extent on the money he
can allot, and his pay does not increase with the cost of living. These are the things that he hears. The papers
are full of it, the letters from home are full of it—quarreling, anxiety,
greed. And, being a soldier, he cannot complain. He is forbidden to complain.
You cannot have that kind of thing in an army. He is not cynical, but he is
worried. He wants to get this war over with, and to get home to find what they
have done to his country in his absence. The Four Freedoms define what he wants
but unless some machinery, some foundation, some clear method is shown, he is
likely to believe only in that freedom which Anatole France defined—the equal
freedom of rich and poor to sleep under bridges. THEATER PARTYLONDON, July 18, 1943—It was late afternoon of
the English summer and in one of London’s innumerable outlying districts the
motion-picture house was comfortably filled. There were some soldiers who had
been wounded and were on their way to recovery. There were women of the
services off duty for a few hours. Some civilian women were there for a quick
picture after shopping and there were factory workers off shift. Down in front
were rows of children, crowding as close to the screen as they could get. It was just an average afternoon at the
pictures. The house was comfortably filled but not crowded. In special places
were some men in wheel chairs from the hospital. The picture was I Married a
Witch with Veronica Lake—a fantasy comedy wherein a New England witch of
Puritan times returns to life and falls straight into the traditional bedroom
comedy—neither a distinguished piece of work nor a bad one. The children loved
the picture and believed it because they believe all moving pictures. Outside there was low cloud and it looked as
though there might be rain later in the evening and there had not been enough
rain. While Veronica Lake, long blond hair over one
eye, sat in pajamas on a man’s bed and he worried for his good and respectable
name and the children crowed with delight—ten German fighter-bombers whirled
in over the coast. The spotters picked them up. The Spitfires took the air. The
anti-aircraft guns fired and two of the raiders were shot down. A third crashed
against a little hill. Then a crazy, ragged chase started in the gray cloud. Spitfires
ranging and searching in the cloud. The raiders separated and lunged on toward London,
and on the ground the sirens howled and the tremendous system of alarms and
defenses went into action. Only one of the raiders got through, twisting
and dodging through the defenses. He came racing down out of the cloud and
right under him was the theater. He was very low when he released his bombs.
The top of the theater leaped into the air and then settled back into a rubble.
The screen went blank. The raider banked his plane, whipped around, came back,
and poured his guns into the wreck. Then he jerked his ship into the gray
clouds and ran for the coast. And he left behind him the screaming of children
in pain and fear. The communities are organized for things like
this. In a matter of minutes the rescue squads were at work; the firemen were
on the ground. The squads are well trained. They forced themselves into the
torn and shredded building. The broken children were carried out and rushed to
the hospital, crushed and shot and destroyed. The dead ones were set aside for
burial, but those who still breathed and kicked and whimpered went to the
waiting doctors. All night long the operations went on. Probing
for bullets, hands and arms and legs cut off and put aside. Eyes removed. The
anesthetists worked delicately against pain, dripping unconsciousness onto the
masks. It went on through the night, the procession of the maimed to the
hospital. The doctors worked carefully, speedily. Quick judgments—this one
can’t live—kept consciousness away. This one has a chance if both legs are
sliced off. Judgments and quick work. From the depots the blood plasma was rushed In
and the strength from other people’s veins dripped into the arteries of the
children. It was nine in the morning when the operating
was finished. At the theater the tired squads were still finding a few bodies.
And in the hospital beds—great wads of bandage and wide, staring, unbelieving
eyes and utter weariness—the little targets, the seven-year-old military
objectives. Workmen were digging a great, long, common
grave for the dead. Veronica Lake had flared up with the quick flash of burning
film and only the reels she was wound on were left. And in the houses in the
morning people were just beginning to be aware enough to cry. It was very quiet
in the streets. At a bar a tired doctor got a drink before he
went to bed. His eyes were ringed with red sorrow and his hand shook as he
lifted the whiskey to his lips. DIRECTED UNDERSTANDINGLONDON, July 19, 1943—International
amity, good fellowship, and mutual understanding between the British and
Americans often reaches a pitch where war between the two seems very close.
This is usually directed understanding, and it gives rise to some very silly
situations. Directed understanding and tolerance ordinarily
begin with generalizations. Our troops approaching England are told in
pamphlets what the British are like, where they are tender and where hard, what
words, innocent at home, are harsh and ugly on the British ear. This has much
the same effect as telling a friend, “You must meet Jones—wonderful fellow. You
two will get along.” With a start like that, Jones has got two strikes on him
before you ever meet him. He has to live down being a charming fellow before
you can tolerate him. In this case it is even worse, because the British are
told that they will like us when they just get to know us. The result is that
the two come together like strange dogs, each one looking for trouble. It takes
a long time to live down this kind of understanding. The second phase of getting along is carried on
in innumerable attempts to describe each other. The British are so and so. The
Americans are so and so. The British are just like other people only more so. The
Americans are boasters who love money. This love of money is, of course, unique
with Americans. Every other people detests money. The Americans are fine,
sturdy people. The British are fine, sturdy people. This is obviously a lie. There
are good ones and stinkers on both sides. Setting them up doesn’t do any good.
Just about the time you get a liking and a respect for a number of Englishmen,
someone comes along and tells you about the English and you have to start from
scratch again. This same thing, undoubtedly, happens to the English too. The third little pitfall concerns the qualities
of the fighting men. A big, rangy old mountain boy comes rolling down the
street with his knuckles just barely clearing the pavement, and right behind is
a Guardsman, shoulders back, chin up, nine buttons glowing like mad. Immediately
the comparison is made. One is a fine soldier and the other is a lout. The fact
of the matter is that they are both covering ground at the same rate, and each
one could probably cover the same ground with a full pack. And then, having
learned about soldierly qualities, you see a little twist-faced,
wide-shouldered Tommy who walks sideways like a crab, and you realize that he’s
as good a fighting man as the world had produced, but on his record, not on his
soldierly bearing. The whole trouble seems to lie in generalities.
Once you have made a generality you are stuck with it. You have to defend it.
Let’s say the British and/or American soldier is a superb soldier. The British
and/or American officer is a gentleman. You start in with a lie. There are good
ones and bad ones. You find out for yourself which is which if you can be let
alone. And when you see an American second lieutenant misbehaving in a London
club, it is expected that you will deny it. Or if you meet an ill-mannered,
surly popinjay of a British officer, the British are expected to deny that he
exists. But he does exist, and they hate him as much as we do. The trouble with
generalities, particularly patriotic ones, is that they force people to defend
things they don’t normally like at all. It must be a great shock to an Englishman who
is convinced that Americans are boasters when he meets a modest one. His sense
of rightness is outraged. Preconceived generalities are bad enough without
trying consciously to start new ones. Recently a Georgia boy with a face like
a catfish and the fine soldierly bearing of a coyote complained bitterly that
he had been here four days and hadn’t seen a duke. He had got to believing that
there weren’t any dukes and he was shocked beyond words. Somewhere there is truth or an approximation of
it. If there is an engagement and the British say, “We got knocked about a bit,”
and the Americans say, “They shot the hell out of us,” neither statement is
true. Understatement is universally admired here and overstatement is
detested, whereas neither one is near the truth and neither one had anything to
do with the fighting quality of the soldier involved. We know that you can’t
say the Americans are something or other when those Americans are crackers and
long-legged men from the Panhandle and the neat business men in bifocals and
shoddy jewelry salesmen and high riggers from the woods in Oregon. And it is
just as silly to try to describe the British when they are Lancashiremen and
Welshmen and cockneys and Liverpool longshoremen. We get along very well as individuals,
but just the moment we become the Americans and they become the British
trouble is not far behind. BIG TRAINLONDON, July 25, 1943—Private Big Train
Mulligan, after induction and training and transfer overseas, found himself,
with a minimum of goldbricking, in a motor pool in London, the driver of a
brown Army Ford, and likely to take any kind of officers anywhere. It is not a
job the Big Train dislikes. He drives generals or lieutenants where he is told to
drive them at the speed he is told to drive them. Leaves them. Waits. Picks
them up. You have only to tell him what time you want to get there and he will
have you there, and although the strain on you and pedestrians and wandering
dogs and cats will be great, Big Train will not be affected at all. In his position he probably knows more military
secrets than anyone in the European theater of operations. But he explains,
“Mostly I don’t listen. If I do, it goes in one ear and out the other. I’ve got
other things to think about.” He has arrived at a certain philosophy regarding
the Army and his private life. About promotion he has this to say: “If you want
to be a general, then it’s all right for you to take stripes, but if you figure
that maybe you personally can’t win the war, then you’re better off as a
private and you have more fun.” He doesn’t like to order other people about any
more than he likes to be ordered about. He can’t avoid the second, but he gets
around the first by just staying a private. “Not that I’d mind,” he said. “I’d
take the hooks for a job like this, but I don’t want to tell a bunch of men
what to do.” Having decided (1) that he couldn’t win the war
single-handed, (2) that the war was going to last quite a long time, (3) that
he wasn’t going to get home on any given day, and (4) what the hell anyways,
the Big Train settled down to enjoy what he couldn’t resist. He probably knows England as well as any living
American. He knows the little towns, the by-roads, north and south, and he has
what is generally considered the best address book in Europe. He talks to
everyone and never forgets a name or address. The result of this is that when
he deposits his colonel, two majors, and a captain at some sodden little hotel in
a damp little town, there to curse the beds and the food, when the Big Train
gets dismissed for the night he consults his address book. Then he visits one
of the many friends he has made here and there. The Big Train gets a piece of meat and fresh
garden vegetables for supper. He drinks toasts to his friends. He sleeps in
clean white sheets and in the morning he breakfasts on new-laid eggs. Exactly
on time he arrives at the sodden little hotel. The colonel and the majors are
exhausted from having fought lumps in their beds all night. Their digestions
are ruined by the doughy food, but the Big Train is rested and thriving. He is
alert and eventually will leave his officers in another tavern and find a
friend for lunch. The Big Train is not what you call handsome,
but he is pleasant-looking and soft-spoken and he particularly likes the
company of women, the casual company or any other kind. He just feels happy if
there is a girl to talk to. How he finds them no one has ever been able to discover.
You can leave the Big Train parked in the middle of a great plain, with no
buildings and no brush, no nothing, and when you come back ten minutes later
there will be a girl sitting in the seat beside him, smoking the colonel’s
cigarettes and chewing a piece of the major’s gum, while the Big Train
carefully writes down her address and the town she comes from. His handling of women and girls is neither
wolfish nor subtle. It consists in his being genuinely interested in them. He
speaks to them with a kind of affectionate courtesy. Is a stickler for decorum
of all kinds. He addresses all women, whether he knows them or not, as “dear”
and he manages to make it convincing, probably because it is true. The result
is that the women always want to see him again and, if the war lasts long enough,
this wish will be granted in time. Mulligan is perfectly honest. If he should
give the colonel’s cigarettes to the girl, a whole package of them, he explains
this fact to the colonel and agrees to replace them as soon as he gets back to
London. The colonel invariably refuses to consider such a thing, as being
ungallant on his part. Of course the girl should have his cigarettes. He puts
the girl at her ease, a place she has never left. Goggles at her, puffs out his
chest and drives away. Big Train knows where she lives and who lives with her
and he has already calculated what he will be likely to have for dinner when
he calls on her. About the English the Big Train has terse and
simple ideas. “I get on all right with the ones I like and I don’t have nothing
to do with the ones I don’t like. It was just the same at home,” he says. It is
probable that he has more good effect on Anglo-American relations than two
hundred government propagandists striving to find the fundamental differences
between the nations. Big Train is not aware of many differences except in
accent and liquor. He likes the ones he likes and he refuses to like for any
reason whatever a man he wouldn’t like at home. His speech is picturesque. He refers to a
toothy, smiling girl as looking like a jackass eating bumblebees. He refuses
to worry about the war. “When they want me to do that let them pin stars on my
shoulders,” he says. “That’s what we got generals for.” Big Train Mulligan,
after two years in the Army and one year overseas, is probably one of the most
relaxed and most successful privates the war has seen. When they want him to
take up his rifle and fight he is quite willing to do so, but until someone suggests
it, he is not going to worry about it. There are good little dinners waiting
for him in nice little cottages all over England. And so long as the colonel’s
cigarettes hold out the Big Train will not leave his hostess empty-handed. BOB HOPELONDON, July 26, 1943—When the time for recognition
of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be
high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to
see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can
be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most
people. Moving about the country in camps, airfields,
billets, supply depots, and hospitals, you hear one thing consistently. Bob
Hope is coming, or Bob Hope has been here. The Secretary of War is on an
inspection tour, but it is Bob Hope who is expected and remembered. In some way he has caught the soldiers’
imagination. He gets laughter wherever he goes from men who need laughter. He
has created a character for himself—that of the man who tries too hard and
fails, and who boasts and is caught at it. His wit is caustic, but is never
aimed at people, but at conditions and at ideas, and where he goes men roar
with laughter and repeat his cracks for days afterward. Hope does four, sometimes five, shows a day. In
some camps the men must come in shifts because they cannot all hear him at the
same time. Then he jumps into a car, rushes to the next post, and because he
broadcasts and everyone listens to his broadcasts, he cannot use the same show
more than a few times. He must, in the midst of his rushing and playing, build
new shows constantly. If he did this for a while and then stopped and took a
rest it would be remarkable, but he never rests. And he has been doing this
ever since the war started. His energy is boundless. Hope takes his shows all over. It isn’t only to
the big camps. In little groups on special duty you hear the same thing. Bob
Hope is coming on Thursday. They know weeks in advance that he is coming. It
would be rather a terrible thing if he did not show up. Perhaps that is some of
his drive. He has made some kind of contract with himself and with the men
that nobody, least of all Hope, could break. It is hard to over-estimate the
importance of this thing and the responsibility involved. The battalion of men who are moving half-tracks
from one place to another, doing a job that gets no headlines, no public
notice, and yet which must be done if there is to be a victory, are forgotten,
and they feel forgotten. But Bob Hope is in the country. Will he come to them,
or won’t he? And then one day they get a notice that he is coming. Then they
feel remembered. This man in some way has become that kind of bridge. It goes
beyond how funny he can be or how well Frances Langford sings. It has been
interesting to see how he has become a symbol. This writer, not knowing Hope, can only
conjecture what goes on inside the man. He has seen horrible things and has
survived them with good humor and made them more bearable, but that doesn’t
happen without putting a wound on a man. He is cut off from rest, and even from
admitting weariness. Having become a symbol, he must lead a symbol life. Probably the most difficult, the most tearing
thing of all, is to be funny in a hospital. The long, low buildings are
dispersed in case they should be attacked. Working in the gardens, or reading
in the lounge rooms are the ambulatory cases in maroon bathrobes. But in the
wards, in the long aisles of pain the men he, with eyes turned inward on
themselves, and on their people. Some are convalescing with all the pain and
itch of convalescence. Some work their fingers slowly, and some cling to the
little trapezes which help them to move in bed. The immaculate nurses move silently in the
aisles at the foot of the beds. The time hangs very long. Letters, even if they
came every day, would seem weeks apart. Everything that can be done is done,
but medicine cannot get at the lonesomeness and the weakness of men who have
been strong. And nursing cannot shorten one single endless day in a hospital
bed. And Bob Hope and his company must come into this quiet, inward, lonesome
place, and gently pull the minds outward and catch the interest, and finally
bring laughter up out of the black water. There is a job. It hurts many of the
men to laugh, hurts knitting bones, strains at sutured incisions, and yet the
laughter is a great medicine. This story is told in one of those nameless
hospitals which must be kept safe from bombs. Hope and company had worked and
gradually they got the leaden eyes to sparkling, had planted and nurtured and
coaxed laughter to life. A gunner, who had a stomach wound, was gasping softly
with laughter. A railroad casualty slapped the cast on his left hand with his
right hand by way of applause. And once the laughter was alive, the men laughed
before the punch line and it had to be repeated so they could laugh again. Finally it came time for Frances Langford to
sing. The men asked for “As Time Goes By.” She stood up beside the little GI
piano and started to sing. Her voice is a little hoarse and strained. She has
been working too hard and too long. She got through eight bars and was into the
bridge, when a boy with a head wound began to cry. She stopped, and then went
on, but her voice wouldn’t work any more, and she finished the song whispering
and then she walked out, so no one could see her, and broke down. The ward was
quiet and no one applauded. And then Hope walked into the aisle between the
beds and he said seriously, “Fellows, the folks at home are having a terrible
time about eggs. They can’t get any powdered eggs at all. They’ve got to use
the old-fashioned kind that you break open.” There’s a man for you—there is really a man. A COZY CASTLELONDON, July 27, 1943—The jeep turns off
the main road and pulls to a stop. The great gate of gray stone arches over the
driveway. When it was built America was a wilderness with a few colonies
clinging passionately to its edges. From the stone sentry room an American
sentry emerges and stands by the jeep. He looks at passes. He salutes and opens
a huge iron gate. The jeep moves on into an ascending driveway
overarched with oaks and beeches six feet through the trunks. The road curves
and climbs a little hill and ahead you can see a gray tower poking above the
enormous trees. Then you come out of the neat, ancient forest and there is a
perfect castle against a hill, with lawns in front of it. It is a little
castle, only about forty rooms, a cottage for its period. And it was built by a
certain English king for a certain English mistress. It is odd that this ancient scandal must not be
identified but it is so. If, for instance, it were known which king and which
mistress were involved in the building of the little castle, then it would be
known by the enemy which castle it is and if, further, it were known that American
troops are quartered in this castle, it would become a target for enemy
aircraft. But since a wholesome number of English kings had mistresses and
built little castles for them, so much information does not give the enemy a
target or rather it gives him a number of targets too great to concentrate on. On the lawn in front of the castle, where once
perhaps gentlemen in heavy armor challenged one another with spears, a platoon
of American soldiers, helmeted and with full packs, are doing close-order drill,
marching, countermarching, opening and closing ranks, their bayonets gleam-in
the summer English sunshine. In the gardens leading to the pointed door the
roses are blooming. Red roses and white roses. Great-grand-children of the
bushes from which perhaps the symbols of Lancaster and York were picked and
worn as insignia in the Civil War. The stones of the entrance are deeply worn,
concave as basins, and beyond is a dark hall, so high and shadow-deep in the
midday that you must get your eyes used to it before you can see the carved
oaken ceiling from which thousands of little oak faces look out. And in this
great hall an American Army sergeant sits behind a pine table and does his
work. Beyond, through an open door, is an even larger
room but this one is lighter, for one side of it has large leaded windows,
constructed in diamonds and lozenges and circles and moons of glass. And this
also looks on the rose garden, the lawn, and finally to the forest. There is a great fireplace in this room, a
fireplace so high that a tall man can walk inside without stooping and could
lie down without scrunching. The mantel over the fireplace is deep with
heraldic carving. This is the lounge. On chairs procured somewhere the GIs sit
and read and listen to the radio. A fine bar has been built against one wall,
where Coca-Cola and pop are sold. And overhead, the arching roof of carved oak,
chiseled and fitted long before America was born. And a soldier leaning back in
his chair is staring fascinated at the ceiling. There is a copy of Yank
in his lap. He squints his eyes and studies the ceiling. He withdraws his
attention and calls, “Hey, Walter, have the Dodgers got twenty-four or
twenty-five games?” Up the broad stairway is a gallery and then the
thirty rooms or so in which the guests of the couple were made comfortable, for
it is probable that only five or six hundred people knew about this old
scandal, including the lady’s husband. The rooms are large, and each one has
its carved fireplace and its little leaded, diamond-paned window, looking dimly
on the gardens. But the rooms themselves are squad rooms with the cots arranged
in a line, the shoes at attention underneath, the lockers with drawn-up blouses
and trousers and towels and the helmets squarely on top. The rooms are probably
much cleaner than they were when the king’s mistress lived there. Downstairs in a kind of cave is the kitchen,
where an Army cook is baking square apple pies by the quarter-acre. The floor
is so deeply worn that he has to step over some of the high places. His coal
stove is roaring, and he has arrived at that quiet hopelessness that cooks get
on finally realizing that their work is never going to be finished, that there
is no way of feeding a man once for all. The CO of the post is a first lieutenant from
Texas and the second in command is a Chicago second lieutenant. They are young
and stern and friendly. The job of keeping the castle in order is just a job to
them. There is no point to any of this except the
change of pageantry. The place, which was built for heralds and courtiers, for
soldiers in body armor, is in no way outraged by the new thing. The jeeps and
armored cars, the half-tracks that came in through the gates, the helmeted
soldiers on the lawn do not seem out of place. They belong here. They are
probably very little different from the earlier inhabitants. Certainly the king
in question would have been glad for them, because he had his international
troubles too. THE YANKS ARRIVELONDON, July 28, 1943—The little gray
English station is set in the green, rolling fields where the grass is being
cut and, where the mowing machine has gone, the cut grass is wilting and the
red poppies are wilting. The double tracks go by the front of the station and a
“Y” siding runs in back of the station. At 4:03 the American commandant and
four officers drive to the station. A British officer comes out of the
signal-man’s room. “The train will be four minutes late,” he says. All the
officers look at their watches. On the main line a through train roars through
at about seventy miles an hour. The young lieutenant says, “I thought British
trains were slow.” “They used to hold the world’s record for
speed,” the commandant says. On another track a freight train moves rapidly
through the station. The flat cars are loaded with tanks, a solid line of tanks
the whole length of the train. A hundred yards from the station a clubmobile is
parked, a bus converted into a kitchen for the cooking of doughnuts and coffee
and run by two Red Cross girls. Their coffee urns are steaming and great
baskets of doughnuts are accumulating. They lift out the doughnuts and load
the baskets with them. On top of the bus is a loudspeaker connected with a
phonograph. The commandant says, “That big girl is a great
one. We got five hundred men at six o’clock this morning. They were pretty
tired. That big girl put on a record and did a Highland fling to some hot
music. She’s a funny one.” The smell of the cooking doughnuts comes down the
breeze. The British officer comes out of the signalman’s
house again. “It will be here in three minutes,” he says. And again the
officers look at their watches. The little train comes around the bend. It
passes the station, puts its tail into the “Y,” and backs into the siding. The
compartments are solid with helmeted men and their equipment is piled in front
of them to the knees. Their faces are almost as brown as their uniforms. They
are sitting with their packs on. It is a hot afternoon, one of the few of the
summer. As the train pulls in, the phonograph in the
clubmobile howls, “Mr. Five by Five.” The sound carries a long way. The
soldiers turn their heads slowly and look toward the music. Now a sergeant runs
down the side of the train and opens the doors of the compartments but the men
do not move. A stout captain, with a very black mustache, shouts, “All right,
men. Pile out of it.” And the little compartments disgorge the men. They stand
helplessly on the platform, their shoulders damp with sweat under the pack
straps and their backs wet under the packs. They carry their barracks bags too
and the things which won’t go in, a guitar here, and a mandolin, a pair of
shoes. One man has a mongrel fox terrier on a string and it stands beside him
panting with excitement. The stout, worried captain gets the men lined
up and marches them to the clubmobile. Swing music is still shrieking from the
loudspeaker on the roof. A single file of men passes a little counter on a side
of the truck and each one gets a big cup of coffee and two doughnuts. Then they
break their ranks and stand about drinking the coffee and looking lost. The big
girl comes out of the truck and works on them. “Where you from, boy?” “Michigan.” “Why, we’re neighbors. I come from Illinois.” A local wolf, a slicker at home, a dark boy
with sideburns, says wearily and just from a sense of duty, “What you doing
tonight, baby?” “What are you doing?” the big girl asks, and
the men about laugh loudly as if it were very funny. The tired wolf puts an arm about her waist.
“Plant me,” he says, and the two do a grotesque shag, a kind of slow-motion
jitterbug. A blond boy with a sunburned nose and red
eyelids shyly approaches a lieutenant. He has his coffee in one hand and his
two doughnuts in the other. Too late he realizes that he is in trouble. He
balances the two doughnuts on the edge of his cup and they promptly fall into
the coffee. He salutes and the lieutenant returns it gravely. “Excuse me, sir,” the boy says. “Aren’t you a
movie star?” “I used to be,” the lieutenant says. “I used to
be.” “I knew I’d seen you in pictures,” the boy
says. “I’ll write home about seeing you here. Say,” he says with excitement,
“would you write your name here on something and I could send it home and then
they’d have to believe me and they could keep it for me.” “Sure,” the lieutenant says, and he signs his
name with a pencil on the back of a grubby envelope from the soldier’s pocket.
The boy regards it for a moment. “What’re you doing here?” he asks. “Why, I’m just in the Army, the same as you
are.” “Oh, yes, of course. Yes, I see you are. Well,
they’ll have to believe I saw you now.” “How long have you been over?” the lieutenant
asks. “We’re not supposed to say anything about stuff
like that.” “Sure, I forgot. Good boy to remember it.” The doughnuts in the coffee have become
semi-liquid by now. The boy drinks the coffee and the doughnuts without
noticing. “Do you suppose we’ll ever be let to go to
London?” he asks. “Sure. When you get a pass.” “Well, that’s a long way off, isn’t it?” “Not so far. You could make it on a forty-eight
hour pass easy and have lots of time.” “Well. Are there lots of girls there?” “Sure. Plenty.” “And will they, will they talk to a guy?” “Sure they will.” “Hot damn!” says the boy. “Oh, hot damn!” “Fall in,” the stout, worried captain shouts,
and, “Fall in,” the sergeants shout. The blond boy gets in line, still holding
his cup. The big girl yells at him over the music, “Hey, sonny. We need those
cups.” She rushes fiercely up to him and grabs the cup
and then quickly pats him once on the shoulder. The men on both sides of him
laugh loudly, as if it were very funny. A HANDLONDON, July 29, 1943—The soldier wears
a maroon bathrobe and pajamas and slippers, the uniform of the Army hospital.
He is a little pale and shaky, the way convalescents are. His left arm he
carries crooked and high, and the fingers of his left hand hook over helplessly.
In front of him on a table is a half-built model of a Liberator. Not covered
yet, but a mass of tiny struts and ribs and braces. And he has a sheet of balsa
wood, stamped with the patterns, and he has a razor blade and a little bowl of
glue, with a match sticking out of it. “I got hurt in Africa,” he says. “Got hit in
the stomach, but they fixed that up pretty good.” He holds up his left arm.
“This is what bothers me,” he says. “That was broke awful bad. I haven’t been
out of a cast long.” He moves the fingers slightly. “Not much feeling in them,”
he says. “I can’t make a fist. I can’t grab hold of anything. At least, I
couldn’t. It’s kind of numb. “I got hold of this model,” he says. “I can
hold things down with my hand, like this.” He puts the side of his hand down on
the sheet of balsa. “I did all of that with my right hand. I guess it’s lucky
I’m right-handed.” He regards his left hand and moves the fingers. “The doctor
says I’ll be able to use it to grab hold of things if I just exercise it. But
it’s hard to exercise it when you can just barely feel it’s there. “A funny thing happened yesterday,” he says.
“Here, I’ll show you the exact place.” He takes a pencil and sticks it into the
maze of tiny braces. “There, you see that piece in there? The one with the
little pencil mark on it? I marked it so I’d remember which one it was. “Yesterday I was trying to get that set in
right, and you can see it’s a hard place to get at. You’ve got to hold it here
and work it up under. Well, I didn’t even know I was doing it. I came to, and I
was holding that little piece in my left hand.” He regards the wizened finger
with amazement. “I told the doctor about it and he said that was all right and
I should try to use it every bit I could. Well, sir, when I think about it I
can’t do it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I can later, a little bit at a time. I roll
a pencil under my fingers. They say that’s a good thing to do. I can feel it some,
too.” He holds a sheet of balsa pattern down with the
side of his left hand and with a razor blade carefully cuts out the tiny curved
piece he is going to use next. It is an intricate piece, and his hand shakes a
little, but the razor blade runs through on the black line, and he lifts the
little piece free and puts it down on the table to apply a spot of glue to each
end of it. Then carefully, with his right hand, he sets the piece in its place.
“I let my nails grow long,” he says. “I can use my fingernails for lots of things.”
With the long fingernail of his right forefinger he scrapes off a little drop
of glue that is squeezed out of the joint and wipes it on a piece of paper. “I’m worried about this hand,” he says. “Of
course, I guess I can get a job. I’m not worried about that so much. I can
always get a job. But I’ve got to get this hand into shape so that it will grab
ahold of things.” He turns the model plane over and then studies the pattern
sheet for the next piece. He is silent for a long time. “My wife knows I was
hurt. She doesn’t know how bad. She knows I’m going to get well all right and
come home, but—she must be thinking pretty hard. I got to get that hand
working. She wouldn’t like a cripple with a hand that wouldn’t work.” His eyes are a little feverish. “Well, how
would you like a cripple to come home? What would you think about that? “It will always be a little crooked,” he says,
“but I wouldn’t mind that so much if it worked. I don’t think she would mind so
much if it worked. She has got a job in a plane factory out on the Coast—doing
a man’s work. She says she is doing fine and I’m not to worry. Here. I’ll show
you a picture of her.” He reaches in his bathrobe pocket. “Where is it?” he
says. “The nurse always puts it in here.” He puts his left hand in his pocket
and brings out a little leather wallet. And suddenly he sees what he has done
and the fingers relax and the wallet drops to the table. “God Almighty!” he
says. “Did you see that?” He looks at the crooked hand still suspended in the
air. “That’s twice in two days,” he says softly. “Twice in two days.” THE CAREER OF BIG TRAIN MULLIGANSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, August 4, 1943—It
has been possible to compile further data on the life and methods of Private
Big Train Mulligan, a man who has succeeded in making a good part of the Army
work for him. It has been said of him by one of his enemies, of whom he has
very few, that he would be a goldbrick but he is too damn lazy. In a course of close study, extending over
several days, certain qualities have stood out in the private in addition to
those mentioned in the previous report. Big Train has a very curious method. If
you are not very careful, you find yourself carrying his luggage and you never
know how it happened. Recently, in one of the minor crises which are an
everyday occurrence to Big Train, this writer came out of a kind of a haze of
friendship to find that he had not only lent Mulligan Ј2 10s, but had forced it
on him without security and had, furthermore, emerged from the transaction with
a sense of having been honored. How this was accomplished is anybody’s guess.
Sometime in the future, no doubt, Mulligan will pay this money back, but in
such a manner that it will seem that he has been robbed. Mulligan has carried looting, requisitioning,
whatever you want to call it, to its highest point. He is a firm believer in
the adage that an army moves on its stomach, a position he rather likes. He
loves nice foods and he usually gets them. A few days ago a party was visiting
a ship which had recently put into a port in England with war materials. The
party went to the bridge, met the master and the other officers, drank a small
cup of very good coffee, and ate a quarter-ounce of cookies, conversing
politely the while. On coming back to the dock where the car stood and where
Mulligan should conceivably be on duty, of course, no such thing was true. Mulligan was not in sight. One of this party
who has known the private and admired him for some time remarked, “If I were
to look for Mulligan right now I should find the icebox on that ship with a
good deal of confidence that Mulligan would not be far from it.” Accordingly,
the party found its way to the ship’s refrigerator and there was Mulligan,
leaning jauntily back against a table. He was holding the thickest roast-beef
sandwich Imaginable in his hand. He has learned to eat very rapidly while
talking on all subjects. He never misses a bite or a word. His pace seems slow
but his execution is magnificent. Not between bites but during bites he was
telling an admiring circle, made up of a steward and three naval gunners, a
story of rapine and other amusements which completely distracted them from
noticing that Big Train had a foot-high stack of sandwiches behind him on the
table. The senior officer said, “Mulligan, don’t you
think it is about time we went along?” Mulligan said, “Yes, sir. I was just coming
along but I thought the captain might be a little hungry. I was just getting a
snack ready for the captain.” He reached behind him and brought out the great
pile of roast-beef sandwiches, which he passed about. Now, whether these sandwiches
had been prepared for just such an emergency or whether Mulligan had intended
to eat them himself will never be known. We prefer to believe that it was just
as he said. Mulligan is a thoughtful friend and an unselfish man. Besides this,
he never goes into a blind alley. He has always a line of retreat, which simply
proves that he is a good soldier. Should his officer be faint with hunger,
Mulligan has a piece of chocolate to tide the captain over. What difference
that the chocolate belonged to the captain in the first place and he was led to
believe that it was all gone? The fact of the matter is that when he needs his
own chocolate Mulligan is happy to give him half of it. The Big Train has been in England now something
over a year and he has acquired a speech which can only be described as
Georgia-Oxford. He addresses people as “mate” or even “mait.” He refuses to
learn that he cannot get petrol at a gas station but he refers to lifts and
braces. Many an officer has tried to get Mulligan
promoted to a corporalcy, if only to have something to break him from, but he
is firmly entrenched in his privacy. There is nothing you can do to Mulligan
except put him in jail and then you have no one to drive you. If he were a
corporal you could break him, but Mulligan has so far circumvented any such
move on the part of his superiors. When the recommendation has gone in, at just
the right moment he has been guilty of some tiny infraction of the rules—not
much, but just enough to make it impossible to promote him. His car is a little
bit dirty at inspection. Mulligan does six hours’ full-pack drill and is safe
from promotion for a good time. Mulligan has nearly everything he wants—women,
leisure, travel, and companionship. He wants only one thing and he is trying
to work out a way to get it. He would like a dog, preferably a Scottie, and he
would like to take it in his car with him. So far he has not worked out his
method, but it is a foregone conclusion that he will not only get his dog but
that his officer will feed it, and when Mulligan has a date in the evening his
officer will probably take care of the dog for him and will feel very good
about it, too. The Army is a perfect setting for this Mulligan. He would be
foolish ever to leave it. And he is rarely foolish. CHEWING GUMLONDON, August 6, 1943—At the port the
stevedores are old men. The average age is fifty-two, and these men handle the
cargo from America. Their pace does not seem fast, but the cargo gets unloaded
and away. The only men on the docks anywhere near military age who are not in
uniform are the Irish from the neutral Free State, who are not subject to Army
call. They stay pretty much to themselves; for while they may approve of then:
neutrality, it is not pleasant to be a neutral in a country at war. They feel
like outsiders. Little old Welshmen with hard, grooved faces
handle the cargo. There is a shrunken man directing the big crane. He stands
beside the open hatch and with his hands directs the cargo slings as though he
were directing an orchestra. Palm down and the fingers fluttering brings down
the sling. Palm up raises it, and by the tempo of his motions the operator
knows whether to go slowly or rapidly. This man has a thin, high voice which
nevertheless cuts through the noise of the pounding engine and grinding gears.
His fingers flutter upward and the locomotive rises into the air on the end of
a sling. The man seems to waft it over the side with his hands. Eighty-seven
tons of locomotive, and he lowers it to the tracks on the docks with his hands. On an imaginary line the children stand and
watch the cargo come out. They are not permitted to go beyond their line for
fear they might be hurt. There are at least a hundred of them, a little shabby,
as everyone in England is after four years of war. And not too clean, for they
have been playing on ground that is largely coal dust. How they cluster about
an American soldier who has come off the ship! They want gum. Much as the
British may deplore the gum-chewing habit, their children find it delightful.
There are semi-professional gum beggars among the children. “Penny, mister?”
has given way to “Goom, mister?” When you have gum you have something permanent,
something you can use day after day and even trade when you are tired of it.
Candy is ephemeral. One moment you have candy, and the next moment you haven’t.
But gum is really property. The grubby little hands are held up to the
soldier and the chorus swells. “Goom, mister?” “I don’t have any,” the soldier says, but they
pay no attention to that. “Goom, mister?” they shriek and crowd in closer. A
steward comes down the gangplank from the ship. He is a little tipsy and he is
dressed for the town. He is going to have a time for himself. A few children go
to him and test him out. “Goom, mister?” they ask. The steward grins genially,
pulls a handful of coins from his pocket and throws them into the air. The dust
rises and covers a little riot, and when it clears the steward is in full
flight with the pack baying after him. Only one small boy has stayed with the
soldier—a very little boy with blond hair and gray eyes. He holds the soldier’s
hand and the soldier blushes with pleasure. “Is it as nice in America as it is
here?” the boy asks. “No—it’s just about the same as here,” the
soldier says. “It’s bigger, but just about the same.” “I guess you really have no goom?” “No, not a piece.” “Is there much goom in America?” “Oh, yes, lots of it.” The little boys sighs deeply. “I’ll go there
sometime,” he says gravely. The pack returns slowly. They have lost their
quarry and are looking for new game. Then over the side the garbage is lowered
in a large box. It is golden with squeezed orange skins. The children hesitate,
because it is against all their training to break rules. But the test is too
great. They can’t stand it. They break over the line and tumble on the garbage
box. They squeeze the skins for the last drop of juice that may conceivably be
there. A bobby comes up quickly, his high hat making
him seem a foot taller than he is. “Get ahn naow, get ahn,” he says mildly. The rebels cram the skins into their pockets
and then, dutifully, they go back to their boundary, but their pockets bulge
with the loot. “That’s naught naice,” the bobby says. “But
they do get very ’ungry for horanges. They really do. I ’avent ’ad a horange in
four years. It’s the law; no one hover five years old can ’ave a horange. “They need them most, you see,” he explained. MUSSOLINILONDON, August 9, 1943—The ship was in
mid-ocean when Mussolini resigned. Rumor ran among the soldiers and the crew
and the Army nurses that something important had happened. Then, down from the
bridge, came the corroboration—“Mussolini has resigned”—on that. For five days
the people on board had that for their minds and their hopes to play with. And
the process went something like this: Two sergeants and a PFC stood out of the wind
in the lee of a life raft. “Well, you’ve got to admit it’s good news if it’s
true,” the PFC said. “Yes,” said the technical sergeant, “but you
know how it is when a guy is quitting. He gets kicked in the pants. There must
be plenty of people who would like to take a sock at old Musso. I wouldn’t be
surprised if he didn’t live too long.” “You got right,” the staff sergeant said. “I’d
hate to be in Musso’s shoes.” The ship plowed through the sea and the escorts
hovered about like worried chickens. ... A second lieutenant sat in the lounge, talking
to an Army nurse. “Gin rummy?” he asked. “Sure,” said the nurse. The lieutenant leaned toward her. “A private in
my outfit got it pretty straight. Somebody knocked off the Duce.” “How do you mean?” The second lieutenant shuffled and passed the
deck for cut. “Got him. That’s what I mean. Cut his throat. I hope he bled
some.” The nurse ignored the cards. She frowned. “I
wonder whether he really had power or whether he was just a figurehead.” “Why? What difference does it make if he’s
dead?” “Well, said the nurse, “if he had power, than
the Fascists go out with him gone. They’ll all get killed. There’ll be a
revolution. That’s what I mean.” “I guess you’re right,” said the lieutenant.
“You want to keep score ...?” The captain lay on his back in his bunk in the
crowded stateroom. He talked to the bunk above him. “You’ve got to hand it to
those Wops,” he said. “When they’ve got something to fight for, they sure put
up a fight.” A major’s head appeared over the edge of the
upper bunk. “What are you talking about?” “Didn’t you hear? After Mussolini got bumped
off, the Wops revolted. They’ve got the nicest little revolution going you ever
heard. Rome is a shambles. They’re hunting down the Fascists like rats.” “God Almighty,” said the major, “this would be
the right time to invade. From a military point of view, you couldn’t ask for a
better time. I wonder if we’ve got the stuff ready to do it?” A steward lingered in the passageway near the
icebox. A KP came furtively near. “Stay out of those strawberries,” the
steward said sternly. “We ain’t got no strawberries,” said the
furtive one. “The nurses went through them strawberries like we’re going
through Italy. I didn’t get none of them strawberries.” “Have we got into Italy?” “Got in? Where you been? We’re halfway up the
calf right now. There’s MPs walkin’ the streets of Rome this minute and the
Wops puttin’ flowers in the hair.” The captain interrupted the sleepy poker game.
“We’ve got to have a drink on this,” he said. “Who’s got some whisky?” “Don’t be silly,” said a lieutenant colonel.
“We haven’t had any whisky since the second day out. What are you drinking to? The
invasion of Italy?” “Invasion, hell. Italy is in our hands.” “I’ve got a bottle,” said the lieutenant
colonel, and he climbed over legs and dug in his briefcase. They stood together
and clinked the glasses and tossed off the whisky. The captain turned and threw
his glass out of the porthole. “That’s a pretty important drink,” he said. “I
wouldn’t want any common drink to get into that glass.” He peered out the
porthole. “A seagull picked us up. We can’t be very far out,” he said. The lieutenant colonel said, “You know, with
Italy out, Germany is going to have a time holding the Balkans down. They’re
going to want to get out from under. I bet Greece revolts, too. And Turkey was
about ready to come in. This may be the push she needs.” ... Three GIs sat in a windblown cave, made by
slinging their shelter halves between a rail and a davit and a ventilator.
They watched the whitecaps go surging by. “I’d like to get there before it’s
over, Willie. I won’t get a chance to see any action if we don’t hurry up.” “You’ll see plenty action and you’ll tote
plenty bales before you’re through, brother.” “I don’t know about that. With those Turks
running wild, Germany can’t hold out forever. Why, Germany’s so busy now, I’ll
bet we could even get in across the Channel. This is a slow damn scow.” ... “Gentlemen,” said a twenty-year-old lieutenant
to three other twenty-year-old lieutenants, “gentlemen, I give you Paris.” “My old man took Paris in the last war,” said one
of the gentlemen. “Gentlemen,” said the first speaker, his voice
shaking, “we’ve crossed the Channel. Oh, boy, oh, boy! We’re in.” The three joined hands in a kind of fraternal
cat’s cradle. ... And so the ship came into port with the war
fought and won. It took them a little time to get over it. CRAPSLONDON, August 12, 1943—This is one of
Mulligan’s lies and it concerns a personality named Eddie. Mulligan has
soldiered with Eddie and knows him well. Gradually it becomes apparent that
Mulligan has soldiered with nearly everyone of importance. At any rate this Eddie was a crap shooter, but
of such saintly character that his integrity in the use of the dice was never
questioned. Eddie was just lucky, so lucky that he could flop the dice against
the wall and bounce them halfway across the barracks floor on a Sunday and
still make a natural. From performances like this the suspicion grew
that Eddie had the ear of some force a little more than human. Eddie, over a
period of a year or two, became a rich and happy man, not so lucky in love, but
you can’t have everything. It was Eddie’s contention that the dice could get
him a woman any time, but he never saw a woman who could make him roll
naturals. Sour grapes though this may have been, Eddie abode by it. Came the time finally when Eddie and his
regiment were put on board a ship and started off for X. It wasn’t a very large
ship, and it was very crowded. Decks and staterooms and alleys, all crowded.
And it just happened that the ship sailed within reasonable time of payday. That first day there were at least two hundred
crap games on the deck, and while Eddie got into one, he did it listlessly,
just to keep his hand in, and not to tire himself, because he knew that the
important stuff was coming later. Between the chicken games Eddie moped about
and did a good deed or two to get himself into a state of grace he knew was
necessary later. He helped to carry a “B” bag for a slightly tipsy GI and
reluctantly accepted a pint of bourbon, which canceled out the good deed, to
Eddie’s way of thinking. He wrote a letter to his wife, whom he hadn’t seen for
twelve years, and would have posted it if he could ever have found a stamp. Occasionally he drifted back to the deck and
got into a small game to keep his wrist limber and his head clear, but he
didn’t have to. Eddie had a roll. He didn’t have to build up a bank in the
preliminaries. He steered clear of spectacular play for two reasons. First, it
was a waste of time. It was just as well to let the money get into a few hands
before he exerted himself, and second, Eddie, at a time like this, preferred a
kind of obscurity and anonymity. There was another reason too. The ship sailed
on Tuesday and Eddie was waiting for Sunday, because he was particularly hot on
Sundays, a fact he attributed to a clean and disinterested way of life. Once on
a Sunday, and, understand, this is Mulligan’s story, Eddie had won a small
steam roller from a road gang in New Mexico, and on another Sunday Eddie had
cleaned out a whole camp meeting, and in humility had devoted 10 per cent of
his winnings to charity. As the week went on the games began to fade
out. There were fewer games and the stakes were larger. On Saturday there were
only four good ones going, and at this time Eddie began to take interest. He
played listlessly Saturday morning, but in the afternoon became more active
and wiped out two of the games because his time was getting short and he didn’t
want too many games going the next day. At ten o’clock the next day Eddie appeared on
the deck, clean and combed and modest and bulging at the pockets of his field
jacket. The game was going, but there were only three players in it. Eddie said
innocently, “Mind if I get in for a pass or two?” The three players scrutinized
him cynically. A Pole with one blue eye and one brown eye spoke roughly to him.
“Froggy skins it takes, soldier,” he said, “not is playing peanuts.” Eddie delicately exposed the butt end of a bank
that looked like a rolled roast for a large supper. The Pole sighed with happiness,
and the other two, who were remarkable and successful for no other reason than
that they could disappear in a crowd, rubbed their hands involuntarily, as
though to keep their fingers warm. Eddie concealed his poke as modestly as a
young woman adjusts the straps of an evening gown that has no straps. He
kneeled down beside the blanket and said, “What about is the tariff?” A wall of
spectators closed behind him. Eddie faded thirty of a hundred. The Pole
rolled and won and let it lie, and Eddie took a hundred of the two hundred and
the Pole shot a six and made it. Behind the dense circle of spectators running
feet could be heard. This was to be a game. The ship took a slight list as GIs
ran from all over just to be near a game like this, even if they couldn’t see
it. The four hundred lay on the blanket like a
large salad. The two disappearing men looked at Eddie, and Eddie went into his
roll and undid four hundred in small bills and laid them timidly out. This Pole
glared at him with his brown eye, and smiled at him with his blue eye, a trick
which served him very well in poker, but had little effect on a crap game. He
breathed on the dice and didn’t speak to them. He rolled an eight and smiled
with both his eyes. Again he breathed on the dice and cast them backhanded to
show how easy that point was, and a four and a three looked up at him. Eddie, breathing easily, relaxed and sure,
pulled the big green salad gently to his side of the blanket. He unrolled two
hundred more from his roll like toilet tissue, and laid them down. “One grand,”
he said, “all or part.” The Pole took half and the two anonymous men
split up the rest, and Eddie rolled a rocking chair natural, a six and a five.
“Leaving it lay,” he said softly. Only the Pole listened to him. He picked up the
dice and looked them over carefully to be sure they were the ones he had put in
himself. And then, scowling with both eyes, he covered Eddie. The pile of money
was ten inches high now, and spilling down like a loose haycock. Eddie hummed a little to himself as he rolled,
and a seven settled firmly. The Pole snorted. Eddie said, “And leaving that
lay, all or part, anybody.” Breathing had stopped on the ship, only the engines
went on. Mouths were open. Figures frozen in the dense crowd about the blanket.
Only once in a while word was passed back about what was happening. Scowling at Eddie, the Pole scraped bottom. A
whole week of very tiring play for the Pole lay on the blanket, and the pot was
set. Eddie was magnificent. He moved easily. He did not shake or rattle the
dice or speak to them or beseech them. He simply rolled them out with childlike
faith. For a long moment he stared uncomprehendingly at the snake eyes that
stared back at him. And then his expression changed to one of horror. “No,” he
said, “somepins wrong. I win on Sunday, always win on Sunday.” A sergeant shuffled his feet uneasily.
“Mister,” he said. “Mister, you see, it ain’t Sunday. We’ve went and crossed
the date line. We lost Sunday.” Anyway, it’s one of Mulligan’s lies. AfricaPLANE FOR AFRICAA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), August
26, 1943—At nine o’clock in the morning word comes that you have been
accepted for Africa. You go to the office of the transportation officer. “Can
you go tonight?” he asks. “Your baggage must be in at three. You will report to
such and such an address at seven-thirty. Do not be late.” It is then about noon. You do the thousand
things that are necessary for a shift of continents. You pack the one bag and
store the other things which you will not take, the warm clothes and the papers
and books. You call the people with whom you have made appointments and call
them off. At seven-thirty you arrive at the address given
and from then on the process is out of your hands and it works very smoothly.
At a quarter of eight you get in an Army truck and are taken to the station. An
Army train is waiting. It is called a ghost train because it has no given
destination. All kinds of units are getting on board the train: combat crews
going out to get their ships, colonels who are going home after months in the
field, couriers with bags and packages of mail. The combat crews carry pistols
and knives and they have the huge bags of flying equipment with them. They are
brown officers who have been serving in the desert and they look a little sick
with fatigue. A bomber crew that has not yet gone into action,
indeed has not had a ship since it got overseas, has been working on English
beer and has managed to get to the singing state. The whistle blows and
everyone piles into the train. It is a sleeper. There is no place to gather. You go to bed
right away. In the corridor the singing crew leans out of the window and the
men shriek at girls as the train starts. Then they break into “Home On the
Range,” but the noise of the train drowns them out. The beer was not strong
enough to give them much of a lift. The blacked-out train roars through the
night. The windows are shut and painted so that no light can shine out. The
singing collapses and the crews retire to their staterooms. At four-thirty in the morning the steward
knocks on your door, sets a cup of tea on the little shelf over your bed, and
leaves. You quickly drink the tea and shave in time to be out of the train at
five. It is cold and rainy when you get out of the train. You don’t know where
you are. You were never told. Army trucks are waiting to take you to the
airfield. Deep puddles of rain water are standing all about the little
station. You climb into a truck and in a short while you have come to a huge
airfield. This is one of the fields of Air Transport Command, which moves men
and goods all over the world. Fighter planes are dispersed about the field,
dimly visible through the rain. The C-54s stand ready to go. This is a large and comfortable station. There
are club-rooms and a bar and a large restaurant. It is cold outside and inside
the fireplaces are piled high with glowing coals. In the largest clubroom are
many people waiting their time to go. There are men who have been here a week
and some crews which just got in. A phonograph is playing something sung by
Dinah Shore. The men sleep on the couches and wait for their time. The control-desk officer says, “Come back at
one-thirty and you will be told when you go.” The nearest town is several miles away. The
crews wander about for a while and then go back to the club-room to read comic
books—Superman and the rest. They read them without amusement, but with great
concentration. The officer says, “You will probably go in
eight hours,” and again the wandering. A ship is warming up. It is going home.
The men on it will be in New York tomorrow. Even the ones who recently came
over look longingly at these lucky ones. Just before they go they are cornered
and messages given. “Call my wife and tell her that you saw me. Here is the
telephone number.” There would be letters to carry, but that is forbidden. The men going home actually write the numbers
down. They look a little self-conscious to be going home, and very happy about
it, too. They get into the big ship and the door closes. It is a four-motored
ship and you have to climb high to get into it. The little crowd stands in the
entrance and watches it go and then it has disappeared into the rain almost
before it is off the ground. The field has suddenly become very lonely. The men
go back to the coal fires and to old copies of magazines, Esquires and New
Yorkers, months old, copies of Life from April and May. The officer says, “The plane will leave for
Africa in fifteen minutes.” It would seem the plane would be crowded, but it
isn’t. There are on board only one combat crew and two civilians. It is a
C-54-A, which means that it has bucket seats and is more than half cargo plane.
Now the crew are gathering together their bags and their parachutes, slinging
on their pistols and knives and web equipment. They are being very nonchalant
about the whole thing. Africa means nothing to them. For a while we stand shivering in the rain
while our names are called off. Then each one climbs the ladder and goes
through the door. The windows of the plane are not blacked out, the way they
are at home. They don’t mind if you see. The big door slams, and outside you
can hear the motors begin to turn over. ALGIERSALGIERS (Via London), August 28, 1943—Algiers
is a fantastic city now. Always a place of strange mixtures, it has been
brought to a nightmarish mess by the influx of British and American troops and
their equipment. Now jeeps and staff cars nudge their way among camels and
horse-drawn cars. The sunshine is blindingly white on the white city, and when
there is no breeze from the sea the heat is intense. The roads are lined with open wagons loaded
high with fresh-picked grapes, with military convoys, with Arabs on horseback,
with Canadians, Americans, Free French native troops in tall red hats. The
uniforms are of all colors and all combinations of colors. Many of the French
colonial troops have been issued American uniforms since they had none of their
own. You never know when you approach American khaki that it will not clothe an
Arab or a Senegalese. The languages spoken in the streets are
fascinating. Rarely is one whole conversation carried out in just one language.
Our troops do not let language difficulties stand in their way. Thus you may
see a soldier speaking in broad Georgia accents conversing with a Foreign
Legionnaire and a burnoosed Arab. He speaks cracker, with a sour French word
thrown in here and there, but his actual speech is with his hands. He acts out
his conversation in detail. His friends listen and watch and they answer
him in Arabic or French and pantomime their meaning, and oddly enough they all
understand one another. The spoken language is merely the tonal background to a
fine bit of acting. Out of it comes a manual pidgin that is becoming
formalized. The gesture for a drink is standard. Gestures of friendship and
anger and love have also become standard. The money is a definite problem. A franc is
worth two cents. It is paper money and comes in five, ten, twenty, fifty, one
hundred, and one thousand franc notes. The paper used is a kind of blotting
paper that wads up and tears easily. Carried in the pocket, it becomes wet and gummy
with perspiration, and when taken out of the pocket often falls to pieces in
your hands. In some stores they will not accept torn money, which limits the
soldier, because most of the money he has is not only torn but wadded and used
until the numbers on it are almost unrecognizable. A wad of money feels like a
handful of warm wilted lettuce. In addition there are many American bills, the
so-called invasion money, which is distinguished from home money by having a
gold seal printed on its face. These bills feel cool and permanent compared
with the Algerian money. A whole new tourist traffic has set up here. A
soldier may buy baskets, bad rugs, fans, paintings on cloth, just as he can at
Coney Island. Many GIs with a magpie instinct will never be able to get home,
such is their collection of loot. They have bits of battle debris, knives,
pistols, bits of shell fragments, helmets, in addition to their colored
baskets and rugs. In each case the collector has someone at home in mind when
he makes the purchases. Grandma would love this Algerian shawl, and this
Italian bayonet is just the thing to go over Uncle Charley’s fireplace, along
with the French bayonet he brought home from the last war. Suddenly there will come
the order to march with light combat equipment, and the little masses of
collections will have to be left with instructions to forward that will never
be carried out. Americans are great collectors. The next station will start the
same thing all over again. The terraces of the hotels are crowded at five
o’clock. This is the time when people gather to get a drink and to look at one
another. There is no hard liquor. Cooled wine and lemonade and orange wine are
the standard drinks. There is some beer made of peanuts, which does have a
definite peanut flavor. The wine is good and light and cooling, a little bit of
a shock to a palate used to bourbon whiskey, but acceptable. On these terraces the soldiers come to sit
about little tables and to meet dates. The French women here have done
remarkably well. Their shoes have thick wooden soles, but are attractive, and
the few clothes they have are clean and well kept. Since there is little
material for dyeing the hair or bleaching it, a new fashion seems to have
started. One lock of the hair is bleached and combed back over the unbleached
part. It has a strange and not unattractive effect. About five o’clock the streets are invaded by
little black Wog boys with bundles of newspapers. They shriek, “Stahs’n
Straipes. Stahs’n Straipes.” The Army newspaper is out again. This is the
only news most of our men get. In fact, little news comes here. New York and
London are much better informed than this station, which is fairly close to
action. But it seems to be generally true that the closer to action you get,
the more your interest in the over-all picture diminishes. Soldiers here are not so much interested in the
trend of war as the soldiers are in training camps at home. Here the qualities
of the mess, the animosities with the sergeant, the price of wine are much more
important than the world at war. This is a mad, bright, dreamlike place. It is
probable that our soldiers will remember it as a whirl of color and a polyglot
babble. The heat makes your head a little vague, so that impressions run
together and blot one another up. Outlines are hazy. It will be a curious
memory when the soldiers try to sort it out to tell about after the war, and it
will not be strange if they improvise a bit. A WATCH CHISELERA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), August
37, 1943—It was well after midnight. The sergeant of MPs and his lieutenant
drove in a jeep out of Sidi Belle Road from Oran. The sergeant had carved the
handles of his gun from the Plexiglas from the nose of a bomber and he had
begun to carve figures in it during off times with his pocket knife. It was a
soft African night with abundant stars. The lieutenant was quite young and sensible
enough to depend a good deal on his sergeant. The jeep leaped and rattled over
cobblestones. “Let’s go up to the Engineers and get a cup of coffee and a
sandwich,” the lieutenant said. “Turn around at the next corner.” At that moment a weapons carrier came roaring in
from the country, going nearly sixty miles an hour. It flashed by the jeep and
turned the corner on two wheels. “Jeezus,” said the sergeant, “shall I go after
him?” “Run him down,” said the lieutenant. The sergeant wheeled the jeep around and put
his foot to the floor. Around the corner he could see the tail lights in the
distance and he seemed to gain on it rapidly. The weapons carrier was stopped,
pulled up beside a field. The jeep skidded to a stop and the sergeant leaped
out with the lieutenant after him. Three men were sitting in the weapons carrier,
three in the front seat. They were quite drunk. The sergeant flashed his light
in the back. There were two empty wine bottles on the floor of the truck. “Get
out,” said the sergeant. As the men got out he frisked each one of them,
tapping the hind pockets and the trousers below the knees. The three soldiers
looked a little bedraggled. “Who was driving that car?” the lieutenant
asked. “I don’t know him,” a small fat soldier said.
“I never saw him before. He just jumped out and ran when he saw you coming. I
never saw him before. We were just walking along and he asked us to come for a
ride with him.” The small fat soldier rushed the words out. “That’ll be enough out of you,” the sergeant
said. “You don’t have to tell your friends the alibi. Where did you dump the
stuff?” “What stuff, Sergeant? I don’t know what stuff
you mean.” “You know what I mean all right. Shall I take a
look about, sir?” “Go ahead,” the lieutenant said. The sergeant
went to the border of the field and flashed his light about in the stubble.
Then he came back. “Can’t see anything,” he said, and to the men, “Where’d you
get this truck?” “Just like I told you—this soldier asked us to
come for a ride, and then he saw you coming and he jumped out and ran.” “What was his name?” “I don’t know. We called him Willie. He said
his name was Willie. I never saw him in my life before. Said his name was
Willie.” “Get in the jeep,” said the sergeant. “I’ve got
the keys, lieutenant. We’ll send out for the truck. Go on now, you guys, get in
that jeep.” “We ain’t done anything wrong, Sarge. What you
going to take us in for? Guy named Willie just asked—” “Shut up and get in,” said the sergeant. The three piled uncomfortably into the back
seat of the jeep. The sergeant got behind the wheel and the lieutenant
loosened his gun in its holster and sat on the little front seat with his body
screwed around to face the three. Only the little man wanted to talk. The jeep
rattled into the dark streets of Oran and pulled up in front of the MP
station, jumped up on the sidewalk, and parked bumper against the building.
Inside brilliant lights were blinding after the blacked-out streets. A sergeant
and a first lieutenant sat behind a big, high desk and looked over at the three
ranged in front of them. “Take off your dog tags and put them up here,”
said the sergeant. He began to make notes on a pad from the dog tags. “Put
everything in your pockets in this box.” He shoved a cigar box to the edge of
his desk. “But this here’s my stuff,” the little man
protested. “You’ll get a receipt. Put it up and roll up
your sleeves.” The two men who had been with the little fat
man were silent and watchful. “Who was driving the truck?” the desk sergeant
asked. “A fellow named Willie. He jumped out and ran
away.” The sergeant turned to the other two. “Who was
driving the truck?” he asked them. They both nodded their heads toward the little
fat man and neither one of them spoke. “You bastards,” the little fat man said
quietly. “Oh, you dirty bastards.” “Roll up your sleeves,” the desk sergeant said,
and then: “Good God, four wrist watches. Say, this one is a GI watch. That’s
government property. Where did you get it?” “I lent a fellow money for it. He’s going to
get it back when he pays me.” “Put your wallet up here.” The little fat man brought out a wallet of red
morocco leather and hesitantly put it up. “I want a receipt for this. This is
my savings.” The desk sergeant shook out the wallet. “God Almighty,”
he said, and he began to count the mounds of bills and he made notes on his
pad. “Ten thousand Algerian francs and three thousand dollars, American,” he
said. “You really are packing the stuff away, aren’t you, buddy?” “That’s my life savings,” the little fat man
said plaintively. “I want a receipt for that, that’s my money.” The lieutenant behind the desk came to life.
“Lock them up separately,” he said. “I’ll talk to them. Sergeant, you send a
detail out for that truck and tell them to search the place all around there.
Tell them to look out for watches, Elgins, GI watches. It will be a case about
this size. It would have a thousand in it if they are all there. The Arabs are
paying forty bucks for them. Okay, lock these men up.” “A guy named Willie,” the fat man complained,
“a guy named Willie just asked us to come for a ride.” He looked at the other
two and his soft face was venomous. “Oh, you dirty bastards,” he said. OVER THE HILLA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), September
1, 1943—Sligo and the kid took their forty-eight hour pass listlessly. The
bars close in Algeria at eight o’clock but they got pretty drunk on wine before
that happened and they took a bottle with them and lay down on the beach. The
night was warm and after the two had finished the second bottle of wine they
took off their clothes and waded out into the quiet water and then squatted
down and sat there with only their heads out. “Pretty nice, eh, kid?” said
Sligo. “There’s guys used to pay heavy dough for stuff just like this and we
get it for nothing.” “I’d rather be home on Tenth Avnoo,” said the
kid. “I’d rather be there than any place. I’d like to see my old lady. I’d like
to see the World Series this year.” “You’d like maybe a clip in the kisser,” said
Sligo. “I’d like to go into the Greek’s and get me a
double chocolate malted with six eggs in it,” said the kid. He bobbed up to
keep a little wavelet out of his mouth. “This place is lonely. I like Coney.” “Too full of people,” said Sligo. “This place is lonely,” said the kid. “Talking about the Series, I’d like to do that
myself,” said Sligo. “It’s just times like this a fella gets kind of tempted to
go over the hill.” “S’posen you went over the hill—where the hell
would you go? There ain’t no place to go.” “I’d go home,” said Sligo. “I’d go to the
Series. I’d be first in the bleachers, like I was in ’forty.” “You couldn’t get home,” the kid said; “there
ain’t no way to get home.” The wine was warming Sligo and the water was
good. “I got dough says I can get home,” he said carelessly. “How much dough?” “Twenty bucks.” “You can’t do it,” said the kid. “You want to take the bet?” “Sure, I’ll take it. When you going to pay?” “I ain’t going to pay, you’re going to pay.
Let’s go up on the beach and knock off a little sleep.” ... At the piers the ships lay. They had brought
landing craft and tanks and troops and now they lay, taking in the scrap, the
broken equipment from the North African battlefields which would go to the
blast furnaces to make more tanks and landing craft. Sligo and the kid sat on a
pile of C-ration boxes and watched the ships. Down the hill came a detail with
a hundred Italian prisoners to be shipped to New York. Some of the prisoners
were ragged and some were dressed in American khaki because they had been too
ragged in the wrong places. None of the prisoners seemed to be unhappy about
going to America. They marched down to a gangplank and then stood in a crowd,
awaiting orders to get aboard. “Look at them,” said the kid, “they get to go
home and we got to stay. What you doing, Sligo? What you rubbing oil all over
your pants for?” “Twenty bucks,” said Sligo, “and I’ll find you
and collect, too.” He stood off and took off his overseas cap and tossed it to
the kid. “Here’s a present, kid.” “What you going to do, Sligo?” “Don’t you come follow me, you’re too dumb.
Twenty bucks, and don’t you forget it. So long, see you on Tenth Avnoo.” The kid watched him go, uncomprehending. Sligo,
with dirty pants and a ripped shirt, moved gradually over, near to the
prisoners, and then imperceptibly he edged in among them and stood bareheaded,
looking back at the kid. An order was called down to the guards, and
they herded the prisoners toward the gangplank. Sligo’s voice came plaintively.
“I’m not supposed to be here. Hey, don’t put me on dis ship.” “Shut up, wop,” a guard growled at him. “I
don’t care if you did live sixteen years in Brooklyn. Git up that plank.” He
pushed the reluctant Sligo up the gangplank. Back on the pile of boxes the kid watched with
admiration. He saw Sligo get to the rail. He saw Sligo still protesting and
righting to get back to the pier. He heard him shrieking, “Hey, I’m Americano,
Americano soldier. You canna poot me here.” The kid saw Sligo struggling and then he saw
the final triumph. He saw Sligo take a sock at a guard and he saw the guard’s club
rise and come down on Sligo’s head. His friend collapsed and was carried out of
sight on board the ship. “The son of a gun,” the kid murmured to himself. “The
smart son of a gun. They can’t do nothing at all to him and he got witnesses.
Well, the smart son of a gun. My God, it’s worth twenty bucks.” The kid sat on the boxes for a long time. He
didn’t leave his place till the ship cast off and the tugs pulled her clear of
the submarine nets. The kid saw the ship join the group and he saw the
destroyers move up and take the convoy under protection. The kid walked dejectedly
up to the town. He bought a bottle of Algerian wine and headed back toward the
beach to sleep his forty-eight. THE SHORT SNORTER WAR MENACESOMEWHERE IN AFRICA (Via London), September
2, 1943—The growth of the Short Snorters is one of the greatest single
menaces to come out of the war so far. The idea started as a kind of joke in a
time when very few people flew over an ocean in an airplane. It became the
custom then for the crew of the airplane to sign their names on a one-dollar
bill which made the new ocean flyer a Short Snorter. He was supposed to keep
this bill always with him. If at any time he were asked if he were a Short
Snorter and he did not have his signed bill with him he was forced to pay a
dollar to each member present at the time when the question was asked. It was
good fun and a kind of general joke and also a means of getting someone to pay
for the drinks. But then came the war and the building of
thousands of ships and the transporting of thousands of men overseas by
airplane and every single one becomes a Short Snorter. There are hundreds of
thousands of Short Snorters now who have actually flown over an ocean and there
are further hundreds of thousands who carry signed bills. And the new Short
Snorter goes much farther than having his bill signed by the crew which carried
him on his initial crossing. The custom has grown to have the bill signed by
everyone you come across. At a bar you ask your drinking companion to sign
your bill. You ask generals and actors and senators to sign your bill. With the growing autographing one bill soon was
not enough. You procured another bill and stuck it with Scotch tape to your
first bill. Then the thing went farther. You began to collect bills from other
countries. To your American dollar bill you stuck a one-pound English note, and
to it a fifty-franc Algerian note, and to it a hundred-lira bill. Every place
you went you stuck the money to your growing Short Snorter until now there are
people who have streamers eight and ten feet long, which, folded and rolled,
make a great bundle in the pocket, and these streamers are covered with
thousands of names and represent besides considerable money. Even the
one-dollar original is disappearing. Many new Short Snorters use $20 bills and
some even $100 bills. These are the new autograph books. The original
half of the joke has been lost. In bars, in airports, in clubs, the first thing
that must be done is a kind of general exchange of signatures. Serious and
intelligent gentlemen sign one another’s bills with an absolute lack of humor.
If the party is fairly large it might take an hour before everyone has signed
the bill of everyone else. Meanwhile the soup gets cold. There are favorite places on the bill for
honored and desirable autographs. The little space under Morgenthau’s name is
one such. The wide space beside the portrait on the bill is another. If you get
an autograph you want to show, you have it written on a clear space, but if it
is just one of the run-of-the-mill signatures it is put any place in the green
part, where it hardly shows up at all. It is a frantic, serious-minded, insane
thing. Men of dignity scramble for autographs on their Short Snorters. A
special case, usually made of cellophane, is sometimes carried to house the
bill, or the long streamers of bills, because these treasures are handled so
much that they would fall to pieces if they were not protected. The effort and time involved in this curious
thing is immense. Entertainers who travel about to our troops sign literally
thousands of Short Snorter bills. For no longer do people have to fly an ocean
to be members. The new method is that any Short Snorter can create a new Short
Snorter. The club is pyramiding. Probably there are ten million Short Snorters
now and every day new thousands begin to scribble on their bills. It would be
interesting to know how many bills are withdrawn from circulation to be used
as autograph books. They must run into the millions. The use of large bills as Short Snorter bills
has a curious logic behind it. The man or woman who used a $20 or $100 bill
feels that he or she will not spend this money because of the signatures on it,
but he also feels that if he needs to he can spend it. Thus he has a nest egg
or mad money and a treasure, too. He will not toss it over a bar nor put it in
a crap game, but if he really should get into a hole he has this money with
him. Very curious practices grow out of a war and
surely none more strange than this one has taken over the public recently. THE BONE YARDA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), September
5, 1943—On the edge of a North African city there is a huge used tank yard.
It isn’t only tanks, either. It is a giant bone yard, where wrecked tanks and trucks
and artillery are brought and parked, ready for overhauling. There are General
Shermans with knocked-out turrets and broken tracks, with engines gone to
pieces. There are trucks that have fallen into shell holes. There are hundreds
of wrecked motorcycles and many broken and burned-out pieces of artillery, the
debris of months of bitter fighting in the desert. On the edge of this great bone yard are the
reconditioning yards and the rebuilding lines. Into the masses of wrecked
equipment the Army inspectors go. They look over each piece of equipment and
tag it. Perhaps this tank, with a German .88 hole drilled neatly through the
turret, will go into the fight again with a turret from the one next to it,
which has had the tracks shot from under it. Most of the tanks will run again,
but those which are beyond repair will furnish thousands of spare parts to take
care of the ones which are running. This plant is like the used-car lots in
American cities, where you can, for a small price, buy the gear or the wheel
which keeps your car running. The engines are removed from the wrecked trucks
and put on the repair lines. Here a complete overhaul job is done, the linings
of the motors rebored, with new rings, tested and ready to go finally into the
paint room, where they are resprayed with green paint. Housings, gears, clutch
plates are cleaned with steam, inspected, and placed in bins, ready to be drawn
again as spare parts. One whole end of the yard is piled high with repaired
tires. Hundreds of men work in this yard, putting the wrecked equipment back to
work. Here is an acre of injured small artillery, 20-
and 37-mm. anti-tank guns. Some of them have been fired so long that their
barrels have burned out. Some of them have only a burst tire or a bent trail.
These are sorted and put ready for repair. The barrels are changed for new
ones, and the old ones go to the scrap pile. For when everything usable has
been made use of there is still a great pile of twisted steel which can be used
as nothing but scrap metal. But the ships which bring supplies to the Army from
home are going back. They take their holds full of this scrap to go into the
making of new steel for new equipment. It is interesting to see the same American who,
a few months ago, was tinkering with engines in a small-town garage now
tinkering with the engine of a General Grant tank. And the man hasn’t changed a
bit. He is still the intent man who is good with engines. He isn’t even dressed
very much differently, for the denim work clothes are very like the overalls he
has been wearing for years. Beside these men work the French and the Arabs.
They are learning from our men how to take care of the machinery that they may
use. They learn quickly but without many words, for most of our men cannot
speak the language of the men who are helping them. It is training by sign
language and it seems to work very well. The wrecked equipment comes in in streams from
the battlefields. Modern war is very hard on its tools. While in this war fewer
men are killed, more equipment than ever is wrecked, for it seems almost to be
weapon against weapon rather than man against man. But there are many sad little evidences in the
vehicles. In this tank which has been hit there is a splash of blood against
the steel side of the turret. And in this burned-out tank a large piece of
singed cloth and a charred and curled shoe. And the insides of a tank are full
of evidences of the men who ran it, penciled notes written on the walls, a
telephone number, a sketch of a profile on the steel armor plate. Probably
every vehicle in the whole Army has a name, usually the name of a girl but
sometimes a brave name like Hun Chaser. That one got badly hit. And there is a
tank with no track and with the whole top of the turret shot away by a heavy shell,
but on her skirt in front is still her name and she is called Lucky Girl.
Every one of these vehicles lying in the wreck yard has some tremendous story,
but in many of the cases the story died with the driver and the crew. There are little tags tied to the barrels of
the guns. One says: “The recoil slaps sideways. I’m scared of it.” And another
says: “You can’t hit a barn with this any more.” And in a little while these
guns, refitted and painted, with their camouflage, will be back in the fight
again. There is hammering in the yard, and fizz of
welders and hiss of steam pipes. The men are stripped to the waist, working
under the hot African sun, their skins burned nearly black. The little cranes
run excitedly about, carrying parts, stacking engines, tearing the hopeless
jobs to pieces for their usable parts. ItalyREHEARSALSOMEWHERE IN MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, September
29, 1943—American troops trained on the beaches of North Africa for the
beaches of Italy. It was hot and dusty on the land, and back from the coast
there were many training props for them to work with. There were wooden landing
barges standing on the ground in which dusty men crouched, until at a signal
the ramp went down and they charged out and took cover. To get ashore quickly,
and to get down behind some hummock of earth where the machine guns can’t get
at you, is very important stuff in landing. And so they practiced over and over, and
instead of getting wet they only raised clouds of dust, the light, reddish
dust of Africa, in colors little like the red soil of Georgia. And when the men had learned to leap out and
charge and take cover and to run forward again, presenting as little of
themselves as possible to the observing officers, they went to the set to learn
how to conduct themselves on entering an enemy town. There were sets like those in a Hollywood
studio in the old silent days, wooden fronts and tall and short buildings with
open windows and little streets between, and there the men learned how to
crouch on a corner and how to slink under the cover of walls. They learned with
practice grenades how to blast out a machine gun set up in a building. It was
strange to see them rehearsing, as though for a play. It went on for weeks. And when they had become used to the method and
when they reacted almost instinctively, they were taken finally to the
Mediterranean beaches, the long, white beaches, which are not very unlike the
beaches at Salerno. The water is incredibly blue there and the beaches are
white. And the water is very salty. You float like a cork on it. On the beaches
they practiced with real landing barges. The teams put out to sea and then
turned and made runs for the shore and the iron ramps clattered down and the
men rushed ashore and crept and wriggled their way up to the line of the shore
where the grapevines began, for there are vineyards in Italy, too. When they had practiced a little while, machine
guns with live ammunition fired over their heads, but not very far over their
heads, to give them a real interest in keeping low. Now in larger groups they rushed in from the
sea and charged up into the vines and crept up through the vineyards and moved
inland. An amazing number of men can disappear into a vineyard so that you
can’t see them at all. The dark Algerian grapes were ripe and as they
crawled the men picked the grapes and ate them and the incidence of GI
dysentery skyrocketed, but there is no way of keeping a dusty, thirsty man
from eating ripe grapes, particularly if they are hanging right over his head,
when he lies under the vines. Over and over again they captured this little
sector and climbed up and captured the heights. They had to learn to do it in
the daytime because when they would really do it it would be in the dark of the
early morning. But when the training for each day was finished, the men went
back to the beaches and took off their clothes and played in the water. The
water was warm and delightful and the salt stung their eyes. Their bodies grew
browner day by day until they were only a little lighter than the Arabs. At night they were very tired and there is not
much to do in Africa after dark anyway. No love is lost for the Arabs. They are
the dirtiest people in the world and among the smelliest. The whole countryside
smells of urine, four thousand years of urine. That is the characteristic smell
of North Africa. The men were not allowed to go into the native cities because
there was a great deal of disease and besides there are too many little
religious rules and prejudices that an unsuspecting dogface can run afoul of.
And there wasn’t much to buy and what there was cost too much. The prices have
skyrocketed on the coming of the troops. The men slept in their pup tents and drew their
mosquito nets over them and scratched and cursed all night until, after a time,
they were too tired to scratch and curse and they fell asleep the moment they
hit the blankets. Their minds and their bodies became machine-like. They did
not talk about the war. They talked only of home and of clean beds with white sheets
and they talked of ice water and ice cream and places that did not smell of
urine. Most of them let their minds dwell on snow banks and the sharp winds of
Middle Western winter. But the red dust blew over them and crusted their skins
and after a while they could not wash it all off any more. The war had narrowed
down to their own small group of men and their own job. It would be a lie to
suggest that they like being there. They wish they were somewhere else. SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
1, 1943—Week after week the practice of the invasion continued, gathering
impetus as the day grew nearer. Landing operations and penetrations, stealthy
approaches and quick charges. The whole thing gradually took on increased speed
as the day approached. The roads back of the coast were crowded with
staff cars dashing about. The highways were lined with trucks full of the
incredible variety of war material for the invasion of Italy. There are
thousands of items necessary to a modern army and, because of the complexity of
supply, a modern army is a sluggish thing. Plans, once made, are not easily
changed, for every move of combat troops is paralleled by hundreds of moves
behind the lines, the moves of food and ammunition, trucks that must get there on
time. If the whole big, sluggish animal does not move with perfect cooperation,
it is very likely that it will not move at all. Modern warfare is very like an
automobile assembly line. If one bolt in the whole machine is out of place or
not available, the line must stop and wait for it. Improvisation is not very
possible. And all over in the practice zones in North
Africa the practice went on to make sure that every bolt would be in its place.
The men went on field rations to get used to them. Canteens must always be
full, but full of the evil-tasting, disinfected water which gets your mouth wet
but gives you very little other pleasure. While the men went through their final training
on the beaches the implements of war were collecting for their use. In huge
harbors, whose names must not be mentioned, transports and landing craft of all
kinds were accumulating. They crept up to the piers and opened the doors in
their noses and took on their bellyfuls of tanks and loaded tracks and then
slipped out and sat at anchor and waited for the “D” day at the “H” hour, which
very few in the whole Army knew. On the freighters cranes slung full-loaded
tracks and laden two-and-a-half-ton “ducks,” which are perhaps America’s real
secret weapon of this war. The “ducks,” big tracks which lumber down the
beaches and enter the water and become boats, or the boats which, coming loaded
to the beach, climb out, and drive as tracks along the dusty roads. In the harbors the accumulations of waiting
ships collected, tank-landing craft and troop-landing craft of all kinds. The
barges, which ran up on the beaches and disgorge their loads and back off and
go for more. And on the piers Arab workers passed the hundreds of thousands of
cases of canned rations to the lighters and the lighters moved out and filled
the ships with food for the soldiers. The fleets accumulated until they choked
the harbor. Now the enemy knew what was going on. They had
to know. The operation was too great for them not to know. They sent their
planes over the harbor to try to bomb the gathering fleets and they were driven
off and destroyed by the protecting Beaufighters and P-38s. They did not
succeed in doing damage, for finally the enemy had lost control of the skies
and the fleets could load at least in peace. But at night they tried to get through and the
flak rose up at them, like all the Fourth of Julys in history, the ships and
the shore batteries put up a wall of fire against the invading planes so that
some of them unloaded their bombs in the open countryside and some of them
exploded with their own bombs and some went crashing into the sea. But they had
lost control. Now “D” day was coming close and at
headquarters the officers collected and held conference after conference and
there was a growing tautness in the whole organization. Staff officers dashed
in to their briefs and rushed back to their units to brief those under them. It
would have been easy to know how close the time had come by the tempo, and then
suddenly it was all done and a curious quiet settled on the whole invasion
force. Somewhere an order passed and in the night the
ships began to move out to the places of rendezvous. And in the night the
columns of men climbed into trucks and the trucks came down the piers to the
ships, and the men, like ants, crawled on the ships and sat down on their
equipment. And the troopships slipped out to the rendezvous to wait for the
moment to leave. It was no start with bugles and flags or
cheering men. The radios crackled their coded orders. Messages went from radio
rooms to the bridges of the ships. The word was passed to the engine rooms and
the great convoys put out to sea. And on the decks of troopships and on the flat
iron floors of the landing craft, the men sat on their lumpy mountains of
equipment and waited. The truck drivers sat in their trucks on the ship and
waited. The tank men stayed close to their iron monsters and waited. The ships
moved out into their formations and the destroyers came tearing in and took up
their places on the flanks and before and after the ships. Out of sight, in
all directions, the fighting ships combed the ocean for submarines and the
listening devices strained for the signal which means a steel enemy is creeping
near. Over the convoy the silver balloons hung in the
southern sunlight, balloons to keep the dive-bombers off. And then the sun went
down. The balloons kept the sun for half an hour after it had gone from the
surface of the sea. There was radio silence now and the darkness came down and
the great convoy crept on toward Italy. The sea was smooth and only the weakest
stomachs were bothered. There were no lights showing, but a pale moon
lighted the dark ships somberly and the slow wakes disturbed the path of the
moon on the ocean. The combat troops sat on the luggage and
waited. This was what it was all for. They had left home for this. They had
studied and trained, changed their natures and their clothing and their habits
all toward this time. And still there were only a very few men who knew “D” day
and “H” hour. INVASIONSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
3, 1943—On the iron floors of the LCIs, which stands for Landing Craft
Infantry, the men sit about and for a time they talk and laugh and make jokes
to cover the great occasion. They try to reduce this great occasion to
something normal, something ordinary, something they are used to. They rag one
another, accuse one another of being scared, they repeat experiences of recent
days, and then gradually silence creeps over them and they sit silently because
the hugeness of the experience has taken them over. These are green troops. They have been trained
to a fine point, hardened and instructed, and they lack only one thing to make
them soldiers, enemy fire, and they will never be soldiers until they have it.
No one, least of all themselves, knows what they will do when the terrible
thing happens. No man there knows whether he can take it, knows whether he will
run away or stick, or lose his nerve and go to pieces, or will be a good
soldier. There is no way of knowing and probably that one thing bothers you
more than anything else. And that is the difference between green troops
and soldiers. Tomorrow at this time these men, those who are living, will be
different. They will know then what they can’t know tonight. They will know how
they face fire. Actually there is little danger. They are going to be good
soldiers, for they do not know that this is the night before the assault. There
is no way for any man to know it. In the moonlight on the iron deck they look at
each other strangely. Men they have known well and soldiered with are strange
and every man is cut off from every other one, and in their minds they search
the faces of their friends for the dead. Who will be alive tomorrow night? I
will, for one. No one ever gets killed in the war. Couldn’t possibly. There
would be no war if anyone got killed. But each man, in this last night in the
moonlight, looks strangely at the others and sees death there. This is the most
terrible time of all. This night before the assault by the new green troops.
They will never be like this again. Every man builds in his mind what it will be
like, but it is never what he thought it would be. When he designs the assault
in his mind he is alone and cut off from everyone. He is alone in the
moonlight and the crowded men about him are strangers in this time. It will not
be like this. The fire and the movement and the exertion will make him a part
of these strangers sitting about him, and they will be a part of him, but he does
not know that now. This is a bad time, never to be repeated. Not one of these men is to be killed. That is
impossible, and it is no contradiction that every one of them is to be killed.
Every one is in a way dead already. And nearly every man has written his letter
and left it somewhere to be posted if he is killed. The letters, some
misspelled, some illiterate, some polished and full of attitudes, and some
meager and tight. All say the same thing. They all say: “I wish I had told you,
and I never did, I never could. Some obscure and impish thing kept me from ever
telling you, and only now, when it is too late, can I tell you. I’ve thought
these things,” the letters say, “but when I started to speak something cut me
off. Now I can say it, but don’t let it be a burden on you. I just know that it
was always so, only I didn’t say it.” In every letter that is the message. The
piled-up reticences go down in the last letters. The letters to wives, and
mothers, and sisters, and fathers, and, such is the hunger to have been a part
of someone, letters sometimes to comparative strangers. The great ships move through the night though
they are covered now, and the engines make no noise. Orders are given in soft
voices and the conversation is quiet. Somewhere up ahead the enemy is waiting
and he is silent too. Does he know we are coming, and does he know when and in
what number? Is he lying low with his machine guns ready and his mortars set on
the beaches, and his artillery in the hills? What is he thinking now? Is he afraid
or confident? The officers know H-hour now. The moon is going
down. H-hour is 3:30, just after the moon has set and the shore is black. The
convoy is to moonward of the shore. Perhaps with glasses the enemy can see the
convoy against the setting moon, but ahead where we are going there is only
misty pearl-like grayness. The moon goes down into the ocean and ships that
have been beside you and all around you disappear into the blackness and only
the tiny shielded position-lights show where they are. The men sitting on the deck disappear into the
blackness and the silence, and one man begins to whistle softly just to be
sure he is there. SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
4, 1943—There is a good beach at Salerno, and a very good landing at Red
Beach No. 2. The ducks were coming loaded ashore and running up out of the
water and joining the lines of trucks, and the pontoon piers were out in the
water with large landing cars up against them. Along the beach the bulldozers
were at work pushing up sand ramps for the trucks to land on and just back of
the beach were the white tapes that mean land mines have not been cleared out. There are little bushes on the sand dunes at
Red Beach, south of the Sele River, and in a hole in the sand buttressed by sandbags
a soldier sat with a leather-covered steel telephone beside him. His shirt was
off and his back was dark with sunburn. His helmet lay in the bottom of the
hole and his rifle was on a little pile of brush to keep sand out of it. He had
staked a shelter half on a pole to shade him from the sun, and he had spread
bushes on top of that to camouflage it. Beside him was a water can and an empty
C-ration can to drink out of. The soldier said, “Sure you can have a drink.
Here, I’ll pour it for you.” He tilted the water can over the tin cup. “I hate
to tell you what it tastes like,” he said. I took a drink. “Well, doesn’t it?” he said. “It sure does,” I said. Up in the hills the .88s were popping and the
little bursts threw sand about. His face was streaked where the sweat had run
down through the dirt, and his hair and his eyebrows were sunburned almost
white. But there was a kind of gaiety about him. His telephone buzzed and he
answered it and said, “Hasn’t come through yet, sir, no sir I’ll tell him.” He
clicked off the phone. “When’d you come ashore?” he asked. And then,
without waiting for an answer, he went on. “I came in just before dawn
yesterday. I wasn’t with the very first, but right in the second.” He seemed to
be very glad about it. “It was hell,” he said, “it was bloody hell.” He seemed to
be gratified at the hell it was, and that was right. The great question had
been solved for him. He had been under fire. He knew now what he would do under
fire. He would never have to go through that uncertainty again. “I got pretty
near up to there,” he said, and pointed to two beautiful Greek temples about a
mile away. “And then I got sent back here for beach communications. When did
you say you got ashore?” And again he didn’t wait for an answer. “It was dark as hell,” he said, “and we were
just waiting out here,” He pointed to the sea where the mass of the invasion
fleet rested. “If we thought we were going to sneak ashore we were nuts,” he
said. “They were waiting for us. They knew just where we were going to land.
They had machine guns in the sand dunes and .88s on the hills. “We were out there all packed in an LCI, and
then all hell broke loose. The sky was full of it and the star shells lighted
it up and the tracers crisscrossed and the noise—we saw the assault go in, and
then one of them hit a surf mine and went up, and in the light you could see
them go flying about. I could see the boats land and the guys go wiggling and running,
and then maybe there’d be a lot of white lines and some of them would waddle
about and collapse and some would hit the beach. “It didn’t seem like men getting killed, more
like a picture, like a moving picture. We were pretty crowded up in there,
though, and then all of a sudden it came on me that this wasn’t a moving
picture. Those were guys getting the hell shot out of them, and then I got kind
of scared, but what I wanted to do mostly was move around. I didn’t like being
cooped up there where you couldn’t get away or get down close to the ground. “Well, the firing would stop and then it would
get pitch black even then, and it was just beginning to get light too, but the
.88s sort of winked on the hills like messages, and the shells were bursting
all around us. They had lots of .88s and they shot at everything. I was just
getting real scared when we got the order to move in, and I swear that is the
longest trip I ever took, that mile to the beach. I thought we’d never get
there. I figured that if I was only on the beach I could dig down and get out
of the way. There was too damned many of us there in that LCI. I wanted to
spread out. That one that hit the mine was still burning when we went on by it.
Then we bumped the beach and the ramps went down and I hit the water up to my
waist. “The minute I was on the beach I felt better. It
didn’t seem like everybody was shooting at me and I got up to that line of
brush and flopped down and some other guys flopped down beside me and then we
got feeling a little foolish. We stood up and moved on. Didn’t say anything to
each other, we just moved on. It was coming daylight then and the flashes of
the guns weren’t so bright. I felt a little like I was drunk. The ground heaved
around under my feet and I was dull. I guess that was because of the firing. My
ears aren’t so good yet. I guess we moved up too far because I got sent back
here.” He laughed openly. “I might have gone on right into Rome if someone
hadn’t sent me back. I guess I might have walked right up that hill there.” The cruisers began firing on the hill and the
.88s fired back. From over near the hill came the heavy thudding of .59-caliber
machine guns. The soldier felt pretty good. He knew what he could do now. He
said, “When did you say you came ashore?” MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October 6, 1943—You
can’t see much of a battle. Those paintings reproduced in history books which
show long lines of advancing troops are either idealized or else times and
battles have changed. The account in the morning papers of the battle of
yesterday was not seen by the correspondent, but was put together from
reports. What the correspondent really saw was dust and
the nasty burst of shells, low bushes and slit trenches. He lay on his stomach,
if he had any sense, and watched ants crawling among the little sticks on the
sand dune, and his nose was so close to the ants that their progress was
interfered with by it. Then he saw an advance. Not straight lines of
men marching into cannon fire, but little groups scuttling like crabs from bits
of cover to other cover, while the high chatter of machine guns sounded, and
the deep proom of shellfire. Perhaps the correspondent scuttled with them
and hit the ground again. His report will be of battle plan and tactics, of
taken ground or lost terrain, of attack and counter-attack. But these are some
of the things he probably really saw: He might have seen the splash of dirt and dust
that is a shell burst, and a small Italian girl in the street with her stomach
blown out, and he might have seen an American soldier standing over a twitching
body, crying. He probably saw many dead mules, lying on their sides, reduced to
pulp. He saw the wreckage of houses, with torn beds hanging like shreds out of
the spilled hole in a plaster wall. There were red carts and the stalled
vehicles of refugees who did not get away. The stretcher-bearers come back from the lines,
walking in off step, so that the burden will not be jounced too much, and the
blood dripping from the canvas, brother and enemy in the stretchers, so long as
they are hurt. And the walking wounded coming back with shattered arms and
bandaged heads, the walking wounded struggling painfully to the rear. He would have smelled the sharp cordite in the
air and the hot reek of blood if the going has been rough. The burning odor of
dust will be in his nose and the stench of men and animals killed yesterday and
the day before. Then a whole building is blown up and an earthy, sour smell
comes from its walls. He will smell his own sweat and the accumulated sweat of
an army. When his throat is dry he will drink the warm water from his canteen,
which tastes of disinfectant. While the correspondent is writing for you of
advances and retreats, his skin will be raw from the woolen clothes he has not
taken off for three days, and his feet will be hot and dirty and swollen from
not having taken off his shoes for days. He will itch from last night’s
mosquito bites and from today’s sand-fly bites. Perhaps he will have a little
sand-fly fever, so that his head pulses and a red rim comes into his vision.
His head may ache from the heat and his eyes burn with the dust. The knee that
was sprained when he leaped ashore will grow stiff and painful, but it is no
wound and cannot be treated. “The 5th Army advanced two kilometers,” he will
write, while the lines of trucks churn the road to deep dust and truck drivers
hunch over their wheels. And off to the right the burial squads are scooping
slits in the sandy earth. Their charges lie huddled on the ground and before
they are laid in the sand, the second of the two dog tags is detached so that
you know that that man with that Army serial number is dead and out of it. These are the things he sees while he writes of
tactics and strategy and names generals and in print decorates heroes. He takes
a heavily waxed box from his pocket. That is his dinner. Inside there are two
little packets of hard cake which have the flavor of dog biscuits. There is a
tin can of cheese and a roll of vitamin-charged candy, an envelope of lemon
powder to make the canteen water taste less bad, and a tiny package of our
cigarettes. That is dinner, and it will keep him moving for
several more hours and keep his stomach working and his heart pumping. And if
the line has advanced beyond him while he eats, dirty, bug-like children will
sidle up to him, cringing and sniffling, their noses ringed with flies, and
these children will whine for one of the hard biscuits and some of the vitamin
candy. They will cry for candy: “Caramela—caramela—caramela—okay,
okay, shank you, good-by.” And if he gives the candy to one, the ground will
spew up more dirty, bug-like children, and they will scream shrilly, “Caramela—caramela.”
The correspondent will get the communiquй and will write your morning dispatch
on his creaking, dust-filled portable: “General Clark’s 5th Army advanced two
kilometers against heavy artillery fire yesterday.” SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATRE, October
8, 1943—The invasion and taking of the beachhead at Salerno had been very
rough. The German was waiting for us. His .88s were on the surrounding hills
and his machine guns in the sand dunes. His mines were in the surf and he sat
there and waited for us. There was no other way. He had to be pushed out. And,
for a time, it looked as though we might be pushed out. But gradually, what
with the naval ships firing and the determined holding out of recently green
troops and the coming of our reserves from the sea, the picture has changed.
Now the invasion fleet lies in comparative safety off the shore and the beach
is secure. The sea has been smooth during the whole thing.
Any storm would have made it more difficult, but the sea has been kind to us.
It is as slick as silk and littered for many miles with little twinkling
C-ration cans floating in the sea and glittering under the sun. The water is
oily, too, and there are bits of wreckage floating everywhere and all the
garbage of this huge fleet, the crates and cans and bottles and debris that men
have the ability to scatter about. Near shore the cruisers and battleships
continue to fire, but now their guns are elevated and they fire over the
mountains at targets unseen from the sea. The command ship lies protected in the middle
of the invasion fleet. She is a floating radio station. From her all the orders
have gone out and to her all the news has come in. And the staffs are brutally
tired. This has not been the usual thing. The command ship has been bombed at
constantly. Her crew has been alerted every half-hour in the twenty-four. The
bugle is blown and then the boatswain’s pipe over the loudspeaker and then the
crackling horn that means battle stations. Then tired staff officers have taken
off their helmets and their lifebelts and made for the deck for their assigned
stations, while the anti-aircraft roared over their heads and the bombs came
down and burst the water into the air. Not many German planes have got through the air
cover, but some have and nearly every one was after the command ship. They have
straddled her with bombs. There have been near misses that jerked her in the
water and it is a wonder her plates aren’t sprung. And this has been going on for four days. No
one has had any sleep. What has made it even worse, the Jerry planes have been
talking to each other on their radios and not bothering to code their messages.
They have been looking for this particular ship and aiming for her. They know
that if they get this ship they may get the controlling brains of the whole
operation. There are very tired colonels and generals on
board, waiting for the order to go ashore and establish headquarters. They
will feel much better when they are ashore. It is not nice to be aboard the
target of the whole fleet. But the command ship has not been hit. Other ships
about her have been blasted, but not the command. The feeling aboard has been
that the luck is getting pretty thin and that the next one must get her. Meanwhile, the litter spreads out to sea on
little currents. There will be C-ration cans come ashore for a thousand miles.
The litter will coat the shores of Italy. What has made the command ship’s life even more
lively is that the Germans have a new bomb. At least, that is the rumor. This
bomb is released and then controlled from the plane. It is directed by radio,
and if it seems about to miss it can be turned by its master. At least that is
what is said. And surely these bombs do not seem to act like other ones. They
come down more slowly, and they glow as they come, with something like a phosphorescence
that you can even see in the daytime. When the red signal for an air attack goes out,
the destroyers move in circles, belching smoke, and the small smoke carriers
dart busily among the big ships, trailing ribbons of white, choking smoke which
smells like sulphur. The little boats weave in and out, until they have
covered the fleet with their artificial fog. The sound of coughing is
deafening. At least it is until the anti-aircraft starts. And then, through the
smoke, you hear the deep blow of the bombs. They don’t sound like anything
else. And their explosions come through the water and strike the ship. You can
feel them in your feet. The endless lines of landing craft go ashore,
carrying the supplies for men who are lying off in the bushes on the forward
lines. Cases of food and tons of shells and cartridges. A hell of them lines
the shore, waiting to be transported inland. And the battle line has moved up. The beach is
taken now and the invasion moves ahead. The white hospital ships move inshore
to take on their cargoes. PALERMOSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
1, 1943—The sea off Sicily was running in long, smooth waves without
whitecaps and the day was bright and the sea that Mediterranean blue that is
unlike any other blue in the world. The PT boat ground its way through, making
a great churned wake and taking even what little sea there was over the bow.
It’s the wettest boat of all, the torpedo boat. The crew, in their rubber
clothes, huddled on the deck trying to keep out of the constant spray, and on
each side of the bridge the machine-gunners, at their stations, sat in their
turrets behind their guns and the water glistened on their faces. The cartridge
cases of the .50-caliber shells were green from contact with the sea water. Off to the right a body was floating in the
sea, rising and falling on the long waves. It was pretty swollen, and the brown
lifebelt and collar made it float high in the water. The captain was dressed in a bathing suit and
he was barefooted. The First had a rubber coat on but his trousers were rolled
up and his feet were bare, too. The two of them looked off across the port
torpedo tube at the floating body. “Should we go over and take a look?” the First
said. “Not in the shape it’s in,” the captain said.
“Besides, we have to make our schedule.” The first said, “I think that’s the loneliest
thing in the world. A body floating at sea. I don’t know anything that looks so
alone.” The captain let go his hold on the torpedo tube
and turned and held onto the rail behind the port gun turret. “Before you came
on I had one that gave me the willies,” he said. He broke abruptly into his
story. “After Palermo fell,” he said, “there was a
night and a part of a day before the Seventh Army got to the city. I was on
patrol with five PTs and we got the flash and we were in the neighborhood
anyway, so we came to take a look. You know what Palermo looks like. That
great, big, strong mountain right beside the city and the crazy lights that get
on it and then the city spilled down there at the base. It looks like Ulysses
has just left there. You can really get the sense of Virgil from that mountain,
from the whole northern coast of Sicily, for that matter. It just stinks of the
classics. “Anyway, it was fairly late in the afternoon
when we came opposite the city and crept in next to the mole and sneaked
through. We were fixed to run if anything shot at us, but nothing did. We went
into the harbor and it was really shot to pieces. There were ships sunk all
over and twisted cranes and one little Italian destroyer lying over on its
side. “The Air Force really did a job on the
waterfront there. Buildings and docks and machinery and boats just blasted into
junk. What a junkman’s dream that was! What made me think of it was that the
water was oily from the blasted ships and there was a dead woman floating on
the oily water, face down and with her hair fanned out and floating behind her.
She bobbed up and down when our wake spread out in the harbor. “At first,” the captain said, “I didn’t know
what gave me a queer feeling and then it came to me. There wasn’t anybody
moving about on the shore at all. You take a wrecked city, why, there’s usually
someone poking around. But not here. I got the idea I’d like to go ashore. So
the First I had then and I, we pulled up between two wrecked fishing boats and
we got out a tommy gun apiece and we tied up and jumped ashore. “It’s kind of hard to imagine. Palermo is a
pretty big city. Except for the harbor and the waterfront, our bombers hadn’t
hurt it very much. Oh, there were some wrecks, but not to amount to anything. I
tell you, there wasn’t one living soul in that city. The population moved right
out into the hills and the troops hadn’t come yet. There wasn’t a soul. “You’d walk up a street where there were big
houses and the doors would be open and—just not anybody. I did see a cat go
streaking across the street, a pure white cat, but that’s the only living thing
there was. “You know those little painted carts the
Sicilians have, with scenes painted on them? Well, there were some of those
lying on their sides and the donkeys that pulled them were lying there dead, too. “The First and I walked up into the town. Every
once in a while I’d get the idea of going into one of the houses and just
seeing what they were like, but I couldn’t. It was quiet and there wasn’t a
breath of wind and the doors were open and I just couldn’t make myself go into
one of those houses. “We’d walked quite a good distance up into the
town, farther than we thought, when it began to get dark. Neither of us had
thought to bring a flashlight. Well, when we saw the dark coming, I think we
both got panicky without any reason. We started to walk back to the waterfront
and we kept going faster and faster and then we finally broke into a run. “There was something about that town that
didn’t want us there after dark. The open doors were black already and the
deep shadows were falling. We dog-trotted through the narrow streets and then I
got to thinking—there’s nobody here, but now if I see anybody it’s going to
scare me. It gets dark awfully quick there. It was pitch black in the narrow
streets, but you could see light above the houses. “It got so we were really running and when we
broke out on the dock and climbed over the wrecks, we were panting. The First
said to me, ‘A guy might have got lost in there and not got back all night.’
But he knew we had been scared, and I knew it too.” A hard dash of spray came over the bow of the
PT and splashed him in the face. “That gave me the willies,” the captain said.
“I think that scared me more than I’ve been scared for a long time. I got to
thinking about it and once or twice I had a dream about it. Come to think of
it, the whole thing was like a dream anyway, from that dead woman right on
through. But if I ever wanted to say how it was to be alone and panicky, I
think I’d think of that right away.” SOUVENIRSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
12, 1943—It is said, and with some truth, that while the Germans fight for
world domination and the English for the defense of England, the Americans
fight for souvenirs. This may not be the final end for our dogfaces, but it
helps. It is estimated that two divisions of American troops could carry away
the Great Pyramid, chip by chip, in twenty-four hours. This writer has seen pup
tents piled nearly to the ridge rope with nearly valueless mementos of places the
soldiers occupied. Dark back rooms of houses in Algeria and Palermo and
Messina, and by now probably Salerno, are roaring with the industry of making
bits of colored cloth and celluloid into gadgets to sell the soldiers. A soldier has been seen struggling down a
street in Palermo carrying a fifty-pound statuette of an angel in plaster of
Paris. It was painted blue and pink and had written on its base in gold paint,
“Balcome too Palermo.” How he ever expected to get it home no one will ever
know. If the homes of America ever receive the souvenirs that are being
collected by our troops there will be no room for living. The post office at an
African station recently stopped a sentimental present a soldier was sending
his wife. It was a prized possession and he had bought it from a Goum for 1000
francs. It was a quart jar of fingers pickled in brandy. It is reported that the pre-Roman Greek temples
at Salerno have suffered more from chipping by American soldiers in two weeks
than they did during the preceding three thousand years, and whereas they have
suffered the destructive rage of invaders for centuries they are not expected
to survive the admiring souvenir-hunting of our troops, who only want to send a
small chip home to the little woman. True souvenir-hunting has its rules. It does
not apply to the fighter group who transported a grand piano, piece by piece,
over a thousand miles. Nor to the bomber swing band who rescued a crushed bull
fiddle and mended it with airplane fix-it until it was four inches thick. They
wanted to use these things. Souvenir hunting, if properly done, only takes
notice of things that can’t possibly be used for anything at all and are too
big or too fragile ever to get home. Probably the greatest souvenir hunter of this
whole war is a private first class who must be nameless but is generally
called Bugs. Bugs, when the battle for Gela in Sicily had
abated, was poking about among the ruins, when he came upon a mirror—but such a
mirror as to amaze him. It had survived bombing and shellfire in some
miraculous manner, a matter which created wonder in Bugs. The mirror was six
feet two in height and four feet wide, and it was in a frame of carved and
painted wood which represented hundreds of small cupids wrestling and writhing
about a length of blue ribbon, which accidentally managed to cover every cupid
from indecency. The whole thing must have weighed about seventy-five pounds,
and it was so beautiful that it broke Bug’s heart. He just couldn’t leave it
behind. Bugs probably fought the toughest war in all
Sicily, for he carried the mirror on his back the whole way. When the shellfire
was bad, he turned his mirror face down and covered it with dirt. On advances
he left it and always came back in the night and got it again, although it entailed
marching twice as far as the rest of his outfit. Finally Bugs arranged a kind of sling, so that
while advancing he had the appearance of a charging billboard. He gradually
came to devote a good part of his life to the care, transportation, and protection
of the biggest souvenir in the whole Seventh Army. When he finally marched into
Palermo he did so in triumph, for his mirror was un-chipped and its frame was
only a little chewed up from handling. Now, for the first time, Bugs was billeted in a
house, one of those tall houses with iron balconies and narrow stairs. Bugs
tried in vain to get the mirror around a corner of the narrow stairway and
finally he got a rope and, tying one end of it to the balcony, he went back to
the street and tied the other end of it to his mirror. Then he went back and
hauled it up to the second floor, where he was billeted. There he surveyed the
room and decided where to hang his mirror. He drove a nail in the wall, hung
the mirror, and stepped back to admire it. And he had just stepped clear when
the nail pulled out and the whole thing crashed and broke into a million
pieces. Bugs regarded the mess sadly, but then the
great philosophy of the “blowed in the glass” souvenir-hunter took possession
of him. He said, “Oh, well, maybe it wouldn’t have looked good in our flat,
anyways.” WELCOMESOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
14, 1943—The Italian people may greet conquering American and British
troops with different methods in different parts of the country, but they act
always with enthusiasm that amounts to violence. One of their methods makes
soldiers a little self-conscious until they get used to it. Great crowds of
people stand on the sidewalks as the troops march by and simply applaud by
clapping their hands as though they applauded a show. This makes the troops
walk very stiffly, smiling self-consciously, half soldiers and half actors. But this hand-clapping is the most restrained
thing that they do. The soldiers get more embarrassed when they are overwhelmed
by Italian men who rush up to them, overpower them with embraces, and plant
great wet kisses on their cheeks, crying a little as they do it. A soldier
hates to push them away, but he is not used to being kissed by men, and all he
can do is to blush and try to get away as quick as possible. A third method of showing enthusiasm at being
conquered is to throw any fruit or vegetable which happens to be in season at
the occupying troops. In Sicily the grapes were ripe and many a soldier got a
swipe across the face with a heavy bunch of grapes tossed with the best will in
the world. The juice ran down inside their shirts, and
after a march of a few blocks troops would be pretty well drenched in grape
juice, which, incidentally, draws flies badly, and there is nothing to do about
it. You can’t drown such enthusiasm by making them not throw grapes. One of the most ridiculous and most dangerous
occupations, however, was the investment and capture of the island of Ischia.
There the people, casting about for some vegetable or floral tribute, found
that the most prominent and showy flower of the season was the pink amaryllis.
This is not a pleasant flower at the best, but in the hands of an enthusiastic
Italian crowd it can almost be a lethal weapon. A reasonable-sized bunch of amaryllis, with
big, thick stems, may weigh four pounds. In a short drive through the streets
of the city of Ischia, some of the troops were nearly beaten to death with
flowers, while one naval officer was knocked clear out of a car by a well-aimed
bouquet of these terrible flowers. His friends proposed him for a Purple Heart,
and wrote a report on his bravery in action. “Under a deadly hail of
amaryllis,” the report said, “Lieutenant Commander So-and-So fought his way through
the street, although badly wounded by this new and secret weapon.” A man could
easily be killed by an opponent armed with amaryllis. The pressures on the Italians must have been
enormous. They seem to go to pieces emotionally when the war is really and
truly over for them. Groups of them simply stand and cry—men, women, and
children. They want desperately to do something for the troops and they haven’t
much to work with. Bottles of wine, flowers, any kind of little gift. They rush
to the churches and pray, and then, being afraid to miss something, they rush
back to watch more troops. The Italian soldiers in Italy respond instantly to
an order to deliver their arms. They pile their rifles up in the streets so
quickly that you have the idea they are greatly relieved to get the damned
things out of their hands once for all. But whatever may have been true about the
Fascist government, it is instantly obvious that the Italian little people were
never our enemies. Whole towns could not put on such acts if they did not mean
it. But in nearly every community you will find a fat and sleek man, sometimes
a colonel, sometimes a civil administrator. Now and then he wears the silver
dagger with the gold tip on the scabbard, which indicates that he was one who
marched on Rome with Mussolini. In a country which has been hungry this man is
well fed and beautifully dressed. He has been living on these people since
Fascism came here, and he has not done badly for himself. On the surrender of a
community he is usually the first to offer to help in the government. He will
do anything to help if only he can just keep his graft and his power. It is to be hoped that he is never permitted
either to help or to stay in his position. Indeed, our commanders are usually
visited by committees of townspeople and farmers who ask that the local Fascist
be removed and kept under wraps. They know that if he ever gets power again he
will avenge himself on them. They hate him and want to be rid of him. And if
you ask if they were Fascists, most Italians will reply, “Sure, you were a
Fascist or you didn’t get any work, and if you didn’t work your family
starved.” And whether or not this is true, they seem to believe it thoroughly. As the conquest goes on up the length of Italy,
the crops are going to change. Some soldiers are already feeling an
apprehension for the cabbage districts and the potato harvest, if they too are
used as thrown tokens of love and admiration. THE LADY PACKSSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
15, 1943—There is a little island very close to the mainland near Naples
which has on it a very large torpedo works, one of the largest in Italy. When
Italy had surrendered, the Germans took the island, mined it thoroughly, and
ran the detonating wires under the water to the mainland, so that they could
blow up the torpedo works if it seemed likely to be captured. The Germans left
a few guards, heavily armed, and they also left an Italian admiral and his wife
as a sort of hostage to the explosives planted all over the little island. To a small Anglo-American naval force a curious
order came. One single torpedo boat was to take on some British commandos, who
were to go ashore in secrecy, cut the wires to the mainland, kill the German
guards, and evacuate the Italian admiral and his wife. The boat assigned was a motor torpedo boat and
it lay alongside a pier in the afternoon and waited for the commandos to come
aboard. The celebrated commandos, the great swashbucklers, took their time in
arriving. In fact, they arrived nearly at dusk, five of them, which to their
mind is a large military force. And these were very strange men. They were small, tired-looking men who might
have been waiters or porters at a railroad station. Their backs were slightly
bent and their knees knobby and they walked with a shuffling gait. Their huge
shoes, with thick rubber soles, looked far too large for them. They were
dressed in faded shorts and open shirts, and their arms were an old-fashioned
revolver and a long, wicked knife for each. Their leader looked like a weary
and petulant mouse who wanted more than anything else in the world to get back
to a good safe job in an insurance office with the certainty that his pension
would not be held up. These five monsters came shambling aboard and
went immediately below decks to get a cup of tea and a slice of that cake which
tastes a little like fish. They sat mournfully in the tiny wardroom, mooning
over their tea and scratching the mosquito bites on their lumpy knees. When it was dark the MTB slipped from the dock
and crept out to sea toward the island. The moon was very bright and had to be
taken into account. But it was thought that in the indefinite light the action
would be easier to accomplish. The motors were muffled, and the small, powerful
boat pushed quietly through a smooth, moonlit sea. On the deck the rubber boat which was to take
the raiders ashore was inflated and ready. The gun crew sat quietly at their
stations. Just before midnight the boat lay to, and the black outline of the
island was not far ahead. Then the commandos came stumbling out of the
companionway and stood about on the deck. The captain of the torpedo boat said,
“You have all the plans now—cut the wires, kill the guards if possible, and
bring out the admiral and his lady. How long do you think that will take you?” The leader of the commandos gave the subject
his consideration, tapping his lips with his finger. “We should be back in an
hour,” he said at last. “An hour? Why, it can’t take that long. If you
take that long you won’t be able to do it at all.” “Oh, the guards business and the wires,” the
commandos explained, “that won’t take long.” “What will, then?” the captain demanded. “Well, the admiral’s wife will need time to
pack,” the commando said. “She doesn’t know we’re coming. She won’t have her
things ready.” And with that they laid the rubber boat over the side and
paddled silently away. For an hour the MTB lay in the moonlight,
waiting. The sailors kept close watch on the dark island and nothing happened.
There were no shots, there were no lights on the blacked-out island. The whole
thing was dead and quiet in the misty moonlight. At ten minutes of the hour the captain began to
look at his watch every half-minute, and he muttered to himself about E-boat
patrols and the necessity for not putting his ship in danger for nonsense. If
there had been any activity ashore he would at least know there was fighting of
some kind. At five minutes of the hour a big shape showed
on the water, and because everything is potentially dangerous the gunners swung
their machine guns on it and waited for it to identify itself. It approached,
and it was a rubber boat. It gently nudged the side of the MTB and a little,
slender woman was helped over the side, and then a quite stout admiral in a
beautiful overcoat, although the night was warm. These figures went immediately
below, but the leader of the commandos said, “Bert, you will go back with me.”
Three of the men climbed aboard the MTB, and the rubber boat shoved off again
and moved back toward the island. The three remaining commandos stood limply on
the deck. The MTB captain was impatient. “Accomplish the mission?” he asked. “Yes, sir, there were eight guards, not seven.” “You didn’t take them?” “No, sir.” The captain’s eyes went quickly to the long,
thin knife at the man’s belt, and the commando nervously, almost
apologetically, fingered its steel hilt. “What have they gone back for?” “The lady’s trunk, sir. We couldn’t get it in
the boat. There wasn’t room with the rest of us. They’ve gone back for her
trunk. Quite a large one. Old-fashioned kind with a hump on it, you know.” The captain put his hands on his hips and
studied the little man. “Sir?” the commando began. “Yes, I know. And I wish it was beer, but there
isn’t any.” He called softly into the companionway, “Joel,
oh, Joel, get some water on. There’ll be five teas wanted in a moment.” CAPRISOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
18, 1943—The day after the island of Capri was taken and before any of the
admirals and generals had found it necessary to inspect the defenses of its
rocky cliffs and hazardous wine cellars a group of sailors from a destroyer in
the harbor strolled along one of the beautiful tree-lined paths. They were
inspecting defenses too, the island’s and their own, and they found their own
lacking in initiative. The hill was steep and there were gardens above and
below the path. As they strolled along a shrill little voice
came from under a grape arbor below the way. “I say,” said the voice. The naval men looked over the low wall and saw
a tiny old woman—a little bit of a woman—dressed in black, who came scrambling
from under the grapevines and climbed up the steps like a puppy. She was
breathless. “I hope you won’t mind,” she panted. “It was
very good to hear English spoken. I am English, you know.” She paused to let this tremendous fact sink in.
She was dressed in decent and aging black. She never had made the slightest
concession to Italy. Her costume would have done her honor and protected her
from scandal in Finchley. Her eyes danced with pleasure, wise, small,
humorous eyes. “They speak Italian here,” she said brightly, and it was obvious
that she did not if she could help it. “And the Germans came,” she said, “and I
haven’t heard much English. That is why I should like just to hear you talk. I
like Americans,” she explained, and you could see that she was willing to take
any kind of criticism for this attitude. “I haven’t heard any English. The
Germans came, but I said that, didn’t I? Well, anyway, the war came and I
couldn’t get out, and that is three years, isn’t it? And do you know it has
been a year since I have had a cup of tea, over a year—you will hardly believe
that.” The communications officer said, “We have tea
aboard. I could bring you a packet this afternoon.” The little woman danced from one foot to the
other like a child. “N-o-o-o,” she said excitedly. “Why—what fun, what fun.” Signals said, “Is there anything else you need,
because maybe I could bring that to you too?” For a moment the old bright eyes surveyed him,
measuring him. “You couldn’t—” she began, and paused. “You couldn’t bring a
little pat of—butter?” “Sure I could,” said Signals. “N-o-o-o,” she cried, and she began to hop like
a child at hopscotch. She held up a finger. “If you’ll bring me a little pat of
butter I will make some scones, real scones, and we’ll have a party. Won’t that
be fun? Won’t that be fun?” She danced with excitement. “Imagine,” she
said. “I’ll bring it this afternoon,” said Signals. “You see, I was caught here and then the
Germans came. They didn’t do me really any harm. They were just here,” she said
seriously. “All of my people are in Australia. I have no family in England any
more.” Her old eyes became sad without any transition. “I don’t know how they
are,” she said. “I have had two letters in three years. It takes nearly a year
to get a letter.” Signals said, “If you will write a letter I’ll
pick it up when I bring the butter and tea and will mail it at the first port.” She looked at him sternly. “And how long will
that take to get to Australia?” she demanded. “Oh, I don’t know. A few weeks.” “N-o-o-o,” she cried, and she began to dance
again, little dainty dancing steps, with her arms held slightly out from her
sides and her wrists bent down. Her shrill little bird voice laughed and her
pale old eyes were wet. “Why,” she cried. “Why, that will be more fun than
tea.” SEA WARFARESOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
19, 1943—The plans for Task Force X were nearly complete. The officers had
coffee in a restaurant in a North African city. The tall, nervous one, a
lieutenant commander and a student of mines—contact, magnetic, and those
vibration mines which react to the engine of a ship—leaned over the table. “I conceive naval warfare to be much like chamber
music,” he said. “Thirty-caliber machine guns, those are the violins, the
fifties are the violas, six-inch guns are perfect cellos.” He looked a little sad. “I’ve never had
sixteen-inch guns to compose with. I have never had any bass.” He leaned back
in his chair. “The composition—the tactics of chamber music—are much the same
as a well-conceived and planned naval engagement. Destroyers out, why, that
will be the statement of theme, the screening attack, and all preparing for the
great statement of the battleships.” He leaned back farther and tipped his
chair against the wall and hooked his heels over the lower rung. A lieutenant (j.g.) laughed. “He always talks
like that. If he didn’t know so much about mines we would think he was crazy.” “You haven’t been in battle, in a good naval
engagement, and you don’t know anything about chamber music,” said the
lieutenant commander. “I’ll show you something tonight if you’ll go with me.” The jeep moved through the blackout. The
streets of the city were fined with military trucks and heavy equipment, all
moving toward the harbor where the ships were loading for Italy. The jeep,
running counter to the traffic, climbed the hill and went over the ridge and
into the valley on the other side, into a valley which had at one time been a
place of vineyards and small country houses. But now it was a vast storage
ground for shells and trucks and tanks, lined and stacked and parked, waiting
to get aboard the ships for Italy. The moon lighted the masses of material getting
ready for war. “Where are you taking us?” the lieutenant
asked. “You’ll see. Just be patient.” The jeep pulled up to a very white wall that
extended off into the distance and disappeared into the pearly in-definiteness
of the moonlight. A high gate of iron bars and spikes opened in the wall. The
lieutenant commander went to the gate and pulled a rope that hung there, and a
small bell called softly. In a moment a white-robed figure appeared at the
gate, a tall man with a long, dark beard. “Yes?” he asked softly. “May we come in?” the lieutenant commander
asked. “May we come in for evensong?” “Yes. of course,” the brother said. He pulled
at one side of the gate and the hinges cried a little. Inside the wall was a lovely garden in the
moonlight. No war material at all. Everything was cut out except flowers and
the little sound of running water and the thick outline of a sturdy church
against a luminous sky. The lieutenant (j.g.) said, “You speak very good
English.” “I should,” said the brother. “I was born in
Massachusetts.” “American?” “We come from all over. We have Germans and
French, and even a Chinese. Some Russians, too.” The party moved slowly up the path and came to
the little fountain which made the dripping sound and put a cool emphasis on a
hot night. “The song has already started,” the brother said. “Walk quietly.” The way went among the walls of flowering
shrubs and then up two outside steps, and then into a dark hallway, and finally
through an entrance into a place that was familiar and strange. Over the rail
and below was the body of the church, only you could not see it, for only one
candle was burning, and it merely suggested the size and height. It picked out
a corner and an arch and a point of gold, and your mind filled in the rest.
Lined below, just visible, were the rows of the white brothers. And then their
voices came softly and swelling, singing the ancient music, the disembodied and
unimpassioned music, of which Mozart said he would rather have written one
chant than all his own. The evensong rose higher and higher, and it was rather
like the dimness of the arched roof overhead. The great, vague room swelled and
pulsed with the sound, and then it died and one single voice took it up and the
others joined in and the candle flame darted about on its wick. The sound of the trucks and the half-tracks and
the pound of the tanks came vaguely from the distance and the music rose to a
high note and stopped. The lines of white figures filed slowly out and a hand
came into the candlelight and pinched out the flame. The jeep went back into the city, and this time
it went very slowly because it was caught between a weapons carrier and a troop
truck loaded with sleepy, upright soldiers who swayed when the truck struck a
rough stretch of street. The lieutenant (j.g.) was very quiet. Some
paradox worried him. He said, “The change from one thing to another was too
quick. There was no time to get used to it. You should have time to get used to
things like that.” “There was actually no change,” the lieutenant
commander said. “I’ve always thought that naval warfare was composed like
chamber music. There wasn’t any change. You just saw two sides of the same
thing. You can’t make islands of experiences. They relate just exactly as the
strings relate in a quartet. Maybe you’ll see in a day or two when we get into
action. You haven’t been in action, have you?” THE WORRIED BARTENDERSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
20, 1943—When our small American force had captured the island of Capri
with no resistance whatsoever on its part or on ours, it was only natural that sooner
or later we should meet Luigi the bartender. Luigi had kept warm during the
whole war a love of Americans based, he freely admitted, on a memory of tips in
the nicer days when American tourists came to bathe in the Blue Grotto and the
pink wine. When sailors and officers from the little force inspected the
defenses of Luigi’s bar and found them formidable. Luigi was cordial but sad. He
spoke the English we know, the English of the banana pushcarts and the
pizzerias, of the spaghetti joints and grind organs. Luigi’s dialect sounded like
home. Luigi was gay but sad. His joy had a habit of
falling off in the middle and dissipating. One afternoon, after each one of us
had tried to remember a man named Giuseppe Marinari, of Gary, Indiana, who was
Luigi’s third cousin, we inquired into his sadness. And only then did his
trouble come out with a rush. It seemed that Luigi had a daughter and, more
than that, he had an incipient grandchild. But this daughter and this
expectation were across the little stretch of water in Castellammare. And what
was worse, the Germans were moving up on Castellammare and we were not there in
enough force either to repel or to intercept them. Consequently it seemed that
Luigi’s daughter was very likely to have her child in a shell hole, illuminated
by star shells and parachute flares and possibly speeded up by bomb bursts.
Luigi was worried and upset because, he explained, it was not as though he had
other daughters or grandchildren. This was his sole chick, due to some
misfortune or deformity, the reason for which was known only to God. And as
Luigi poured out his story he also poured out Scotch whisky that had been
buried in the earth in back of his bar ever since the war started. Going back to the ship, the little group could
not lose the sadness that Luigi had planted in it. “How would you like it to
happen to your family?” Lieutenant Blank said. “Why, you can look across to
Castellammare.” On this basis the group visited the commodore
in the wardroom of his flagship. They told their story and the commodore looked
gravely over his coffee cup at them. And his very calm blue eyes got bright
with amusement. “What do you want me to do,” he asked, “attack Castellammare?” “No, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank. “But we have
six captured Italian MS boats. How would it be if we took one of them and just
went over and got her? It would only take an hour or less.” “And suppose you lost the boat and got yourself
killed?” “We wouldn’t do that, sir. We would just run
over and get her. We could do it in practically a few minutes.” The commodore said, “I can’t permit it. The
thing is out of the question. The thing is silly. We’re trying to run a war,
not a maternity hospital. And besides, I have work for you to do. You can’t go
running about like this.” “Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank. “These are your orders,” said the commodore.
“You are to take one of the MS boats and patrol the coast of the mainland,
particularly in the area about Castellammare. You will report the presence of
any German shipping there and if you see any hostile craft you will report it
and engage it. It may be necessary for you to go pretty far inshore to carry
out these orders. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank, “but I sure
wish we could have got that girl off.” “This is no time for sentiment,” the commodore
said. The thing was very quick. It required only to
pull up to the little dock at the little town and to ask for Luigi’s daughter.
In ten minutes she was at the dock carrying a bundle of clothing and, in our
estimation, she was a little closer than even Luigi suspected. And then the
Isotta-Fraschini engines of the MS boat purred and the white wake spread away
from the boat and she cut through the water back to Capri, for MS boats do not
ride on top of the water, they knife through it. The rest was very silly. Luigi was at the
waterfront and he cried and his daughter cried and about a thousand Caprianos
cried and the sound of kissing was deafening and a lot of sailors looked gruff
and a kind of triumphant procession went up the hill on the funicular railway
and there was something in the nature of a party at Luigi’s bar. The child, no
matter what its sex, is going to have Lieutenant Blank’s first name, and not
only Luigi but all Luigi’s relatives are going to remember all of us in their
prayers for hundreds of years to come. So much for the assurances. But the next
morning a party of five went up on the hill to get haircuts. We were sitting reading
copies of The London Pictorial for 1937 and waiting for the one barber
chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a
little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in
the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi
appeared with his little tray. It was a pretty nice day. THE CAMERA MAKES SOLDIERSSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
21, 1943—I suppose that there is no weapon which so slyly and surely
attacks the souls of men as a moving-picture camera does. Men who are disgusted
or hurt or just plain ignorant react to a Bell & Howell Eyemo as a frog
does to a hot rock. One of our best sports writers suggested one time that the
best way to get touchdowns in football was to mount a newsreel camera between
the goal posts. It is a secret weapon which dissects people and brings out the
curious childish ego that everyone has and lays it spread out thick on the
surface. Recently in Africa and Sicily and Italy we (not
editorial we, but a cameraman and I) were working on a technical picture for
the Army and there we discovered that the same force that operates at Long
Island garden parties and at tennis matches also works on a battle line. It
worked everywhere. Weary troops straightened up and marched stiffly and some of
them tried to hog the camera and some of them looked fierce and soldierly. All
shoulders went back and steps quickened. The thinly covered actor in everyone
came out. A line of Army stevedores on a dock in a North African port suddenly,
on seeing the camera, began to pass boxes of C-rations with a speed and rhythm
which has probably never been duplicated in Army history. Of course the moment
the camera was moved they went back to a much more sensible, goldbricking pace,
but for the few feet of film we have, the boxes shot by and piled up in a
mountain out of camera range. The impact of the camera is by no means limited
to the Americans. Our picture had to do with all kinds of work and all kinds of
men. One day we set up on a barge where a number of Arabs were employed to
unload cargo and, incidentally, were doing the finest bit of sleepwalking I
have ever seen. Each Arab regarded each box as a personality he didn’t like,
touched with reluctance, and got rid of with relief. His repugnance, however,
did not make him carry it to its destination with any speed that required
streamlining. With these people we did not find any speedup when the camera
was produced. The moment it began to turn, every Arab stood up grandly and
presented his profile and looked sternly toward Mecca. Time and time again we
tried to catch them in what is called a natural pose, not of work, because that
would be a contradiction in terms, but just relaxed and looking Arab. But
either they had seen too many Hollywood films of Valentino as an Arab, or a
Valentino had studied Arabs under the impact of the camera. We never caught
them any other way except looking sternly offstage, always in profile and
always noble. We had wanted to get them relaxed because I suppose Arabs have as
few noble moments as anyone in the world. Bushmen may compete with them in this
respect but I doubt it. And they could not be fooled. They knew when the camera
was turning and when it wasn’t. They were as highly trained in stealing scenes
from each other as dress extras in Hollywood. Finally we gave up. They will
continue noble as far as we are concerned. We will perpetuate this myth of the
noble Arab. The moment we stopped shooting they collapsed into natural Arabs,
but we never got it on film. The camera works everywhere. There is no
ferocity like that on the face of a quarterback who is running, not at an
opponent but at newsreel coverage on a tripod. And this may all be egotism, but
there was one example of something that seemed to be much more than this. One
day we set up the camera to photograph the discharge of the cargo of a hospital
ship which had been loaded in Sicily. The side doors of the ship were opened
and the wooden platform was extended. The lines of ambulances were drawn up on
the pier, and then the stretcher-bearers came down in a steady line with the
wounded men sitting and lying and huddled and stretched out in positions indicated
by the nature of their wounds. Some of them were sick with pain, were gray with
pain, and some were only slightly hurt so that their eyes were clear. And not
one single man as he passed the camera failed to respond to it. Everyone gave
it either a smile or a little nod. Some saluted it gravely. The rigid features
changed and the eyes brightened, and if an arm could move it moved in greeting.
I think this was not egotism. I think these men, each one of them, had a quick
thought. “Someone at home will see this picture. I must appear less badly hurt
than I am. Otherwise they might worry.” I think those tired smiles were a great
hunk of consideration and courage. THE STORY OF AN ELFMonday, November 1, 1943—This story
could not be written if there were not witnesses—not vague unknown men, but
Quentin Reynolds and H. R. Knickerbocker and Clark Lee and Jack Belden, who was
hurt at Salerno, and John Lardner and a number of others who will come
clamoring forward if anyone doubts the facts here to be presented. The thing began when a British consul met
Quentin Reynolds in the hall of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers. The consul was a
small, innocent, well-mannered man who liked to think of the British and
Americans as allies and who was willing to make amicable gestures. In good
faith he asked Reynolds where he was staying and in equal good faith Reynolds
replied that he had not yet been billeted. “There’s an extra bed in my room,” the consul
said. “You’re welcome to it if you like.” That was the beginning, and what happened was
nobody’s fault. It was just one of those accidents. The consul had a nice room
with a balcony that overlooked the harbor and from which you could watch air
raids. It wasn’t Reynolds’ fault. He accepted hospitality for himself, not for
the nine other war correspondents who moved in with him. Nine is only a working
number. Sometimes there were as many as eighteen. They slept on the floor, on
the balcony, in the bathroom, and some even slept in the hall outside the door
of Room 140, Alletti Hotel, Algiers. It was generally agreed that the consul should
have his own bed, that is, if he kept it. But let him get up to go to the
bathroom and he returned to find Knickerbocker or Lee or Belden, or all three,
in it. Another thing bothered the consul a little. Correspondents don’t sleep
much at night. They talked and argued and sang so that the poor consul didn’t
get much rest. There was too much going on in his room. He had to work in the
daytime, and he got very little sleep at night. Toward the end of the week he
took to creeping back in the middle of the afternoon for a nap. He couldn’t get
his bed then. Someone always had it. But at three in the afternoon it was
usually quiet enough so that he could curl up on the floor and get a little
rest. The foregoing is not the unbelievable
part—quite the contrary. It is what follows that will require witnesses. It was
during one of the all-night discussions of things in general that someone,
perhaps Clark Lee, perhaps Dour Jack Belden, suggested that we were getting
very tired of Algerian wine and wouldn’t it be nice if we had some Scotch. From
that point on this is our story and we intend to stick to it. Someone must have rubbed something, a ring or a
lamp or perhaps the utterly exhausted British consul. At any rate, there was a
puff of blue smoke and standing in the room was a small man with pointed ears
and a very jolly stomach. He wore a suit of green leather and his cap and the
toes of his shoes ended in sharp points and they were green too. “Saints of Galway,” said Reynolds. “Do you see
what I see?” “Yes,” said Clark Lee, “Well, do you believe it?” “No,” said Lee, who is after all a realist and
was at Corregidor. Jack Belden has lived in China for many years
and he knows about such things. “Who are you?” he asked sternly. “I’m little Charley Lytle,” the elf said. “Well, what do you want, popping in on us?”
Belden cried. The British consul groaned and turned over and
pulled the covers over his head. Knickerbocker has since admitted that his
first impulse was to kill the elf and stuff him to go beside the sailfish in
his den. In fact, he was creeping up when Charley Lytle held up his hand. “When war broke out I tried to enlist,” he
said. “But I was rejected on political grounds. It isn’t that I have any
politics,” he explained. “But the Army’s position is that if I did have, heaven
knows what they would be. There hasn’t been a Republican leprechaun since
Coolidge. So I was rejected pending the formation of an Elves-in-Exile
Battalion. I decided then that I would just make people happy, soldiers and war
correspondents and things like that.” Reynolds’ eyes narrowed dangerously. He is very
loyal. “Are you insinuating that we aren’t happy?” he gritted. “That my friends
aren’t happy?” “I’m not happy,” said the British consul, but
no one paid any attention to him. Little Charley Lytle said, “I heard some
mention made of Scotch whisky. Now it just happens that I have—” “How much?” said Clark Lee, who is a realist. “Why, all you want.” “I mean how much money?” Lee demanded. “You don’t understand,” said little Charley.
“There is no money involved. It is my contribution to the war—I believe you
call it effort.” “I’m going to kill him,” cried Knickerbocker.
“Nobody can sneer at my war and get away with it.” Reynolds said, “Could we get a case?” “Surely,” said little Charley. “Three cases?” “Certainly.” Lee broke in. “Now don’t you strain him. You
don’t know what his breaking point is.” “When can you deliver?” Reynolds asked. Instead of answering, little Charley Lytle made
a dramatic and slightly ribald gesture. There was one puff of smoke and he had
disappeared. There followed three small explosions, like a series of tiny depth
charges, and on the floor of Room 140 of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers lay three
cases of Haig and Haig Pinch Bottle, ringed with the hot and incredulous eyes
of a platoon of thirsty correspondents. Reynolds breathed heavily the way a man does
when he has a stroke. “A miracle!” he whispered. “A miracle straight out of the
middle ages or Mary Roberts Rinehart.” Dour Jack Belden has lived a long time in
China. On top of a basic pessimism, he has seen everything and is difficult to
impress. His eyes now wandered out the arched window to the sweltering streets
and the steaming harbor below. “It’s a medium good trick,” he said. “But it’s a
cold-weather trick. I’d like to give him a real test.” He ignored the growl of
growing rage from his peers. “If this so-called Elf could produce a bottle of
say La Batt’s Pale India Ale on a day like this, I’d say he was a commer—” He
was interrupted by a slight fall of snow from the hot and fly-specked ceiling.
Our eyes followed the lazy white flakes to the floor, where they fell on a box
of slim-necked bottles. The snow swirled and spelled out Courtesy of Canada
in the air. I think Jack Belden went too far. He said
lazily, “But is it cold?” Reynolds flung himself forward and touched the
neck of a bottle. “Colder than a (two words deleted by censor),” he said. That night there was an air raid, and even the
British consul enjoyed it. And anyone who doesn’t believe this story can ask
any of the people involved, even dour Jack Belden. MAGIC PIECESNovember 3, 1943—A great many soldiers
carry with them some small article, some touchstone or lucky piece or symbol
which, if they are lucky in battle, takes on an ever-increasing importance. And
being lucky in battle means simply not being hurt. The most obvious magic
amulets, of course, are the rabbits’ feet on sale in nearly all gift stores.
St. Christopher medals are carried by Catholics and non-Catholics alike and in
many cases are not considered as religious symbols at all, but as simple lucky
pieces. A novelty company in America has brought out a
Testament bound in steel covers to be carried in the shirt pocket over the
heart, a gruesome little piece of expediency which has faith in neither the
metal nor the Testament but hopes that a combination may work. Many of these
have been sold to parents of soldiers, but I have never seen one carried. That
particular pocket is for cigarettes and those soldiers who carry Testaments, as
many do, carry them in their pants pockets, and they are never considered as
lucky pieces. The magic articles are of all kinds. There will
be a smooth stone, an odd-shaped piece of metal, small photographs encased in
cellophane. Many soldiers consider pictures of their wives or parents to be
almost protectors from danger. One soldier had removed the handles from his
Colt .45 and had carved new ones out of Plexiglas from a wrecked airplane. Then
he had installed photographs of his children under the Plexiglas so that his
children looked out of the handles of his pistol. Sometimes coins are considered lucky and rings
and pins, usually articles which take their quality from some intimacy with
people at home, a gift or the symbol of some old emotional experience. One man
carries a locket his dead wife wore as a child and another a string of amber
beads his mother once made him wear to ward off colds. The beads now ward off
danger. It is interesting that, as time in action goes
on, these magics not only become more valuable and dear but become more secret
also. And many men make up small rituals to cause their amulets to become
active. A smooth stone may be rubbed when the tracers are cutting lines about a
man’s head. One sergeant holds an Indian-head penny in the palm of his left
hand and against the stock of his rifle when he fires. He is just about
convinced that he cannot miss if he does this. The employment of this kind of
magic is much more widespread than is generally known. As time goes on, and dangers multiply and
perhaps there is a narrow escape or so, the amulet not only takes on an
increasing importance but actually achieves a kind of personality. It becomes a
thing to talk to and rely on. One such lucky piece is a small wooden pig only
about an inch long. Its owner, after having tested it over a period of time and
in one or two tight places, believes that this little wooden pig can accomplish
remarkable things. Thus, in a bombing, he held the pig in his hand and said,
“Pig, this one is not for us.” And in a shelling, he said, “Pig, you know that
the one that gets me, gets you.” But in addition to simply keeping its owner
safe from harm, this pig has been known to raise a fog, smooth out a high sea, procure
a beefsteak in a restaurant which had not had one for weeks. It is rumored
further that this pig in the hands of a previous owner has commuted an execution,
cured assorted cases of illness, and been the direct cause of at least one
considerable fortune. This pig’s owner would not part with him for anything. The association between a man and his amulet
becomes not only very strong but very private. This is partly a fear of being
laughed at, but also a feeling grows that to tell about it is to rob it of some
of its powers. Also there is the feeling that the magic must not be called on
too often. The virtue of the piece is not inexhaustible. It can run down,
therefore it is better to use it sparingly and only to call on it when the need
is great. Novelty companies have taken advantage of this
almost universal urge toward magic. They turn out lucky rings by the thousands
and coins and little figures, but these have never taken hold the way the
associational gadgets do. Whatever the cause of this reliance on magic
amulets, in wartime it is so. And the practice is by no means limited to
ignorant or superstitious men. It would seem that in times of great danger and
great emotional tumult a man has to reach outside himself for help and comfort,
and has to have some supra-personal symbol to hold to. It can be anything at
all, an old umbrella handle or a religious symbol, but he has to have it.
There are times in war when the sharpest emotion is not fear, but loneliness
and littleness. And it is during these times that the smooth stone or the
Indian-head penny or the wooden pig are not only desirable but essential.
Whatever atavism may call them up, they appear and they seem to fill a need.
The dark world is not far from us—from any of us. SYMPTOMSNovember 5, 1943—During the years
between the last war and this one, I was always puzzled by the reticence of
ex-soldiers about their experiences in battle. If they had been reticent men it
would have been different, but some of them were talkers and some were even
boasters. They would discuss their experiences right up to the time of battle
and then suddenly they wouldn’t talk any more. This was considered heroic in
them. It was thought that what they had seen or done was so horrible that they
didn’t want to bring it back to haunt them or their listeners. But many of
these men had no such consideration in any other field. Only recently have I found what seems to be a
reasonable explanation, and the answer is simple. They did not and do not
remember—and the worse the battle was, the less they remember. In all kinds of combat the whole body is
battered by emotion. The ductless glands pour their fluids into the system to
make it able to stand up to the great demand on it. Fear and ferocity are
products of the same fluid. Fatigue toxins poison the system. Hunger followed
by wolfed food distorts the metabolic pattern already distorted by the
adrenalin and fatigue. The body and the mind so disturbed are really ill and
fevered. But in addition to these ills, which come from the inside of a man and
are given him so that he can temporarily withstand pressures beyond his
ordinary ability, there is the further stress of explosion. Under extended bombardment or bombing the nerve
ends are literally beaten. The ear drums are tortured by blast and the eyes
ache from the constant hammering. This is how you feel after a few days of
constant firing. Your skin feels thick and insensitive. There is a salty taste
in your mouth. A hard, painful knot is in your stomach where the food is
undigested. Your eyes do not pick up much detail and the sharp outlines of objects
are slightly blurred. Everything looks a little unreal. When you walk, your
feet hardly seem to touch the ground and there is a floaty feeling all over
your body. Even the time sense seems to be changed. Men who are really moving
at a normal pace seem to take forever to pass a given point. And when you move
it seems to you that you are very much slowed down, although actually you are
probably moving more quickly than you normally do. Under the blast your eyeballs are so beaten
that the earth and the air seems to shudder. At first your ears hurt, but then
they become dull and all your other senses become dull, too. There are
exceptions, of course. Some men cannot protect themselves this way and they
break, and they are probably the ones we call shell-shocks cases. In the dullness all kinds of emphases change.
Even the instinct for self-preservation is dulled so that a man may do things
which are called heroic when actually his whole fabric of reactions is changed.
The whole world becomes unreal. You laugh at things which are not ordinarily
funny and you become enraged at trifles. During this time a kind man is capable
of great cruelties and a timid man of great bravery, and nearly all men have
resistance to stresses beyond their ordinary ability. Then sleep can come without warning and like a
drug. Gradually your whole body seems to be packed in cotton. All the main
nerve trunks are deadened, and out of the battered cortex curious dreamlike
thoughts emerge. It is at this time that many men see visions. The eyes fasten
on a cloud and the tired brain makes a face of it, or an angel or a demon. And
out of the hammered brain strange memories are jolted loose, scenes and words
and people forgotten, but stored in the back of the brain. These may not be
important things, but they come back with startling clarity into the awareness
that is turning away from reality. And these memories are almost visions. And then it is over. You can’t hear, but there
is a rushing sound in your ears. And you want sleep more than anything, but
when you do sleep you are dream-ridden, your mind is uneasy and crowded with
figures. The anesthesia your body has given you to protect you is beginning to
wear off, and, as with most anesthesia, it is a little painful. And when you wake up and think back to the
things that happened they are already becoming dreamlike. Then it is not
unusual that you are frightened and ill. You try to remember what it was like,
and you can’t quite manage it. The outlines in your memory are vague. The next
day the memory slips farther, until very little is left at all. A woman is said
to feel the same way when she tries to remember what childbirth was like. And
fever leaves this same kind of vagueness on the mind. Perhaps all experience which
is beyond bearing is that way. The system provides the shield and then removes
the memory, so that a woman can have another child and a man can go into combat
again. It slips away so fast. Unless you made notes on
the spot you could not remember how you felt or the way things looked. Men in
prolonged battle are not normal men. And when afterward they seem to be
reticent—perhaps they don’t remember very well. THE PLYWOOD NAVYNovember 15, 1943—The orders were
simple. The naval task force was to destroy or drive German shipping out of the
sea in the whole area north of Rome. German convoys were moving out of various
ports, possibly evacuating heavy equipment from Italy to the south of France.
The task force was ordered to break up this traffic. It is not permitted to say what units comprised
the force but a part of it at least was a group of torpedo boats, some British
MTBs and some American PTs. The British were not quite so fast as the Americans
but they were more heavily armed. The afternoon before the attack was spent in
putting the boats ready. The gunners had their guns apart, oiling and scrubbing
the salt spray from the working parts. The guns on the little boats must be
worked on all the time. Even the cartridge cases turn green from the constant
splashing with salt water. The American PTs are wet devils. Any speed of any
kind of sea bring green water over the bow. The men dress in rubber clothes and
rubber hoods and even then they do not stay dry. In the afternoon the torpedoes were inspected
and the fuel tanks filled to the limit. The sea was very blue and very calm.
During the whole first two weeks of the attack against Italy the sea was calm
as a lake, and that particular sea can be very bad. The British officers and men were bearded with
fine great brushes which projected forward from constant brushing outward with
the hands. This gives a pugnacious look to a man’s face. A few American faces
were bearded too, but the tradition is not set with our men. From the little island harbor, the coast of
Italy was visible in the afternoon—the steep hills terraced for vines and lemon
trees and the mountains rising to bare rocky ridges behind. Vesuvius was
smoking in the background, a high feather of smoke. On the quay, surrendered Italian carabinieri
stood looking at the “Plywood Navy,” which is what the crews call the torpedo
boats. As the sun went down the work was finished and
dinner was started in the tiny galleys of the Plywood Navy. The force was to
sail at dark. Long before dark the moon was up. It would set after two in the
morning and it was planned to be on the ground and ready for attack as soon as
the moon had set. This was a deadly swarm that prepared to go. In its combined
torpedo tubes it carried the force to sink a navy. The little ships can dodge
in close and, when the going is rough, they can scatter and run like quail. And
they can turn and twist so fast and travel at such speed that they are
impossible to catch and very hard to hit. Just at dusk the motors burst into roars one at
a time and then settled down to their throbbing beat. These motors can be
quieted so that they make very little noise, but in ordinary running they sound
like airplanes. The moonlit night came, and the little boats
moved out from their berths, and once clear of the breakwater they formed in
three lines and settled down to traveling speed. In the moonlight their white
wakes shone, and each boat ran over the wake of the boat ahead, and the beat of
their motors was deep. On the decks the men had already put on their rubber
pants and their rubber coats and the peaked rubber hoods. In the turrets the
men sat at their machine guns and waited. On 412 the master and his First stood on the
little bridge. The spray came over the bow in long, swishing spurts as the PT
put her nose down into the easy swells and the light wind picked up the splash.
Their faces were dripping. Now and then the First stepped the three steps down
to the tiny chart room where a hooded light glimmered on the chart. (One line
deleted by censor.) The First checked the course and put his head through and
climbed back to the bridge. A call came from aft—“Aircraft at nine o’clock!” The men at the turrets and at the after gun
swung their weapons sharp to the left and elevated the muzzles, and the gunners
peered uneasily into the milky moonlit sky. Unless they come out of the moon,
and they never do, they are very hard to see. But above the engines of the boat
could be heard the hum of aircraft engines. “Ours or theirs?” the First asked. “Ours have orders not to come close. It must be
theirs,” the master said. Then off to the port side in the milky sky there was
the dark shape of a plane and not flying very high. The gunners stirred and
followed the shape with the muzzles. It was too far off to fire. The master
picked up his megaphone and called, “He’ll come in from the side if he’s
coming. Watch for him.” The drone of the plane disappeared. “Maybe he didn’t see us,” the First said. “With our wake? Sure he saw us. Maybe he was
one of ours.” He must have cut his motors. Suddenly he is
overhead and his bomb lands and explodes just after he has passed over. The
roar of the explosion and the battering of the machine guns come at once. A
wall of spray comes over the side from the explosion, and the boat seems to
leap out of the sea. The lines of the tracers reach for the
disappearing plane and the lines seem to curve the way the stream from a hose
does when you move the hose. Then the guns are silent. The master calls, “Watch
out for him. He may be back. Watch for him from the same side.” The gunners
obediently swing their guns about. This time he didn’t cut his motors. Maybe he
needed altitude. You could hear him coming. The guns started on him before he
was overhead and the curving lines of tracers followed him over and each line
was a little bit behind him. And then one line jumped ahead. A little blue
light showed on him then. For a moment he seemed to hover and then he fell, end
over end, but slowly, and the blue light on him got larger and larger as he
came down. The rest of the guns were after him as he came down. He landed about
five hundred yards away and the moment he struck the water he broke into a
great yellow flame, and then a second later he exploded with a dull boom and
the fire was sucked down under the sea and he was gone. “He must have been crazy,” the captain said,
“to come in like that. Who got him?” No one answered. The captain called to the
port turret, “Did you get him, Ernest?” “Yes, sir,” said Ernest. “I think so.” “Good shooting,” said the captain. November 19, 1943—Torpedo boat 412
slipped southward. The moon seemed to hang in the sky and to have given up the
idea of ever setting. Actually it was time in the mind that was slowed down.
The muffles were still on the engines but the boat picked up a little speed,
not the great roaring rush of the wide-open PT but a steady drumming that threw
out a curving V of wake and boiled the water a little under the fantail. The
captain said, “Keep your eyes peeled for the others. We don’t want our own
people to smack us.” He went down into the little chart room again and studied
his charts. Then he poked his head up and spoke to his First. “A port isn’t far
off now,” he said. “Let’s get there. We might catch a convoy.” On top of his
words there came a distant drumming of engines. The First cut his motors still further to
listen, and the speed of the 412 dropped. “I guess those are ours,” he said. The captain cocked his head a little.
“Something wrong.” he said. “Doesn’t sound right.” And he cocked his head on
the other side, like a listening spaniel. “Ever heard an E-boat?” he asked. “No, I haven’t. You know damn well I haven’t.” “Neither have I,” said the captain, “but those
don’t sound like PTs or MTBs to me.” He peered over the rail. The signalman had
his blinker ready to make a recognition signal. The captain said quickly,
“Kill the motor.” Through the milky light the E-boats came. They seemed to grow
up out of the night, the misty shapes of them high-powered and unmistakable.
The 412 drifted easily in the water. The captain said hoarsely to the signalman.
“Don’t signal, for God’s sake!” He was silent for a moment and there seemed to
be E-boats all around. “Listen,” the captain said. ‘We’ve maybe got to make a
crash run. I don’t know when.” (Ten lines deleted by censor.) The E-boats moved slowly past. They must have
seen the 412 lying uneasily in the moonlight. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them
that a hostile craft would lie so still so near to their guns. The breathing of
the crew was almost audible. The E-boats were nearly past when one of them,
just on the chance, blinked. (One line deleted by censor.) The gunners brought
down their barrels. The engines of the 412 roared and the boat leaped in the
water. She stood up on her own crest and tore away. (One line deleted by
censor.) Her wake in the last of the moonlight was creamy behind her. She
whipped over the water like a gull. But the E-boats did not fire on her. They
continued placidly on their way. Five minutes of the run, and the First
throttled down and the 412 settled back into the water and leveled out and the
sound of her motors died away. “God Almighty,” the captain said. And he
whistled to himself. “That was close.” (Three lines deleted by censor.) “Let’s
lie here and get our breath. That was too close.” The moon lay close to the water at last. In a
few minutes it would be dark, deliciously dark, safe and dark. Then men stirred
about nervously on the silent boat. And then across the moon a dark shape moved and
then another. “Good God,” the captain said, “there’s a convoy. That’s what the
E-boats were for.” A large dark hull moved across the moon. “We’ve got to get
to them,” the captain said excitedly. “They’ll get us sure,” said the first. “No they won’t.” (Three lines deleted by
censor.) He called his orders softly. The torpedo men moved
to their places. The 412 turned silently and slipped toward the passing
convoy. There seemed to be ships of all sizes, and the 412 could see them
against the sinking moon and they could not see the 412. “That big one,” the
captain said. “She must be at least five thousand tons.” He issued his orders
and took the wheels himself. Then he swung the boat and called softly, “Fire!”
There was a sharp explosive whisk of sound and a splash, and the torpedo was
away. He swung again and fired another. And his mouth moved as though he were
counting. Then without warning the sea and the sky tore
to pieces in a vomit of light and a moment later the 412 nearly jumped out of
the water. “Run,” the captain shouted. “Run!” And the 412 leaped up on its
fantail again and pushed its bow into the air. The explosion was gone almost the moment it had
started. There wasn’t much of any fire. It just subsided and the water closed
over it. “Ammunition,” the captain shouted. “Ammunition
or high-test gasoline.” But the rest of the fleet was not silent. The
tracers reached out for the sea, and the rockets, even the flak rockets. The
crossfire reached to sea and combed the sea and searched the sea. (One line
deleted by censor.) Some time later the captain touched his First’s arm and the
First pulled down the boat again. In the distance, as the moon went down, the
E-boats were probably beating the ocean looking for the 412 or the submarine or
whatever had hit their ship. But the 412 had got away. (One line deleted by
censor.) The pitch blackness lay on the water after the moon had gone. Ocean
and land and boat were blotted out. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said the
captain. “Let’s get on back.” A DESTROYERNovember 24, 1943—A destroyer is a
lovely ship, probably the nicest fighting ship of all. Battleships are a little
like steel cities or great factories of destruction. Aircraft carriers are
floating flying fields. Even cruisers are big pieces of machinery, but a
destroyer is all boat. In the beautiful clean lines of her, in her speed and
roughness, in her curious gallantry, she is completely a ship, in the old
sense. For one thing, a destroyer is small enough so
that her captain knows his whole crew personally, knows all about each one as a
person, his first name and his children and the trouble he has been in and is
capable of getting into. There is an ease on a destroyer that is good and a
good relationship among the men. Then if she has a good captain you have
something really worth serving on. The battleships are held back for a killing
blow, and such a blow sometimes happens only once in a war. The cruisers go in
second, but the destroyers work all the time. They are probably the busiest
ships of a fleet. In a major engagement, they do the scouting and make the
first contact. They convoy, they run to every fight. Wherever there is a mess
the destroyers run first. They are not lordly like the battleships, nor
episcopal like the cruisers. Most of all they are ships and the men who work
them are seamen. In rough weather they are rough, honestly and violently rough. A destroyerman is never bored in wartime, for a
destroyer is a seaman’s ship. She can get under way at the drop of a hat. The
water under fantail boils like a Niagara. She will go rippling along at
thirty-five knots with the spray sheeting over her and she will turn and fight
and run, drop depth charges, bombard, and ram. She is expendable and dangerous.
And because she is all these things, a destroyer’s crew is passionately
possessive. Every man knows his ship, every inch of it, not just his own
station. The Destroyer X is just such a ship. She has done many
thousands of miles since the war started. She has been bombed and torpedoes
have gone under her bow. She has convoyed and fought. Her captain is a young,
dark-haired man and his executive officers looks like a blond undergraduate.
The ship is immaculate. The engines are polished and painted and shined. She is a fairly new ship, the X,
commissioned fifteen months ago. She bombarded at Casablanca and Gela and
Salerno and she has captured islands. Her officers naturally would like to go
to larger ships because there is more rank to be had on them, but no
destroyerman would rather sail on anything else. The destroyer X is a personal ship and a
personality. She is worked quietly. No one ever raises his voice. The captain
is soft-spoken and so is everyone else. Orders are given in the same low tone
as requests for salt in the wardroom. The discipline is exact and punctilious
but it seems to be almost mutually enforced, not from above. The captain will
say, “So many men have shore leave. The first man who comes back drunk removes
shore liberty for everyone.” It is very simple. The crew would discipline
anyone who jeopardized the liberty of the whole ship. So they come back in good
shape and on time. The X has very few brig cases. When the AT is in a combat area she never
relaxes. The men sleep in their clothes. The irritating blatting sound which
means “action stations” is designed to break through sleep. It sounds like the
braying of some metallic mule, and the reaction to it is instant. There is a
scurrying of feet in the passageways and the clatter of feet on the ladders and
in a few seconds the X is bristling with manned and waiting guns, AAs
that peer at the sky and the five-inch guns which can fire at the sky too. The crouched and helmeted men can get to their
stations in less than a minute. There is no hurry or fuss. They have done it
hundreds of times. And then a soft-spoken word from the bridge into a telephone
will turn the X into a fire-breathing dragon. She can throw tons of
steel in a very short time. One of the strangest things is to see her big
guns when they go on automatic control. They are aimed and fired from the
bridge. The turret and the guns have been heavy dead metal and suddenly they
become alive. The turret whips around but it is the guns themselves that seem
to live. They balance and quiver almost as though they were sniffing the air.
They tremble like the antennae of an insect, listening or smelling the target.
Suddenly they set and instantly there is a belch of sound and the shells float
away. The tracers seem to float interminably before they hit. And before the
shells have struck, the guns are trembling and reaching again. They are like
rattlesnakes poising to strike, and they really do seem to be alive. It is a
frightening thing to see. A RAGGED CREWDecember 1, 1943—When the plans were
being made to capture a German radar station on an Italian island in the
Tyrrhenian Sea. forty American paratroopers were assigned to do the job, forty
men and three officers. They came to the naval station from somewhere in
Africa. They didn’t say where. They came in the night sometime, and in the
morning they were bedded down in a Nissen hut, a hard and ragged crew. Their
uniforms were not the new and delightful affairs of the posters. The jackets,
with all the pockets, and the coarse canvas trousers had been washed so often
and dried in the hot sun that they had turned nearly white, and they were
ragged at the edges. The officers, two lieutenants and a captain,
were dressed in no way different from their men, and they had been months
without their insignia of rank. The captain had two strips of adhesive tape
stuck on his shoulders, to show that he was a captain at all, and one of his
lieutenants had sewed a piece of yellow cloth on his shoulders for his rank.
They had been ten months in the desert, and there was no place to buy the
pretty little bars to wear on their shoulders. They had not jumped from a plane
since they had finished their training in the United States, but the rigid,
hard training of their bodies had gone right on in the desert. There had been no luxuries for these men,
either. Sometimes the cigarettes ran out, and they just didn’t have any. They
had often lived on field rations for weeks at a time, and they had long
forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed, even a cot. They had all looked
somewhat alike, and perhaps this is the characteristic look of the paratrooper.
The eyes were very wide set, and mostly they were either gray or blue. The hair
was cropped, almost shaved, giving their heads a curious egg look. Their ears
seemed to stick straight out from their heads, perhaps because all their hair
was cut off. Their skins were burned almost black by the desert sun, which made
their eyes and their teeth seem very light, and their lips were ragged and
rough from months of the sun. The strangest thing about them was their
quietness and their almost shy good manners. Their voices were so soft that you
could barely hear them, and they were extremely courteous. The officers gave
their orders almost under their breaths, and there was none of the stiffness of
ordinary military discipline. It was almost as though they all thought alike so
that few orders were necessary at all. When something was to be done, the
moving or loading of their own supplies, for instance, they worked like parts
of a machine, and no one seemed to move quickly, but there was no waste
movement and the work was done with incredible speed. They did not waste time
saluting. A man saluted his officer only when he spoke to him or was spoken to. These paratroopers had as little equipment as
you can imagine. There were some rifles, some tommy guns, and the officers had
the new carbines. In addition, each man had a knife and four hand grenades,
painted yellow, but they had had their grenades so long that the yellow paint
was just about worn off. The rifles had been polished and cleaned so long and
so often that the black coating was worn off in places and the bright metal
shone through. The little American flags they wore on their shoulders were pale
from sunburn and from the washing of their clothes. There was no excess
equipment of any kind. They had what they wore, and they could carry. And for
some reason they gave the impression of great efficiency. In the morning their officers came into the
conference to be instructed in the nature of the action. They filed in shyly
and took their places at the long, rough table. The naval men distributed maps
and the action was described in detail, part of it on a large blackboard that
was set up against a wall. The island was Ventotene, and there was a radar
station on it which searched the whole ocean north and south of Naples. The
radar was German, but it was thought that there were very few Germans. There
were two or three hundred carabinieri there, however, and it was not known
whether they would fight or not. Also, there were a number of political
prisoners on the island who were to be released, and the island was to be held
by these same paratroopers until a body of troops could be put ashore. The three officers regarded the blackboard with
their wide-set eyes, and now and then they glanced quietly at one another. When
the discussion was finished the naval captain said, “Do you understand? Are
there any questions?” The captain of paratroopers studied the board
with the map of the island, and he asked softly, “Any artillery?” “Yes, there are some coastal guns, but if they
use them we’ll get them with naval guns.” “Oh! Yes, I see. Well, I hope the Italians
don’t do anything bad. I mean I hope they don’t shoot at us.” His voice was
very shy. A naval officer said jokingly, “Don’t your men
want to fight?” “It isn’t that,” the captain said. “We’ve been
a long time in the desert. My men are pretty trigger happy. They might be very
rough if anybody shoots at them.” The meeting broke up and the Navy invited the
paratroopers to lunch in the Navy mess. “If you’ll excuse us,” the captain said, “I
think we’ll get back to the men. They’ll want to know what we’re going to do.
I’ll just take this map along and explain it to them.” He paused apologetically
and added, “You see, they’ll want to know.” The three officers got up from the
table and went out. Their men were in the Nissen hut. The ragged captain and
his lieutenants walked across the street, blinding in the white sunlight, and
they went inside the Nissen hut and closed the door. They stayed a long time in
there, explaining the action to the forty men. VENTOTENEDecember 3, 1943—The units of the naval
task force made their rendezvous at sea and at dusk and made up their formation
and set off at a calculated speed to be at the island of Ventotene at moonset.
Their mission was to capture the island and to take the German radar which was
there. The moon was very large and it was not desirable that the people on the
island should know what force was coming against them, consequently the attack
was not to be attempted until the darkness came. The force spread out in its
traveling formation and moved slowly over the calm sea. On a destroyer of the force, the paratroopers
who were to make the assault sat on the deck and watched the moon. They seemed
a little uneasy. After being trained to drop in from the sky their first action
was to be a seagoing one. Perhaps their sense of fitness was outraged. All along the Italian coast the air force was
raiding. The naval force could see the flares parachuting down and the burst of
explosives and the lines of tracers off to the right. But the coast was kept
too busy for anyone to bother with the little naval force heading northward. The timing was exact. The moon turned very red
before it set, and just as it set the high hump of the island showed against
its face. And the moment it had set the darkness was thick so that you could
not see the man standing at your shoulder. There were no lights on the island
at all. This island has been blacked out for three years. When the naval force
had taken its positions a small boat equipped with a loudspeaker crept in
toward the beach. From five hundred yards off shore it beamed its loudspeaker
on the darkened town and a terrible voice called its proclamation. “Italians,” it said, “you must now surrender.
We have come in force. Your German ally has deserted you. You have fifteen
minutes to surrender. Display three white lights for surrender. At the end of
fifteen minutes we will open fire. This will be repeated once more.” The announcement
was made once more—“... three white rights for surrender.” And then the night
was silent. On the bridge of a destroyer the officers
peered at the darkness in the direction of the island. At the ship’s rails the
men looked off into the darkness. The executive officer kept looking at his
wrist watch and the night was so dark that the illuminated dial could be seen
six feet away. Gun control had the firing data ready. The guns of the whole
force were trained on the island. And the minutes went slowly. No one wanted to
fire on the town, to turn the concentrated destruction of high explosive on the
dark island. But the minutes dragged interminably on, ten—eleven—twelve. The
green, glowing hands moved on the face of the wrist watch. The captain spoke a
word into his phone, and there was a rustle and the door of the plotting room
opened for a moment and then closed. And then, as the minute hand crawled over
fourteen minutes, three white rockets went up from the island. They flowed
upward and curved lazily over and fell back. And then, not content, three more
went up. The captain sighed with relief and spoke again into his phone. And the
whole ship seemed to relax. In the wardroom the commodore of the task force
sat at the head of the table. He was dressed in khaki, his shirt open at the
throat and his sleeves rolled up. He wore a helmet, and a tommy gun lay on the
table in front of him. “I’ll go in and take the surrender,” he said, and he
called the names of five men to go with him. “The paratroopers are to come in
as soon as you can get them in the landing boat,” he said to the executive
officer. “Lower the whaleboat.” The deck was very dark. You had to feel your
way along. The boat davits were swung out as they always are in action, and now
a crew was lowering the whaleboat. They held it at deck level for the men to
get in—a coxswain and an engineer were already in the boat. Five officers,
armed with sub-machine guns, clambered over the rail and settled themselves.
Each man had a drum of bullets on his gun and each wore a pouch which carried
another drum. The boat lowered away, and just as it touched the water the
engineer started the engine. The boat cast off and turned toward the shore. It
was pretty much of a job of guess work because you could not see the shore. The
commodore said, “We’ve got to get in and disarm them before they change their
minds. Can’t tell what they’ll do if we give them time.” And he said to his
men, “Don’t take any chances. Open fire if anyone shows the slightest sign of
resisting.” The boat slipped toward the dark shore, her
motors muffled and quiet. December 6, 1943—There are times when
the element of luck is so sharply involved in an action that sense of dread
sets in afterward. And such was the invasion of the island of Ventotene by
five men in a whale-boat. They knew that there was a German radar crew on the
island, but they did not know that it numbered eighty-seven men, all heavily
armed, and moreover heavily armed with machine guns. They did not know that
this crew had ammunition and food stored to last six weeks. All the men in the
whaleboat did know was that the Italians had put up three white flares in the
night as a token of surrender. The main harbor of Ventotene is a narrow inlet
that ends against a cliff like an amphitheater, and on this semicircular cliff
the town stands high above the water. To the left of this inlet there is a pier
and a little breakwater, unconnected with the land and designed to keep the swells
from breaking on the pier, and finally to the left of the pier there is another
inlet very like the true harbor, which, however, is no harbor at all. The whaleboat with the five men in it
approached the dark island and when it was close to the shore the commander
shone a flashlight quickly and it showed a deep inlet. Naturally, he thought
this was a harbor, and the little boat coasted easily into it. Then the light
flashed on again and ranged about, only to discover that this was not the true
harbor at all but the false inlet. The whaleboat put about and headed out again
and soon it came to what looked like a sand bar stuck out of the water. And
again the light flashed out, and it was seen that it was a breakwater. Again
the boat proceeded, but approximately ten minutes had been consumed in being
slightly lost. The third try was successful and the little boat found the entrance
of the true harbor and nosed into it. And just as the whaleboat put its head
into the little harbor an explosion came from behind the breakwater, and there
was the sound of running feet, and then from the top of the cliff there came
another big explosion, and then progressively back on the hill more and more
blasts. There was nothing to do then but to go ahead.
The whaleboat plunged into the pier and the five men leaped out. Behind the
breakwater lay a German E-boat and beside her stood a German soldier. He had
just thrown a potato-masher grenade at the E-boat to destroy and sink her. One
of the American officers ran at him, and with one motion the German ripped out
his Luger pistol and tossed it in the water and then put both of his hands over
his head. The lancing light of a powerful flashlight circled him. The officer
who had taken him rushed him to the whaleboat and put him under guard of the
boat’s engineer. Now a crowd of Italians came swarming down from
the hill, crying, “Surrender, surrender!” And as they came they dropped their
rifles on the ground, in an unholy heap. The commodore pointed to a place on
the quay. “Stack them there,” he said. “Get everything you have and stack it
right there.” Now the landing was crisscrossed with lights. The
five Americans stood side by side with their guns ready, while the Italian
carabinieri brought their guns and put them in a pile. Everyone seemed to be
confused and glad and frightened. The people wanted to crowd close to see the
Americans and at the same time the ugly pig snouts of the tommy guns warned
them back. It is not reassuring to be one of five men who are ostensibly
holding a line against two hundred and fifty men, even if those men seem to
have surrendered. Every one of the Italians was talking. No one
was listening. And no one wanted to listen. And then breaking through their
ranks came a remarkable figure, a tall gray-haired old man dressed in pink
pajamas. He stalked through the chattering, shouting ranks of the carabinieri
and he said, “I speak English.” Immediately the shouting stopped and the ring
of faces showed intensely in the flashlight beams. “I have been a political
prisoner here for three years,” the old man said. For some reason he did not
seem funny in his pink pajamas. He had a great dignity, even enough to offset
his costume. The commodore asked, “What were those
explosions?” “The Germans,” the old man said. “There are
eighty-seven of them. They were set up with machine guns to fire on you when
you entered the harbor, but when you landed troops in the false harbor and when
you landed more troops on the breakwater they thought they might be surrounded,
so they retreated. They are dynamiting as they go.” “When we landed troops?” the commodore began,
and then he shut himself off. “Oh, yes. I see,” he said. “Yes, when we landed
troops.” One of the officers shivered and grinned at the commodore. “I wish those paratroopers would come in about
now,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind it either,” the commodore
replied. And he went on to the old man in the pajamas, “Where will the Germans
go?” “They’ll go to their radar station to destroy
it. Then they have some entrenchments on the hill. I think they will try to
hold them there.” And at that moment there came a very large explosion and a
fire started back on the hill, a fire large enough so that it illuminated the
little dock and the entrance to the bay. “That will be the radar station now,”
the old man said. “They are very thorough. Too bad the troops you landed didn’t
get there first.” “Yes,” said the commodore, “isn’t it?” More Italians came down the hill then and
deposited their arms. They seemed to be very glad to let them go. Apparently
they had never loved their guns very much. On the dock the five Americans stood uneasily
and the safety catches were off their guns, and their eyes moved restlessly
among the Italians. The firelight from the burning buildings high on the hill
made deep shadows in back of the dock houses. The commodore said softly, “I wish those
paratroopers would get here. If Jerry finds out there are only five of us, I
wouldn’t give any odds on us.” And then there was a sound of a boat’s motor
and the commodore smiled with relief. The forty-three paratroopers were coming
in to the shore. “Give them a light, coxswain,” the commodore called. “Show
them where to come.” December 8, 1943—The five men from the
destroyer moved restlessly about the quay on the island of Ventotene which
they had accidentally, and with five kinds of luck, captured. The paratroopers
did not arrive. There was no sign from the destroyer standing off shore and
minutes got to be hours. The dark town on the cliff became peopled with
imaginary snipers and back on the hill where the Germans had retreated an
occasional explosion roared as they blasted more installations. They didn’t
know how many Americans there were, and there were five, and the Americans did
not know how many Germans there were, and there were eighty-seven. This was
very largely in favor of the Americans, because if the Germans had known—It is
not a nice thing to dwell on. Your impulse when you are alone and not knowing
when you are going to be fired on out of the dark is to keep moving, to pace
restlessly about and to be very timid about getting a light of any kind behind
you. This pacing about is probably the worst thing you can do. According to Bob
Capa, who has been in more wars and closer to them than nearly anyone now
living (and why he is living no one knows), the thing to do is not to move at
all. If you sit perfectly still in the dark, he argues, no one knows you are
there. It is only by moving about that you give away your position. He also
holds that under fire the best thing is to sit still until you know where the
fire is coming from. This is a hard thing to do but it must be correct, because
Bob Capa is still alive. But every instinct is toward shuffling about and
leaving the place where you are. But getting a light behind you is the worst.
It seems to burn you in the back and in your mind’s eye you can see what a
beautiful target you are to someone out in the dark, you and that great black
shadow in front of you. There probably is nothing in the world so
elastic as subjective time. There is no way of knowing how long it took for
those forty-three paratroopers to get ashore. It may have been half an hour and
it may have been three hours. It felt to the five men ashore like three days.
Probably it was about forty-five minutes. The dark, hostile island and the
dark water gave no comfort. But after an interminable time there was a secret
little mutter of engines. Then out in the dark there was a little flutter of
light. The boat was asking for directions. One of the officers on the quay got
down on his stomach and leaned over the stone parapet and signaled back with
his flashlight so that it could not be seen from the island. And at intervals
he flashed his torch to guide the boat. It came out of the dark abruptly: out of the
pitch dark it slipped noiselessly and bumped gently against the quay. And it
was one of those boats even the name of which the Navy will cut out if I put it
in, but the important thing was that there were forty-three paratroopers on
board. They seemed to flow over the side; they were very quiet. Their captain
went to work instantly. He sent out pickets before he had been one minute
ashore, and they slipped away up the hill to guard the approaches to the
harbor. Some crept up into the town, armed with their rifles and grenades, and
they occupied the tops of buildings, and others went down to the beaches to
watch the seaward approaches. Meanwhile a little gangplank was ashore, and the
supplies were coming down onto the quay in the darkness. In the middle of this work there was a growl of
a plane overhead. The captain of paratroopers gave a curt order and the men
took cover. The plane droned over, and as it got offshore again the destroyer
burst into action. She flamed like a flowerpot at an old-fashioned Fourth of
July fireworks exhibit. Her tracers spread like a fountain. And then she was
dark again and the plane was gone. The unloading continued until there was a pile
of goods on the quay, rations in cases and boxes of ammunition and machine
guns and the light sleeping rolls of the paratroopers. They did not bring any
luxuries with them. They never do. Food and ammunition are their main interests.
They get along with very little else. But on Ventotene they brought water too,
in those handled containers which are used for both water and gasoline. For
Ventotene has no water. In other times water barges came out from the mainland.
The only local water is that caught in cisterns during the rainy months. When the supplies were landed the three
paratrooper officers and the naval officers gathered in a little stone building
on the waterfront. And an electric lantern was on the floor and the doors and
windows were shut so that no line of light could show out. The faces were
lighted from below and they were strained faces, with the jaw muscles pulled
tight. The maps were out again. “I’m not going to throw my men against a bigger
force in the dark,” the captain of paratroopers said. “Jerry will be trenched
by now. I’m not going to move until morning. We’ve only got half as many men
and no artillery.” An officer said, “Maybe—maybe we could talk
them out of it. Let’s have some of the Italians in and see what we can do. The
Jerry doesn’t know how many men we have or how many ships. Let’s think about
that a little. It’s just barely possible we could talk them out of it.” “How?” the captain asked. “Well, would you let me go up with a white flag
in the morning?” “They’d bump you.” “Would you let me try?” “Well—” “Might save a lot of trouble—sir—” “We can’t afford to lose officers.” “You won’t lose me. Just give me a nod.” The
captain looked at him for a long time and then he smiled thinly and his head
dipped, almost imperceptibly. December 10, 1943—The lieutenant walked
slowly up the hill toward the German positions. He carried his white flag over
his head, and his white flag was a bath towel. As he walked he thought what a
fool he was. He had really stuck his neck out. Last night when he had argued
for the privilege of going up and trying to kid the Jerry into surrender he
hadn’t known it would be like this. He hadn’t known how lonely and exposed he
would be. Forty paratroopers against eighty-seven Jerrys,
but Jerry didn’t know that. The lieutenant also hoped Jerry wouldn’t know his
guts were turned to water. His feet sounded loud on the path. It was early in
the morning and the sun was not up yet. He hoped they could see his white flag.
Maybe it would be invisible in this light. He kept in the open as much as
possible as he climbed the hill. He knew that the forty paratroopers were
crawling and squirming behind him, keeping cover, getting into position so that
if anything should go wrong they might attack and stand some chance of
surprising the Jerry. He knew the fieldglasses of the captain would be on the
German position, waiting for something to happen. “If they shoot at you, flop and lie still,” the
captain had said. “We’ll try to cover you and get you out.” The lieutenant knew that if he were hit and not
killed he would hear the shot after he was hit, but if he were hit in the head
he wouldn’t hear or feel anything. He hoped, if it happened, it would happen
that way. His feet seemed very heavy and clumsy. He looked down and saw the
little stones on the path, and he wished he could get down on his knees to see
what kind of stones they were. He had a positive hunger to get down out of
line. His chest tingled almost as if he were preparing to receive the bullet.
And his throat was as tight as it had been once when he tried to make a speech
in college. Step by step he drew nearer, and there was no
sign from Jerry. The lieutenant wanted to look back to see whether any of the
paratroopers were in sight, but he knew the Germans would have their
fieldglasses on him, and they were close enough so that they could even see his
expression. It happened finally, quickly and naturally. He
was passing a pile of rocks, when a deep voice shouted an order to him. There
were three Germans, young-looking men, and they had their rifles trained on his
stomach. He stopped and stared at them as they stared back. He wondered whether
his eyes were as wide as theirs. They paused, and then a hoarse voice called from
up ahead. The Jerries stood up and they glanced quickly down the hill before
they came out to him. And then the four marched on. It seemed a little silly to
the lieutenant, like little boys marching up an alley to attack Connor’s
woodshed. And his bath towel on a stick seemed silly, too. He thought, Well,
anyway, if they bump me our boys will get these three. In his mind’s eye he
could see helmeted Americans watching the little procession through their rifle
sights. Ahead was a small white stone building, but
Jerry was too smart to be in the building. A trench started behind the building
and led down to a hole almost like a shell hole. Three officers faced him in the hole. They were
dressed in dusty blue and they wore the beautiful high caps of the Luftwaffe,
with silver eagles and swastikas. They were electronics engineers, a ground
service for the German Air Force. They faced him without speaking, and his
throat was so tight that for a moment he could not begin. All he could think of
was a green table; Jerry had three deuces showing and the lieutenant a pair of
treys. He knew they had no more, but they didn’t know what his hole card was.
He only hoped they wouldn’t know, because all he had was that pair of treys. The Oberleutnant regarded him closely and said
nothing. “Do you speak English?” the lieutenant asked. “Yes.” The lieutenant took a deep breath and spoke the
piece he had memorized. “The colonel’s compliments, sir. I am ordered to demand
your surrender. At the end of twenty minutes the cruisers will move up and open
fire unless ordered otherwise following your surrender.” He noticed the
Oberleutnant’s eyes involuntarily move toward the sea. The lieutenant lapsed
out of his formality, as he had planned. “What’s the good?” he said. “We’ll
just kill you all. We’ve got six hundred men ashore and the cruisers are aching
to take a shot at you. What’s the good of it? You’d kill some of us and we’d
kill all of you. Why don’t you just stack your arms and come in?” The Oberleutnant stared into his eyes. That what’s-in-the-hole
look. The look balanced: call or toss in, call or toss in. The pause was
centuries long, and then at last, “What treatment will we receive?” the
Oberleutnant asked. “Prisoners of war under Convention of The
Hague.” The lieutenant was trying desperately to show nothing in his face.
There was another long pause. The German breathed in deeply and his breath
whistled in his nose. “It is no dishonor to surrender to superior
forces,” he said. December 13, 1943—When the lieutenant
went up to the Germans with his bath towel for a white flag, the captain of
paratroopers, peering through a crack between two buildings, watched him go.
The men hidden below saw the lieutenant challenged, and then they saw him
behind the white stone building. The watching men hardly breathed then. They
were waiting for the crack of a rifle shot that would mean the plan for kidding
the Germans into surrender had failed. The time went slowly. Actually, it was
only about fifteen minutes. Then the lieutenant appeared again, and this time
he was accompanied by three German officers. The watchers saw him walk down to a clear place
in the path and there pause and point to the ground. Then two of the officers
retired behind the white building again. But in a moment they reappeared, and
behind them came the German soldiers. They straggled down the path and, at the
place that had been indicated, they piled their arms, their rifles and machine
guns, and even their pistols. The captain, lying behind his stones, watched and
counted. He tallied the whole eighty-seven men who were supposed to be there.
He said to his lieutenant, “By God, he pulled it off!” And now a little pageant developed. As the
Germans marched down the path, American paratroopers materialized out of the
ground beside them, until they were closely surrounded by an honor guard of
about thirty men. The whole group swung down the path and into the little white
town that stood so high above the harbor of Ventotene. Since Ventotene had been for hundreds of years
an Italian prison island, there was no lack of place to put the prisoners. The
top floor of what we would call a city hall was a big roomy jail, with four or
five big cells. The column marched up the steps of the city hall and on up to
the third floor, and then the Germans were split into three groups and one
group was put into each of three cells, while the fourth cell was reserved for
the officers. Then guards with tommy guns were posted at the doors of the
cells, and the conquest was over. The lieutenant who had carried the white flag
sat down on the steps of the city hall a little shakily. The captain sat down
beside him. “Any trouble?” the captain asked. “No. It was too easy. I don’t believe it yet.”
He lighted a cigarette, and his shaking hand nearly put out the match. “Wonderful job,” the captain said. “But what
are we going to do with them?” “Won’t the ships be back tonight?” “I hope so, but suppose they don’t get back. We
can’t let anybody get any sleep until we get rid of these babies.” A trooper lounged near. “Those Jerry officers
are raising hell,” he said. “They want to see the commanding officer, sir.” The captain stood up. “Better come with me,” he
told the lieutenant. “How many men did you tell them we had?” “Six hundred,” the lieutenant said, “and I forgot
how many cruisers offshore.” The captain laughed. “One time I heard about an
officer who marched fifteen men around a house until they looked like an army.
Maybe we better do that with our forty.” At the door of the officers’ cell the captain
took out his pistol and handed it to one of the guards. “Leave the door open
and keep your eye on us all the time. If they make a suspicious move, shoot
them!” “Yes, sir,” said the guard, and he unlocked and
opened the heavy door. The German officers were at the barred window,
looking down on the deserted streets of the little town. They could see two
lonely sentries in front of the building. The German Oberleutnant turned as the
captain entered. “I demand to see the colonel,” he said. The captain swallowed. “Er—the colonel? Well,
he is engaged.” For a long moment the German stared into the
captain’s eyes. Finally he said, “You are the commanding officer, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am,” the captain said. “How many men have you?” “We do not answer questions,” the captain said
stiffly. The German’s face was hard and disappointed. He
said, “I don’t think you have six hundred men. I think you have only a few more
than thirty men.” The captain nodded solemnly. He said, “We’ve
mined the building. If there is any trouble—any trouble at all—we’ll blow the
whole mess of you to hell.” He turned to leave the cell. “You’ll be taken
aboard ship soon now,” he said over his shoulder. Going down the stairs, the lieutenant said,
“Have you really mined the building?” The captain grinned at him. “Have we really got
six hundred men?” he asked. And then he said, “Lord, I hope the destroyer gets
in tonight to take these babies out. None of us is going to get any sleep until
then.” THE END. THE WAY IT WAS “THE LIEUTENANT
WALKED SLOWLY up the hill
toward the German positions. He carried his
white flag over his head, and his white
flag was a bath towel. Last night when
he had argued for the privilege of
going up and trying to kid the Jerry into
surrender he hadn’t known it would be like
this. He hadn’t known how lonely and
exposed he would be. The lieutenant
knew that if he were hit and not killed he
would hear the shot after he was hit, but
if he were hit in the head he wouldn’t
hear or feel anything. He
hoped, if it happened, it would happen that
way ...” One of the
Unforgettable Stories John Steinbeck Tells in Once
There Was a War Books by John Steinbeck CUP OF GOLD THE PASTURES OF HEAVEN TO A GOD UNKNOWN TORTILLA FLAT OF MICE AND MEN THE RED PONY THE GRAPES OF WRATH CANNERY ROW THE WAYWARD BUS THE PEARL BURNING BRIGHT EAST OF EDEN SWEET THURSDAY THE SHORT REIGN OF PIPPIN IV Published by Bantam
Books ONCE THERE WAS A WAR by JOHN STEINBECK Bantam Books • New York THIS LOW-PRICED BANTAM BOOK printed
in completely new type, especially designed for easy reading, contains the
complete text of the original, hard-cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN
OMITTED. ONCE THERE WAS A WAR A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc. PRINTING HISTORY Viking edition published September 1958 Books Abridged edition published March 1959 Serialized the NEW
YORK HERALD TRIBUNE Syndicate June-December 1943 Bantam edition published January 1960 All rights reserved Copyright © 1943, 1958, by John Steinbeck Published simultaneously in the United States and
Canada Bantam
Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the
words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the U. S.
Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Printed in the United
States of America. Bantam Books, Inc., 25 West 45th St., New York 36, N. Y. ContentsONCE THERE WAS
A WAR: AN INTRODUCTION THE CAREER OF
BIG TRAIN MULLIGAN IntroductionONCE THERE WAS A WAR: AN INTRODUCTIONONCE UPON A TIME there was a war, but so long ago and so
shouldered out of the way by other wars and other kinds of wars that even
people who were there are apt to forget. This war that I speak of came after
the plate armor and longbows of Crйcy and Agincourt and just before the little
spitting experimental atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I attended a part of that war, you might say
visited it, since I went in the costume of a war correspondent and certainly
did not fight, and it is interesting to me that I do not remember very much
about it. Reading these old reports sent in with excitement at the time brings
back images and emotions completely lost. Perhaps it is right or even necessary to forget
accidents, and wars are surely accidents to which our species seems prone. If
we could learn from our accidents it might be well to keep the memories alive,
but we do not learn. In ancient Greece it was said that there had to be a war
at least every twenty years because every generation of men had to know what it
was like. With us, we must forget, or we could never indulge in the murderous
nonsense again. The war I speak of, however, may be memorable
because it was the last of its kind. Our Civil War has been called the last of
the “gentlemen’s wars,” and the so-called Second World War was surely the last
of the long global wars. The next war, if we are so stupid as to let it happen,
will be the last of any kind. There will be no one left to remember anything.
And if that is how stupid we are, we do not, in a biologic sense, deserve
survival. Many other species have disappeared from the earth through errors in mutational
judgment. There is no reason to suppose that we are immune from the immutable
law of nature which says that over-armament, over-ornamentation, and, in most
cases, over-integration are symptoms of coming extinction. Mark Twain in A
Connecticut Yankee uses the horrifying and possible paradox of the victor’s
being killed by the weight of the vanquished dead. But all this is conjecture, no matter how
possible it may be. The strange thing is that my dim-remembered war has become
as hazy as conjecture. My friend Jack Wagner was in the First World War. His
brother Max was in the Second World War. Jack, in possessive defense of the war
he knew, always referred to it as the Big War, to his brother’s disgust. And of
course the Big War is the war you knew. But do you know it, do you remember it, the
drives, the attitudes, the terrors, and, yes, the joys? I wonder how many men
who were there remember very much. I have not seen these accounts and stories
since they were written in haste and telephoned across the sea to appear as
immediacies in the New York Herald Tribune and a great many other
papers. That was the day of the Book by the War Correspondent, but I resisted
that impulse, believing or saying I believed that unless the stories had validity
twenty years in the future they should stay on the yellowing pages of dead
newspaper files. That I have got them out now is not for my first reason given
at all. Reading them over after all these years, I realize not only how much I
have forgotten but that they are period pieces, the attitudes archaic, the
impulses romantic, and, in the light of everything that has happened since,
perhaps the whole body of work untrue and warped and one-sided. The events set down here did happen. But on
rereading this reportage, my memory becomes alive to the other things, which
also did happen and were not reported. That they were not reported was partly a
matter of orders, partly traditional, and largely because there was a huge and
gassy thing called the War Effort. Anything which interfered with or ran
counter to the War Effort was automatically bad. To a large extent judgment
about this was in the hands of the correspondent himself, but if he forgot
himself and broke any of the rules, there were the Censors, the Military
Command, the Newspapers, and finally, most strong of all in discipline, there
were the war-minded civilians, the Noncombatant Commandos of the Stork Club, of
Time Magazine and The New Yorker, to jerk a correspondent into
line or suggest that he be removed from the area as a danger to the War
Effort. There were citizens’ groups helping with tactics and logistics; there
were organizations of mothers to oversee morals, and by morals I mean not only
sexual morals but also such things as gambling and helling around in general.
Secrecy was a whole field in itself. Perhaps our whole miasmic hysteria about
secrecy for the last twenty years had its birth during this period. Our
obsession with secrecy had a perfectly legitimate beginning in a fear that
knowledge of troop-ship sailings would and often did attract the wolf packs of
submarines. But from there it got out of hand until finally facts available in
any library in the world came to be carefully guarded secrets, and the most
carefully guarded secrets were known by everyone. I do not mean to indicate that the
correspondent was harried and pushed into these rules of conduct. Most often he
carried his rule book in his head and even invented restrictions for himself in
the interest of the War Effort. When The Viking Press decided to print these
reports in book form, it was suggested that, now that all restrictions were
off, I should take out the “Somewhere in So-and-So” dateline and put in the
places where the events occurred. This is impossible. I was so secret that I
don’t remember where they happened. The rules, some imposed and some self-imposed,
are amusing twenty years later. I shall try to remember a few of them. There
were no cowards in the American Army, and of all the brave men the private in
the infantry was the bravest and noblest. The reason for this in terms of the
War Effort is obvious. The infantry private had the dirtiest, weariest, least
rewarding job in the whole war. In addition to being dangerous and dirty, a
great many of the things he had to do were stupid. He must therefore be
reassured that these things he knew to be stupid were actually necessary and
wise, and that he was a hero for doing them. Of course no one even casually
inspected the fact that the infantry private had no choice. If he exercised a
choice, he was either executed immediately or sent to prison for life. A second convention was that we had no cruel or
ambitious or ignorant commanders. If the disorganized insanity we were a part
of came a cropper, it was not only foreseen but a part of a grander strategy
out of which victory would emerge. A third sternly held rule was that five million
perfectly normal, young, energetic, and concupiscent men and boys had for the
period of the War Effort put aside their habitual preoccupation with girls.
The fact that they carried pictures of nude girls, called pin-ups, did not
occur to anyone as a paradox. The convention was the law. When Army Supply
ordered X millions of rubber contraceptive and disease-preventing items, it had
to be explained that they were used to keep moisture out of machine-gun barrels—and
perhaps they did. Since our Army and Navy, like all armies and
navies, were composed of the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the cruel,
the gentle, the brutal, the kindly, the strong, and the weak, this convention
of general nobility might seem to have been a little hard to maintain, but it
was not. We were all a part of the War Effort. We went along with it, and not
only that, we abetted it. Gradually it became a part of all of us that the
truth about anything was automatically secret and that to trifle with it was to
interfere with the War Effort. By this I don’t mean that the correspondents
were liars. They were not. In the pieces in this book everything set down
happened. It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies. When General Patton slapped a sick soldier in a
hospital and when our Navy at Gela shot down fifty-nine of our own troop
carriers, General Eisenhower personally asked the war correspondents not to
send the stories because they would be bad for morale at home. And the
correspondents did not file the stories. Of course the War Department leaked to
a local newsman and the stories got printed anyway, but no one in the field
contributed to that bit of treason to the War Effort. Meanwhile strange conventional stories were
born and duly reported. One of the oddest concerned the colonel or general in
the Air Force whose duty required that he stay in reluctant comfort on the
ground and who ate his heart out to be with his “boys” out on mission over Germany
among the red flak. It was hard, stern duty that kept him grounded, and much
harder than flying missions. I don’t know where this one started, but it
doesn’t sound as though it came from enlisted personnel. I never met a bomber
crew which wouldn’t have taken on this sterner duty at the drop of a hat. They
may have been a little wild, but they weren’t that crazy. Reading over these old reports, I see that
again and again sentences were removed by censor. I have no idea what it was
that was removed. Correspondents had no quarrel with censors. They had a tough
job. They didn’t know what might be brought up against them. No one could
discipline them for eliminating, and so in self-preservation they eliminated
pretty deeply. Navy censors were particularly sensitive to names of places,
whether they had any military importance or not. It was the safest way. Once
when I felt a little bruised by censorship I sent through Herodotus’s account
of the battle of Salamis fought between the Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C.,
and since there were place names involved, albeit classical ones, the Navy
censors killed the whole story. We really tried to observe the censorship
rules, even knowing that a lot of them were nonsense, but it was very hard to
know what the rules were. They had a way of changing with the commanding
officer. Just when you thought you knew what you could send, the command
changed and you couldn’t send that at all. The correspondents were a curious, crazy, and
yet responsible crew. Armies by their nature, size, complication, and command
are bound to make mistakes, mistakes which can be explained or transmuted in
official reports. It follows that military commanders are a little nervous
about reporters. They are restive about people breathing down their necks,
particularly experts. And it was true that many of the professional war
correspondents had seen more wars and more kinds of wars than anybody in the
Army or Navy. Capa, for example, had been through the Spanish War, the
Ethiopian War, the Pacific War. Clark Lee had been at Corregidor and before
that in Japan. If the regular Army and Navy didn’t much like the war
correspondents there was nothing they could do about it, because these men were
the liaison with the public. Furthermore many of them had become very well
known and had enormous followings. They were syndicated from one end of the
nation to the other. Many of them had established their methods and their
styles. A few had become prima donnas, but not many. Ernie Pyle was so popular
and so depended on by readers at home that in importance he much outranked most
general officers. To this hard-bitten bunch of professionals I
arrived as a Johnny-come-lately, a sacred cow, a kind of tourist. I think they
felt that I was muscling in on their hard-gained territory. When, however,
they found that I was not duplicating their work, was not reporting straight
news, they were very kind to me and went out of their way to help me and to
instruct me in the things I didn’t know. For example, it was Capa who gave me
the best combat advice I ever heard. It was, “Stay where you are. If they
haven’t hit you, they haven’t seen you.” And then Capa had to go and step on a
land mine in Viet-Nam, just when he was about to retire from the whole
terrible, futile business. And Ernie Pyle got it between the eyes from a sniper
on the trip he planned as his weary last. All of us developed our coy little tricks with
copy. Reading these old pieces, I recognize one of mine. I never admitted
having seen anything myself. In describing a scene I invariably put it in the
mouth of someone else. I forget why-1 did this. Perhaps I felt that it would be
more believable if told by someone else. Or it is possible that I felt an
interloper, and eavesdropper on the war, and was a little bit ashamed of being
there at all. Maybe I was ashamed that I could go home and soldiers couldn’t.
But it was often neither safe nor comfortable being a correspondent. A great
part of the services were in supply and transport and office work. Even combat
units got some rest after a mission was completed. But the war correspondents
found that their papers got restive if they weren’t near where things were
happening. The result was that the correspondents had a very high casualty
rate. If you stayed a correspondent long enough and went to the things that
were happening, the chances were that you would get it. In reading these
reports I am appalled at how many of the reporters are dead. Only a handful of
the blithe spirits who made the nights horrible and filled the days with
complaints, remain living. But to get back to the conventions. It was the
style to indicate that you were afraid all the time. I guess I was really
afraid, but the style was there too. I think this was also designed to prove
how brave the soldiers were. And the soldiers were just exactly as brave and as
cowardly as anyone else. We edited ourselves much more than we were
edited. We felt responsible to what was called the home front. There was a
general feeling that unless the home front was carefully protected from the
whole account of what war was like, it might panic. Also we felt we had to
protect the armed services from criticism, or they might retire to their tents
to sulk like Achilles. The self-discipline, self-censorship among the
war correspondents was surely moral and patriotic but it was also practical in
a sense of self-preservation. Some subjects were taboo. Certain people could
not be criticized or even questioned. The foolish reporter who broke the rules
would not be printed at home and in addition would be put out of the theater by
the command, and a correspondent with no theater has no job. We knew, for instance, that a certain very
famous general officer constantly changed press agents because he felt he
didn’t get enough headlines. We knew the commander who broke a Signal Corps
sergeant for photographing his wrong profile. Several fine field officers were
removed from their commands by the jealousy of their superiors because they
aroused too much enthusiasm in their men and too much admiration from the
reporters. There were consistent sick leaves which were gigantic hangovers,
spectacular liaisons between Army brass and WAACs, medical discharges for
stupidity, brutality, cowardice, and even sex deviation. I don’t know a single
reporter who made use of any of this information. Apart from wartime morals, it
would have been professional suicide to have done it. The one man who jumped
the gun and scooped the world on the armistice was ruined in his profession,
and his career was terminated. Yes, we wrote only a part of the war, but at
the time we believed, fervently believed, that it was the best thing to do. And
perhaps that is why, when the war was over, novels and stories by ex-soldiers,
like The Naked and the Dead, proved so shocking to a public which had
been carefully protected from contact with the crazy hysterical mess. We had plenty of material anyway. There was a
superabundance of heroism, selflessness, intelligence, and kindness to write
about. And perhaps we were right in eliminating parts of the whole picture.
Surely if we had sent all we knew, and couched in the language of the field,
the home front would have been even more confused than we managed to make it.
Besides, for every screaming egotist there was a Bradley, and for every
publicity-mad military ham there were great men like Terry Allen and General
Roosevelt, while in the ranks, billeted with the stinking, cheating,
foul-mouthed goldbricks, there were true heroes, kindly men, intelligent men
who knew or thought they knew what they were fighting for and took all the rest
in their stride. Professionally the war correspondents, I
believe, were highly moral and responsible men, many of them very brave men,
some of them completely dedicated men, but in the time after the story was
filed I guess we were no better and no worse than the officers and enlisted
men, only we had more facilities than the services, either commissioned or
enlisted. We carried simulated ranks, ranging from captain to lieutenant colonel,
which allowed us to eat at officers’ mess, where enlisted men could not go, but
we also had access to the enlisted men, where officers could not go. I remember
an officers’ dance in North Africa, a dull, cold little affair with junior
officers mechanically dancing with commissioned nurses to old records on a
wind-up phonograph, while in nearby barracks one of the finest jazz combos I
ever heard was belting out pure ecstasy. Naturally we correspondents happily
moved to the better music. Rank surely has its privileges, but with us it
sometimes amounted to license. When our duty was done and our stories on the
wire, we discovered and exchanged every address where black-market meat,
liquor, and women could be procured. We knew the illegal taxis. We chiseled,
stole, malingered, goldbricked, and generally made ourselves as comfortable as
we could. I early learned that a pint of whisky to a transportation sergeant
would get me on a plane ahead of a general with crash orders from the General
Staff. We didn’t steal much from the Army. We didn’t have to. It was given to
us. Besides we were up against experts in the Army. I remember a general in
supply morosely reading a report of missing materiel from a supply depot and
exploding, “The American soldier is the worst thief in the world. You know
what’s going to happen? When they steal everything we’ve got, they’ll start
stealing from the Germans, and then God help Hitler.” And I remember on a
destroyer at sea when every sidearm of every officer, 45s and carbines, suddenly
disappeared, and although the ship was searched from stem to stern, even the
fuel and water tanks explored, not one single weapon was ever found. There was
a kind of a compulsion to steal. Prisoners were frisked for watches, cameras,
and sidearms (the trade goods of the GIs) with professional skill. But the
correspondents didn’t steal much—first, as I said, because they didn’t have to,
and second, because we moved about so much that we couldn’t take things with
us. Heaven knows how many helmets, bedding rolls, and gas masks I was issued. I
rarely got them where I was going, and I never got them back. In the cellars of
London hotels today there must be trunks of loot left there fifteen years ago
by correspondents and never claimed. I personally know of two such caches. For what they are worth, or for what they may
recapture, here they are, period pieces, fairy tales, half-meaningless
memories of a time and of attitudes which have gone forever from the world, a
sad and jocular recording of a little part of a war I saw and do not believe, unreal
with trumped-up pageantry, so that it stands in the mind like the battle
pictures of Crйcy and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg. And, although all wax is a
symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal, still there was in these
memory-wars some gallantry, some bravery, some kindliness. A man got killed,
surely, or maimed, but, living, he did not carry crippled seed as a gift to his
children. Now for many years we have suckled on fear and
fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and
deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are
poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear,
faceless, stupid sarcomic terror. The pieces in this volume were written under
pressure and in tension. My first impulse on rereading them was to correct, to
change, to smooth out ragged sentences and remove repetitions, but their very
raggedness is, it seems to me, a parcel of their immediacy. They are as real as
the wicked witch and the good fairy, as true and tested and edited as any other
myth. There was a war, long ago—once upon a time. EnglandTROOPSHIPSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 20, 1943—The
troops in their thousands sit on their equipment on the dock. It is evening,
and the first of the dimout lights come on. The men wear their helmets, which
make them all look alike, make them look like long rows of mushrooms. Their
rifles are leaning against their knees. They have no identity, no personality. The
men are units in an army. The numbers chalked on their helmets are almost like
the license numbers on robots. Equipment is piled neatly—bedding rolls and
half-shelters and barracks bags. Some of the men are armed with Springfield or
Enfield rifles from the First World War, some with M-1s, or Garands, and some
with the neat, light clever little carbines everyone wants to have after the
war for hunting rifles. Above the pier the troopship rears high and
thick as an office building. You have to crane your neck upward to see where
the portholes stop and the open decks begin. She is a nameless ship and will be
while the war lasts. Her destination is known to very few men and her route to
even fewer, and the burden of the men who command her must be almost unendurable,
for the master who loses her and her cargo will never sleep comfortably again.
He probably doesn’t sleep at all now. The cargo holds are loaded and the ship
waits to take on her tonnage of men. On the dock the soldiers are quiet. There is
little talking, no singing, and as dusk settles to dark you cannot tell one man
from another. The heads bend forward with weariness. Some of these men have
been all day, some many days, getting to this starting point. There are several ways of wearing a hat or a cap.
A man may express himself in the pitch or tilt of his hat, but not with a
helmet. There is only one way to wear a helmet. It won’t go on any other way.
It sits level on the head, low over eyes and ears, low on the back of the neck.
With your helmet on you are a mushroom in a bed of mushrooms. Four gangways are open now and the units get
wearily to their feet and shuffle along in line. The men lean forward against
the weight of their equipment. Feet drag against the incline of the gangways.
The soldiers disappear one by one into the great doors in the side of the troopship. Inside the checkers tabulate them. The numbers
chalked on the helmets are checked again against a list. Places have been
assigned. Half of the men will sleep on the decks and the other half inside in
ballrooms, in dining rooms where once a very different kind of people sat and
found very important things that have disappeared. Some of the men will sleep
in bunks, in hammocks, on the decks, in passages. Tomorrow they will shift. The
men from the deck will come in to sleep and those from inside will go out. They
will change every night until they land. They will not take off their clothes
until they land. This is no cruise ship. On the decks, dimmed to a faint blue dusk by
the blackout lights, the men sink down and fall asleep. They are asleep almost
as soon as they are settled. Many of them do not even take off their helmets.
It has been a weary day. The rifles are beside them, held in their hands. On the gangways the lines still feed into the
troopship—a regiment of colored troops, a hundred Army nurses, neat in their
helmets and field packs. The nurses at least will have staterooms, however
crowded they may be in them. Up No. 1 Gangway comes the headquarters complement
of a bombardment wing and a company of military police. All are equally tired.
They find their places and go to sleep. Embarkation is in progress. No smoking is
allowed anywhere. Everyone entering the ship is triply checked, to make sure
he belongs there, and the loading is very quiet. There is only the shuffle of
tired feet on the stairways and quiet orders. The permanent crew of military
police know every move. They have handled this problem of traffic before. The tennis courts on the upper deck are a
half-acre of sleeping men now—men, feet, and equipment. MPs are everywhere, on
stairs and passages, directing and watching. This embarkation must go on
smoothly, for one little block might well lose hours in the loading, just as
one willful driver, making a wrong turn in traffic, may jam an avenue for a
long time. But in spite of the shuffling gait, the embarkation is very rapid.
About midnight the last man is aboard. In the staff room the commanding officer sits
behind a long table, with telephones in front of him. His adjutant, a tired
blond major, makes his report and places his papers on the table. The CO nods
and gives him an order. Throughout the ship the loudspeakers howl.
Embarkation is complete. The gangways slide down from the ship. The iron doors
close. No one can enter or leave the ship now, except the pilot. On the bridge
the captain of the ship paces slowly. It is his burden now. These thousands are
in his care, and if there is an accident it will be his blame. The ship remains against the pier and a light
breathing sound comes from deep in her. The troops are cut off now and gone
from home, although they are not a hundred steps from home. On the upper decks
a few men lean over the rails and look down on the pier and away at the city
behind. The oily water ripples with the changing tide. It is almost time to go.
In the staff room, which used to be the ship’s theater, the commanding officer
sits behind his table. His tired, blond adjutant sits beside him. The phone
rings, the CO picks it up, listens for a moment and hangs up the receiver. He
turns to the adjuntant. “All ready,” he says. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 21, 1943—The
tide is turning now and it is after midnight. On the bridge, which towers above
the pier buildings, there is great activity. The lines are cast off and the
engines reversed. The great ship backs carefully into the stream and nearly
fills it to both banks. But the little tugs are waiting for her and they bump
and persuade her about until she is headed right and they hang beside her like
suckling ships as she moves slowly toward the sea. Only the MPs on watch among
the sleeping soldiers see the dimmed-out city slipping by. Down deep in the ship, in the hospital, the
things that can happen to so many men have started to happen. A medical major has
taken off his blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He is washing his hands in
green soap, while an Army nurse in operating uniform stands by, holding the
doctor’s white gown. The anonymous soldier, with the dangerous appendix, is
having his stomach shaved by another Army nurse. Brilliant light floods the
operating table. The doctor major slips into his sterile gloves. The nurse
adjusts the mask over his nose and mouth and he steps quickly to the sleeping
soldier on the table under the light. The great troopship sneaks past the city and
the tugs leave her, a dark thing steaming into the dark. On the decks and in
the passages and in the bunks the thousands of men are collapsed in sleep. Only
their faces show under the dim blue blackout lights—faces and an impression of
tangled hands and feet and legs and equipment. Officers and military police
stand guard over this great sleep, a sleep multiplied, the sleep of thousands.
An odor rises from the men, the characteristic odor of an army. It is the smell
of wool and the bitter smell of fatigue and the smell of gun oil and leather.
Troops always have this odor. The men lie sprawled, some with their mouths
open, but they do not snore. Perhaps they are too tired to snore, but their
breathing is a pulsing, audible thing. The tired blond adjutant haunts the deck like a
ghost. He doesn’t know when he will ever sleep again. He and the provost
marshal share responsibility for a smooth crossing, and both are serious and
responsible men. The sleeping men are missing something tremendous,
as last things are usually missed. The clerks and farmers, salesmen, students,
laborers, technicians, reporters, fishermen who have stopped being those
things to become an army have been trained from their induction for this
moment. This is the beginning of the real thing for which they have practiced.
Their country, which they have become soldiers to defend, is slipping away into
the misty night and they are asleep. The place which will fill their thoughts
in the months to come is gone and they did not see it go. They were asleep.
They will not see it again for a long time, and some of them will never see it
again. This was the time of emotion, the moment that cannot be replaced, but
they were too tired. They sleep like children who really tried to stay awake to
see Santa Claus and couldn’t make it. They will remember this time, but it will
never really have happened to them. The night begins to come in over the sea. It is
overcast and a light rain begins to fall. It is good sailing weather because a
submarine could not see us 200 yards away. The ship is a gray, misty shape,
slipping through a gray mist and melting into it. Overhead a Navy blimp watches
over her, sometimes coming in so close that you can see the men in the little
underslung cabin. The troopship is cut off now. She can hear but
cannot speak. Her outgoing radio will not be used at all unless she is hit or
attacked. For the time of her voyage no one will hear of her. Submarines are in
the misty sea ahead, and of the men on board very many have never seen the
ocean before and the sea itself is dark and terrifying enough without the
lurking things, and there are other matters besides the future fighting that
frighten a local boy—new things, new people, new languages. The men are beginning to awaken now, before the
call. They have missed the moment of parting. They awaken to—destination
unknown, route unknown, life even for an hour ahead unknown. The great ship
throws her bow into the Atlantic. On the boat deck two early-rising mountain boys
are standing, looking in wonder at the incredible sea. One of them says, “They
say she’s salty clear down to the bottom.” “Now you know that ain’t so,” the other says. “What you mean, it ain’t so? Why ain’t it so?” The other speaks confidently. “Now, son,” he
says, “you know there ain’t that much salt in the world. Just figure it out for
yourself.” SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 22, 1943—The
first morning on a troopship is a mess. The problem of feeding thousands of men
in such close quarters is profound. There are two meals a day, spaced ten
hours apart. Mess lines for breakfast form at seven and continue until ten.
Dinner lines start at five in the afternoon and continue until ten at night.
And during these times the long, narrow corridors are lined with men, three
abreast, carrying their field kits. On the first day the system does not take
effect. There are traffic jams and thin tempers. At ten in the morning a
miserable private in chemical warfare whines to a military policeman, who is
keeping the lines shuffling along. “Please, mister. Get me out of this line. I
have had three breakfasts already. I ain’t hungry no more. Every time I get out
of one line I get shoved into another one.” Men cannot be treated as individuals on this
troopship. They are simply units which take up six feet by three feet by two
feet, horizontal or vertical. So much space must be allotted for the physical
unit. They are engines which must be given fuel to keep them from stopping. The
products of their combustion must be taken care of and eliminated. There is no
way of considering them as individuals. The second and third day the method
begins to work. The line flows smoothly and on time, but that first day is a
mess. The men are rested now and there is no room to
move about. They will not be able to have any exercise during this voyage.
There are too many feet. The major impression on a troop ship is of feet. A
man can get his head out of the way and his arms, but, lying or sitting, his
feet are a problem. They sprawl in the aisles, they stick up at all angles.
They are not protected because they are the part of a man least likely to be
hurt. To move about you must step among feet, must trip over feet. There are big, misshapen feet; neat, small
feet; shoes that are polished; curl-toed shoes; shoestrings knotted and
snarled, and careful little bows. You can read character by the feet and shoes.
There are perpetually tired feet, and nervous, quick feet. To remember a
troopship is to remember feet. At night on a blacked-out ship, you must creep
and feel your way among acres of feet. The men begin to be restless now. It is hard to
sit still and do nothing. Some have brought the little pocket books and others
go to the ship’s library and get books. Detective stories and short stories.
They take what they can get. But there are many men who do not consider reading
a matter of pleasure and these must find some other outlet for their interests. Several months ago Services of Supply, in
reporting the items supplied to the soldiers’ exchanges, included several
hundreds of thousands of sets of dice, explaining that parcheesi was becoming
increasingly popular in the Army. Those who remember parcheesi as a rather
dumpy game may not believe this if they have not seen it, but it is so. The
game has been streamlined to a certain extent but there is no doubt of its
popularity. The board with its string pockets has disappeared in the interest
of space. Parcheesi is now played on an Army blanket. It is a spirited, healthy game, and seems to
hold the attention of the players. Some tournaments of parcheesi continue for
days. One, indeed, never stopped during the whole crossing. Another game which
is very popular in the Army is cassino. Its most common forms are stud cassino
and five-card-draw cassino. It is gratifying to see that our new Army has gone
back to the old-fashioned virtues our forefathers lied about. The ship is very heavily armed. From every
point of observation the guns protrude. This troopship could fight her way
through considerable opposition. On the decks, in addition to the lifeboats,
are hundreds of life rafts ready to be thrown into the sea. These boats and
rafts are equipped with food and water and medicine and even fishing tackle. Now the men who slept on the decks last night
move inside, as the inside men move out. The wind is fresh. The soldiers take
the shelter halves and begin to build ingenious shelters. Some erect single
little covers between stanchions and rails, while others, pooling their canvas,
are able to make windproof caves among the life rafts. In these they settle
down to read or to play parcheesi or cassino. The sea is calm and that is good,
for great numbers of the men have never been on any kind of boat. A little
rough weather will make them seasick and then there will be an added problem
for the worried and tired permanent force on the boat. The decks cannot be flushed, for there is no
place for the men to go while it is being done. There are many delicate
problems on such a ship. If another ship should be sighted, the men must not
crowd to one side, for that would throw too great a weight on one side of the
ship and might even endanger her. Our cargo is men and it must be shifted with
care. Every day there is boat drill. The alarm
sounds, and after the first day of pandemonium the men go quietly to their
stations. There are so many problems to be faced on a troopship. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 23, 1943—A
troopship is a strange community and it reacts as a community. It is unique,
however, in that it is cut off from all the world and that it is in constant
danger of being attacked and destroyed. No matter how casual the men seem, that
last fact is never very far from their minds. In the water any place may be the
submarine and any moment may come the blast that sends the great ship to the
bottom. Thus the gunners never relax, the listening
devices are tense and occupied. Half the mind listens and waits all the time
and in the night small sounds take on a large importance. At intervals the
guns are fired to see that they are in perfect condition. The gunnery officer
never relaxes. On the bridge the captain sleeps very rarely and takes his
coffee in his hand. Under such a strain the human brain reacts
curiously. It builds its apprehensions into realities and then repeats those
realities. Thus a troopship is a nest of rumors, rumors that go whisking from
stem to stern, but the most curious thing is that on all troopships the rumors
are the same. Some generalized picture takes shape in all of them. The story
starts and is repeated, and everyone, except perhaps the permanent crew,
believes each for a few hours before a new one takes its place. It might be
well to set down some of the rumors so that when heard they will be recognized
for what they are, the folklore of a troopship. The following are heard on every troopship,
without exception; further, they are believed on every troopship: 1. This morning we were sighted by a submarine.
It could not catch us, but it radioed its fellows and now a pack is assembling
ahead of us to intercept us and sink us. This rumor is supposed to come from
the radio officer, who heard the submarine calling its brothers. The pack will
close in on us tonight. All of these rumors are said to come from a responsible
officer. 2. This morning a submarine surfaced, not
knowing we were near. We had every gun trained on her, ready to blow her out of
the water, because we heard her in our listening devices. She saw us as she
broke water and signaled just in time that she was one of ours. It is not explained
how it happens that she did not hear us in her listening devices, and if the
question arises it is explained that probably her listening devices were out of
order. 3. Some terrible and nameless thing has happened
among the officers (this rumor is only among the enlisted men). The crime they
have committed is not mentioned, but it is known that a number of officers are
under detention and will be court-martialed. This rumor may be pure wishful
thinking. 4. Both the officers’ post exchanges and the
enlisted men’s post exchanges sell a water pop in brown bottles. The soldiers
know very well that what is in their bottles is pop, but the rumor runs through
the ship that the brown bottles in the officers’ lounge contain beer. Some
little discontent arises from this until it is forgotten in a new rumor. 5. The front end of the ship is weak and only
patched up. On the last voyage she cut a destroyer (sometimes a cruiser) in two
and they patched her up and sent her out anyway. She is perfectly all right,
unless we run into heavy weather, in which case she is very likely to fall to
pieces. Since men are not allowed on the forepeak, because the gun crews are
there, they cannot look over and see whether or not this is true. 6. Last night the German radio announced that
this ship had been sunk. The Germans often do this, fishing for information. While
parents, wives, and friends do not know exactly what ship we are on, they know
about when we were alerted and they will be frantic and there is no way of
telling them that we are all right, for no messages are permitted to go out.
The soldiers go about worrying to think of the worry of their people. 7. Some kind of epidemic has broken out on the
ship. The officers are keeping it quiet to prevent a panic. They are burying
the dead secretly at night. As the days go by and the men grow more
restless and the parcheesi games have fallen off because the sinews of the game
have got into a few lean and hungry hands, the rumors grow more intense.
Somewhere in mid-ocean a big patrol plane flies near to us and circles
protectively, and the rumor springs up that she has signaled the captain to
change course. Something terrific is going on somewhere and we are changing
our destination. Since we change our course every thirty seconds
anyway, there is no telling by watching the wake where we are going. So the
rumors go. It would be interesting if the ship’s officers would post a list of
rumors the men are likely to hear. It would certainly eliminate some apprehensions
on the part of the men, and it would be interesting to see whether then a whole
new list of fresh, unused rumors would grow up. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 24, 1943—A
small USO unit is aboard this troopship, girls and men who are going out to
entertain troops wherever they may be sent. These are not the big names who go
out with blasts of publicity and maintain their radio contracts. These are
girls who can sing and dance and look pretty and men who can do magic and
pantomimists and tellers of jokes. They have few properties and none of the
tricks of light and color which dress up the theater. But there is something
very gallant about them. The theater is the only institution in the world which
has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough
and devoted people to keep it alive. An accordion is the largest piece of
property the troupe carries. The evening dresses, crushed in suitcases, must be
pressed and kept pretty. The spirit must be high. This is trouping the really
hard way. The theater is one of the largest mess halls.
Soldiers are packed in, sitting on benches, standing on tables, lying in the
doorways. A little platform on one end is the stage. Tonight the loudspeaker is
out of order, but when it isn’t it blares and distorts voices. The master of
ceremonies gets up and faces his packed audience. He tells a joke—but this
audience is made up of men from different parts of the country and each part
has its own kind of humor. He tells a New York joke. There is a laugh, but a
limited one. The men from South Dakota and Oklahoma do not understand this
joke. They laugh late, merely because they want to laugh. He tries another joke
and this time he plays safe. It is an Army joke about MPs. This time it works.
Everybody likes a joke about MPs. He introduces an acrobatic dancer, a pretty
girl with long legs and the strained smile acrobats develop to conceal the fact
that their muscles are crying with tension. The ship is rolling slowly from
side to side. All of her work is dependent on perfect balance. She tries each
part of her act several times and is thrown off balance, but, seriously, she
tries again until, in a pause in the ship’s roll she succeeds, and legs are
distorted properly for the proper two seconds. The soldiers are with her. They
know the difficulty. They want her to succeed and they cheer when she does.
This is all very serious. She leaves the stage under whistles and cheers. A blues singer follows. Without the
loudspeakers she can hardly be heard, for her voice, although sweet, has no volume.
She forces her voice for volume and loses her sweetness, but she is pretty and
young and earnest. A girl accordion-player comes next. She asks
for suggestions. This is to be group singing and the requests are for old
songs—“Harvest Moon,” “Home on the Range,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” The
men bellow the words in all pitches. There is no war song for this war. Nothing
has come along yet. The show continues—a pantomimist who acts out the physical
examination of an inductee and does it so accurately that his audience howls.
A magician in traditional tail coat manipulates colored silks. In all the acts the illusion does not quite
come off. The audience helps all it can because it wants the show to be good.
And out of the little acts, which are not quite convincing, and the big
audience which wants literally to be convinced, something whole and good comes,
so that when it is over there has been a show. One of the men in the unit has been afraid. He
has not slept since the ship sailed. He is afraid of the ocean and of
submarines. He has lain in his bunk, listening for the blast that will kill
him. He is probably very brave. He does his act when he is terrified. It is
foolish to say he should not be afraid. He is afraid, and that is something he
cannot control, but he does his act, and that is something he can control. Up on the deck in the blackness the colored
troops are sprawled. They sit quietly. A great bass voice sings softly a bar of
the hymn “When the Saints Go Marching In.” A voice says, “Sing it, brother!” The bass takes it again and a few other voices
join him. By the time the hymn has reached the fourth bar an organ of voices is
behind it. The voices take on a beat, feeling one another out. The chords begin
to form. There is nothing visible. The booming voices come out of the darkness.
The men sing sprawled out, lying on their backs. The song becomes huge with
authority. This is a war song. This could be the war song. Not the
sentimental wash about lights coming on again or bluebirds. The black deck rolls with sound. One chorus
ends and another starts, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Four times and on
the fifth the voices fade away to a little hum and the deck is silent again.
The ship rolls and metal protests against metal. The ship is silent again. Only
the shudder of the engine and the whisk of water and the whine of the wind in
the wire rigging break the silence. We have not yet a singing Army nor any songs
for a singing Army. Synthetic emotions and nostalgias do not take hold because the
troops know instinctively that they are synthetic. No one has yet put words and
a melody to the real homesickness, the real terror, and the real ferocity of
the war. SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, June 25, 1943—We
are coming close to land. The birds picked us up this morning and a big flying
boat circled us and then darted away to report us. There has been no trouble at
all, and if, on the bridge, the enemy has been reported, we do not know it. The
word sifts down from the bridge that we shall land tonight. The soldiers line
the rails and report every low-hanging cloud as a landfall. Now that we are
near and the lines of our approach are narrow, the danger is greater. The ship
swerves and turns constantly. These waters are the most dangerous of all. The men are reading a little booklet that has
been distributed, telling them how to get along with the English. The book
explains language differences. It suggests that in England a closet is not a
place to hang clothing, that the word “bloody” should be avoided, that a
garbage can is a dust bin, and it warns that the English use many common words
with a meaning different from what we assign to them. Many of our men find this
very funny and they go about talking a curious gibberish which they imagine is
a British accent. A light haze shrouds the horizon, and out of it
our Spitfires drive at us and circle like angry bees. They come so close that
we hear the fierce whistle of their wings. For a long time they circle us and
then go away, and others take their place. In the afternoon land shows through the haze
and, as we get closer, the neat houses and the neat country, orderly and old.
The men gaze at it in wonder. It is the first foreign place most of them have
ever seen and each man says it looks like some place he knows. One says it
looks like California in the springtime of a wet year. Another recognizes
Vermont. The men crowd to the portholes and the rails. The troopship moves into a harbor and drops her
anchor. She is surrounded on all sides by shipping and by naval units. The men
will go ashore in lighters, but not yet, for disembarkation is, if anything,
more complicated than embarkation. Men can easily be lost or mixed with the
wrong units. The night comes and in the staff room officers
gather and wait until they are assigned the transportation for their men. It
takes a good part of the night. At an exact time each unit must be in an exact
place, where a lighter will be waiting to take them on. The troop trains will
be waiting ashore. It has been a perfect crossing. No trouble, no sickness, no
attack. The ship’s officers show the strain. They haven’t slept much. After a
few voyages they must be relieved. The responsibility is too great for a man to
bear for too long a stretch. In the morning the lighters come in and hug the
sides of the troopship. The big iron doors open and the troops move out and
take their places on the decks of the little boats. The portholes high above
are filled with heads looking down. Men for a later debarkation. The little
boat moves off, puffs up the bay among the tugs and the destroyers and the
anchored freighters. The soldiers are self-conscious in a new place. They
regard this new land skeptically as one must when he is not sure of himself.
The little boat puffs up to the dock, which has mysteriously become a quay,
pronounced “key,” which is, of course, ridiculous. Now as the lighter ties up an astonishing thing
happens. A band of pipers marches out in kilts, with bagpipes and drums and the
swingy march of pipers. The harsh skirling cuts through the air. The most
military, the most fighting music in the world. Our men crowd the rail. The
band approaches, drums banging, pipes squealing and, as they draw abreast, the
soldiers break into a great cheer. They may not like the harsh music; it takes
time to like it; but something of the iron of the music goes into them. The
pipers wheel and march back and away. It was a good thing to do. Our men, in
some deep way, feel honored. The music has stirred them. This is a different
war from the one of training camps and strategy at post exchanges. From the deck of the lighter the men can see
the roofless houses, the burned-out houses. The piles of rubble where the
bombs have fallen. They have seen pictures of this and have read about it, but
that was pictures and reading. It wasn’t real. This is different. It isn’t like
the pictures at all. On the quay, the Red Cross is waiting with caldrons of
coffee, with mountains of cake. They have been serving since dawn and they will
serve until long after dark. The gangplank to the lighter is fixed now. The
men, carrying their heavy barrack bags, packs on their backs and rifles slung
over their shoulders, struggle up the steep gangway to the new country. And in
the distance they can hear the sound of the pipes greeting another lighter-load
of troops. A PLANE’S NAMEA BOMBER STATION, June 26, 1943—The
bomber crew is getting back from London. The men have been on a
forty-eight-hour pass. At the station an Army bus is waiting, and they pile in
with other crews. Then the big bus moves through the narrow streets of the
little ancient town and rolls into the pleasant green country. Fields of wheat
with hedgerows between. On the right is one of the huge vegetable gardens all
cut up into little plots where families raise their own produce. Some men and
women are working in the garden now, having ridden out of town on their
bicycles. The Army bus rattles over the rough road and
through a patch of woods. In the distance there are a few squat brown buildings
and a flagstaff flying the American flag. This is a bomber station. England is Uttered
with them. This is one of the best. There is no mud here, and the barracks are
permanent and adequate. There is no high concentration of planes in any one
field. Probably no more than twenty-five Flying Fortresses live here, and they
are so spread out that you do not see them at once. A raider might get one of
them, but he would not be likely to get more than one. No attempt is made to camouflage the buildings
or the planes—it doesn’t work and it’s just a lot of work. Air protection and
dispersal do work. Barbed wire is strung along the road, coils of it, and in
front of the administration building there is a gate with a sentry box. The
bus pulls to a stop near the gate and the men jump down, adjusting their gas
masks at their sides. No one is permitted to leave the place without his gas
mask. The men file through the gate, identify themselves, and sign In back on
the post. The crews walk slowly to their barracks. The room is long and narrow and unpainted.
Against each side wall are iron double-decker bunks, alternating with clothes
lockers. A long rack in the middle between the bunks serves as a hanger for
whiter coats and raincoats. Next to it is the rack of rules and submachine
guns of the crew. Each bunk is carefully made, and to the foot of
each are hung a helmet and a gas mask. On the walls are pinup girls. But the
same girls near each bunk—big-breasted blondes in languorous attitudes, child
faces, parted shiny lips and sleepy eyes, which doubtless mean passion, but
always the same girls. The crew of the Mary Ruth have their
bunks on the right-hand side of the room. They have had these bunks only a few
weeks. A Fortress was shot down and the bunks were emptied. It is strange to
sleep in the bed of a man who was at breakfast with you and now is dead or a
prisoner hundreds of miles away. It is strange and necessary. His clothes are
in the locker, to be picked up and put away. His helmet is to be taken off the
foot of the bunk and yours put there. You leave his pin-up girls where they
are. Why change them? Yours would be the same girls. This crew did not name or come over in the Mary
Ruth. On the nose of the ship her name is written, and under it “Memories
of Mobile.” But this crew does not know who Mary Ruth was, nor what
memories are celebrated. She was named when they got her, and they would not
think of changing her name. In some way it would be bad luck. A rumor has swept through the airfields that
some powerful group in America has protested about the names of the ships and
that an order is about to be issued removing these names and substituting the
names of towns and rivers. It is to be hoped that this is not true. Some of the
best writing of the war has been on the noses of bombers. The names are highly
personal things, and the ships grow to be people. Change the name of Bomb
Boogie to St. Louis, or Mary Ruth of Mobile Memories to Wichita,
or the Volga Virgin to Davenport, and you will have injured the
ship. The name must be perfect and must be approved by every member of the
crew. The names must not be changed. There is enough dullness in the war as it
is. Mary Ruth’s crew sit on their bunks and
discuss the hard luck of Bomb Boogie. Bomb Boogie is a hard-luck
ship. She never gets to her target. Every mission is an abortion. They bring
her in and go over her and test her and take her on test runs. She is perfect
and then she starts on an operational flight, and her engines go bad or her
landing gear gives trouble. Something always happens to Bomb Boogie. She
never gets to her target. It is something no one can understand. Four days ago
she started out and never got as far as the coast of England before one of her
engines conked out and she had to return. One of the waist gunners strolls out, but in a
minute he is back. “We’re alerted for tomorrow,” he says. “I hope it isn’t
Kiel. There was a hell of a lot of red flak at Kiel.” “The guy with the red beard is there,” says
Brown, the tail gunner. “He looked right at me. I drew down on him and my guns
jammed.” “Let’s go eat,” the turret gunner says. NEWS FROM HOMEBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, June 28, 1943—The
days are very long. A combination of summer time and daylight-saving time keeps
them light until eleven thirty. After mess we take the Army bus into town. It
is an ancient little city which every American knows about as soon as he can
read. The buildings on the narrow streets are Tudor, Stuart, Georgian, and even
some Norman. The paving stones are worn smooth and the flagstones of the sidewalks
are grooved by apes of strollers. It is a town to stroll in. American soldiers,
Canadian, Royal Air Force men, and many of Great Britain’s women soldiers walk
through the streets. But Britain drafts its women and they are really in the
Army, driver-mechanics, dispatch riders, trim and hard in their uniforms. The crew of the Mary Ruth ends up at a
little pub, overcrowded and noisy. They edge their way in to the bar, where the
barmaids are drawing beer as fast as they can. In a moment this crew has found
a table and they have the small glasses of pale yellow fluid in front of them.
It is curious beer. Most of the alcohol has been taken out of it to make
munitions. It is not cold. It is token beer—a gesture rather than a drink. The bomber crew is solemn. Men who are alerted
for operational missions are usually solemn, but tonight there is some burden
on this crew. There is no way of knowing how these things start. All at once a
crew will feel fated. Then little things go wrong. Then they are uneasy until they
take off for their mission. When the uneasiness is running it is the waiting
that hurts. They sip the flat, tasteless beer. One of them
says, “I saw a paper from home at the Red Cross in London.” It is quiet. The
others look at him across their glasses. A mixed group of pilots and ATS girls
at the other end of the pub have started a song. It is astonishing how many of
the songs are American. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to,” they sing. And the
beat of the song is subtly changed. It has become an English song. The waist gunner raises his voice to be heard
over the singing. “It seems to me that we are afraid to announce our losses. It
seems almost as if the War Department was afraid that the country couldn’t take
it. I never saw anything the country couldn’t take.” The ball-turret gunner wipes his mouth with the
back of his hand. “We don’t hear much,” he says, “it’s a funny thing, but the
closer you get to action the less you read papers and war news. I remember
before I joined up I used to know everything that was happening. I knew what
Turkey was doing. I even had maps with pins and I drew out campaigns with
colored pencils. Now I haven’t looked at a paper in two weeks.” The first man went on, “This paper I saw had
some funny stuff in it. It seemed to think that the war was nearly over.” “I wish the Jerries thought that,” the tail
gunner says. “I wish you could get Goering’s yellow noses and them damned flak
gunners convinced of that.” “Well anyway,” the waist gunner says, “I looked
through that paper pretty close. It seems to me that the folks at home are
fighting one war and we’re fighting another one. They’ve got theirs nearly won
and we’ve just got started on ours. I wish they’d get in the same war we’re in.
I wish they’d print the casualties and tell them what it’s like. I think maybe
that they’d like to get in the same war we’re in if they could get it to do.” The tail gunner comes from so close to the
border of Kentucky he talks like a Kentuckian. “I read a very nice piece in a
magazine about us,” he says. “This piece says we’ve got nerves of steel. We
never get scared. All we want in the world is just to fly all the time and get
a crack at Jerry. I never heard anything so brave as us. I read it three or
four times to try and convince myself that I ain’t scared.” “There was almost solid red flack over Bremen
last Thursday,” the radio man says. “Get much more and we can walk home over
solid flak. I hate that red flak. We sure took a pasting Thursday.” “Well, we didn’t get any,” says Henry Maurice
Grain, one of the gunners. “We got the nose knocked out of our ship, but that
was an accident. One of the gunners in a ship high on ahead tossed out some
shell casings and they came right through the nose. They’ve got her nearly
fixed up now.” “But anyway,” the first man says doggedly, “I
wish they’d tell them at home that the war isn’t over and I wish they wouldn’t
think we’re so brave. I don’t want to be so brave. Shall we have another beer?” “What for?” says the tail gunner. “This stuff
hasn’t got even enough character for you to dislike it, I’m going back to wipe
my guns. Then I won’t have to do it in the morning.” They stand up and file slowly out of the pub.
It is still daylight. The pigeons are flying about the tower of an old Gothic
church, a kind of architecture especially suited to nesting pigeons. The hotel taken over by the Red Cross is
crowded with men in from the flying fields which dot the countryside. Our bus
drives up in front and we pile in. The crew looks automatically at the sky. It
is clear, with little puffs of white cloud suspended in the light of a sun that
has already gone down. “Looks like it might be a clear day,” the radio
man says. “That’s good for us and it’s good for them to get at us.” The bus rattles back toward the field. The tail
gunner muses. “I hope old Red Beard has got a bad cold,” he says. “I didn’t
like the look in his eye last time.” (Red Beard is an enemy fighter pilot who comes
so close that you can almost see his face.) SUPERSTITIONBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, June 30, 1943—It
is a bad night in the barracks, such a night as does not happen very often. It
is impossible to know how it starts. Nerves are a little thin and no one is
sleepy. The tail gunner of the other outfit in the room gets down from his
upper bunk and begins rooting about on the floor. “What’s the matter?” the man on the lower bunk
asks. “I lost my medallion,” the tail gunner says. No one asks what is was, a St. Christopher or a
good-luck piece. The fact of the matter is that it is his medallion and he has
lost it. Everyone gets up and looks. They move the double-decker bunk out from
the wall. They empty all the shoes. They look behind the steel lockers. They
insist that the gunner go through all his pockets. It isn’t a good thing for a
man to lose his medallion. Perhaps there has been an uneasiness before. This
sets it. The uneasiness creeps all through the room. It takes the channel of
being funny. They tell jokes; they rag one another. They ask shoe sizes of one
another to outrage their uneasiness. “What size shoes you wear, Brown? I get
them if you conk out.” The thing runs bitterly through the room. And then the jokes stop. There are many little
things you do when you go out on a mission. You leave the things that are to be
sent home if you have an accident. You leave them under your pillow, your
photographs and the letter you wrote, and your ring. They’re under your pillow,
and you don’t make up your bunk. That must be left unmade so that you can slip
right in when you get back. No one would think of making up a bunk while its
owner is on a mission. You go out clean-shaven too, because you are coming
back, to keep your date. You project your mind into the future and the things
you are going to do then. In the barracks they tell of presentiments they
have heard about. There was the radio man who one morning folded his bedding
neatly on his cot and put his pillow on top. And he folded his clothing into a
neat parcel and cleared his locker. He had never done anything like that
before. And sure enough, he was shot down that day. The tail gunner still hasn’t found his
medallion. He has gone through his pockets over and over again. The brutal talk
goes on until one voice says, “For God’s sake shut up. It’s after midnight.
We’ve got to get some sleep.” The lights are turned out. It is pitch black in
the room, for the blackout curtains are drawn tight. A man speaks in the
darkness. “I wish I was in that ship by now.” He knows that he will be all
right when the mission starts. It’s this time of waiting that hurts, and
tonight it has been particularly bad. It is quiet in the room, and then there is a
step, and then a great clatter. A new arrival trying to get to his bunk in the
dark has stumbled over the gun rack. The room breaks into loud curses. Everyone
curses the new arrival. They tell him where he came from and where they hope he
will go. It is a fine, noisy outburst, and the tension goes out of the room.
The evil thing has gone. You are conscious, lying in your bunk, of a
droning sound that goes on and on. It is the Royal Air Force going out for the
night bombing again. There must be hundreds of them—a big raid. The sound has
been going on all evening and it goes on for another hour. Hundreds of
Lancasters, with hundreds of tons of bombs. And, when they come back, you will
go out. You cannot call the things that happen to
bombing crews superstition. Tension and altitude do strange things to a man. At
30,000 feet, the body is living in a condition it was not born to withstand. A
man is breathing oxygen from a tube and his eyes and ears are working in the
reduced pressure. It is little wonder, then, that he sometimes sees things
that are not there and does not see things that are there. Gunners have fired
on their own ships and others have poured great bursts into empty air, thinking
they saw a swastika. The senses are not trustworthy. And the sky is treacherous
with flak. The flak bursts about you and sometimes the fragments come tearing
through your ship. The fighters stab past you, flaring with their guns. And, if
you happen to see little visions now and then, why, that’s bound to happen. And
if on your intensified awareness, small incidents are built up with meanings,
why, such things always happen under tension. Ghosts have always ridden through
skies and if your body and nerves are strained with altitude, too, such things
are bound to happen. The barrack room is very silent. From a corner
comes a light snore. Someone is talking in his sleep. First a sentence mumbled
and then, “Helen, let’s go in the Ferris wheel now.” There is secret sound from the far wall, and
then a tiny clink of metal. The tail gunner is still feeling through his
pockets for his medallion. PREPARATION FOR A RAIDBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 1, 1943—In
the barracks, a brilliant white light flashes on, jerking you out of sleep. A
sharp voice says, “All right, get out of it! Briefing at three o’clock,
stand-by at four-twenty. Better get out of it now.” The crew struggles sleepily out of their bunks
and into clothes. It is 2:30 a.m. There hasn’t been much sleep for anyone. Outside the daylight is beginning to come. The
crew gropes its way through sleepiness and the semidarkness to the guarded
door, and each goes in as he is recognized by the guard. Inside there are rows of benches in front of a large
white screen, which fills one wall. Some of the crews are already seated. The
lights go out and from a projector an aerial photograph is projected on the
screen. It is remarkably clear. It shows streets and factories and a winding
river, and docks and submarine pens. An Intelligence officer stands beside the
screen and he holds a long pointer in his hand. He begins without preliminary.
“Here is where you are going,” he says, and he names a German city. “Now this squadron will come in from this
direction,” the pointer traces the road, making a black shadow on the screen.
The pointer stops at three long, narrow buildings, side by side. “This is your
target. They make small engine parts here. Knock it out.” He mentions times and
as he does a sergeant marks the times on a blackboard. “Standby at such a
time, take-off at such a time. You will be over your target at such a time, and
you should be back here by such a time.” It is all on the minute—5:52 and 9:43.
The incredible job of getting so many ships to a given point at a given time
means almost split-second timing. The Intelligence officer continues: (Next three
sentences cut by censor.) “Good luck and good hunting.” The lights flood on.
The pictured city disappears. A chaplain comes to the front of the room. “All
Catholics gather at the back of the room,” he says. The crews straggle across the way to the mess
hall and fill their plates and their cups, stewed fruit and scrambled eggs and
bacon and cereal and coffee. The Mary Ruth’s crew is almost gay. It
is a reaction to the bad time they had the night before. All of the tension is
broken now, for there is work and flying to be done, not waiting. The tail
gunner says, “If anything should happen today, I want to go on record that I
had prunes for breakfast.” They eat hurriedly and then file out, washing
their dishes and cups in soapy water and then rinsing them in big caldrons near
the door. Dressing is a long and complicated business.
The men strip to the skin. Next to their skins they put on long light woolen
underwear. Over that they slip on what looks like long light-blue-colored
underwear, but these are the heated suits. They come low on the ankles and far
down on the wrists, and from the waists of these suits protrude electric plugs.
The suit, between two layers of fabric, is threaded with electric wires which
will carry heat when the plug is connected to the heat outlet on the ship. Over
the heated suit goes the brown cover-all. Last come thick, fleece-lined heated
boots and gloves which also have plugs for the heat unit. Next goes on the Mae
West, the orange rubber life preserver, which can be inflated in a moment. Then
comes the parachute with its heavy canvas straps over the shoulders and between
the legs. And last the helmet with the throat speaker and the earphones
attached. Plugged in to the intercommunications system, the man can now
communicate with the rest of the crew no matter what noise is going on about
him. During the process the men have got bigger and bigger as layer on layer of
equipment is put on. They walk stiffly, like artificial men. The lean waist
gunner is now a little chubby. They dress very carefully, for an exposed place
or a disconnected suit can cause a bad frostbite at 30,000 feet. It is
dreadfully cold up there. It is daylight now and a cold wind is blowing.
The men go back to the armament room and pick up their guns. A truck is waiting
for them. They stow the guns carefully on the floor and then stiffly hoist
themselves in. The truck drives away along the deserted runway. It moves into a
side runway. Now you can see the ships set here and there on the field. A
little group of men is collected under the wings of each one. “There she is,” the ball-turret man says. “I
wonder if they got her nose repaired.” It was the Mary Ruth that got her
nose smashed by cartridge cases from a ship ahead. The truck draws up right
under the nose of the great ship. The crew piles out and each man lifts his gun
down tenderly. They go into the ship. The guns must be mounted and carefully
tested. Ammunition must be checked and the guns loaded. It all takes time.
That’s why the men were awakened so long before the take-off time. A thousand
things must be set before the take-off. THE GROUND CREWBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 2, 1493—The
ground crew is still working over the Mary Ruth. Master Sergeant Pierce,
of Oregon, is the crew chief. He has been long in the Army and he knows his
engines. They say of him that he owns the Mary Ruth but he lends her to
the skipper occasionally. If he says a flight is off, it is off. He has been
checking the engines a good part of the night. Corporal Harold is there, too. He has been
loading bombs and seeing that the armament of the ship is in condition. The
ground crew scurry about like rabbits. Their time is getting short. They have
the obscure job, the job without glory and without publicity, and the ships
could not fly without them. They are dressed in coveralls and baseball caps. The gunners have mounted their guns by now and
are testing the slides. A ground man is polishing the newly mended nose,
rubbing every bit of dirt from it, so that the bombardier may have a good sight
of his target. A jeep drives up, carrying the officers—Brown,
Quenin, Bliley, and Feerick. They spill a number of little square packets on
the ground, one for each man. Captain Brown distributes them. They contain
money of the countries near the target, concentrated food, and maps. Brown
says, “Now, if we should get into any trouble don’t go in the direction of——because
the people haven’t been very friendly there. Go toward——you’ll find plenty of help
there.” The men take the packets and slip them in pockets below the knees in
their coveralls. The sun is just below the horizon now and there
are fine pink puff clouds all over the sky. The captain looks at his watch. “I
guess we better get going,” he says. The other Brown, the tail gunner, runs
over. He hands over two rings, a cameo and another. “I forgot to leave these,”
he says. “Will you put them under my pillow?” The crew scramble to their places
and the door is slammed and locked. The waist doors are open, of course, with
the guns peering out of them, lashed down now, but immediately available. The
long scallop of the cartridge belts drapes into each one. The captain waves from his high perch. His
window sits right over the ship’s name—Mary Ruth, Memories of Mobile.
The engines turn over and catch one at a time and roar as they warm up. And
now, from all over the field, come the bursting roars of starting engines. From
all over the field the great ships come rumbling from their dispersal points
into the main runways. They make a line Like giant bugs, a parade of them,
moving down to the take-off stretch. The captain signals and two ground-crew men
dart in and pull out the chocks from in front of the wheels and dart out again.
The Mary Ruth guns her motors and then slowly crawls out along her
entrance and joins the parade. Along the runway the first ship whips out and
gathers speed and takes the air, and behind her comes another and behind
another and behind another, until the flying line of ships stretches away to
the north. For a little while the squadron has disappeared, but in a few
minutes back they come over the field, but this time they are not in a line.
They have gained altitude and are flying in a tight formation. They go roaring
over the field and they have hardly passed when another squadron from another
field comes over, and then another and another. They will rendezvous at a given
point, the squadrons from many fields, and when the whole force has gathered
there will be perhaps a hundred of the great ships flying in Vs and in Vs of
Vs, each protecting itself and the others by its position. And this great
flight is going south like geese in the fall. There is incredible detail to get these
missions off. Staff detail of supply and intelligence detail, deciding and
briefing the targets, and personnel detail of assigning the crews, and
mechanical detail of keeping the engines going. Bomb Boogie went out
with the others, but in a little while she flutters back with a dead motor. She
has conked out again. No one can know why. She sinks dispiritedly to the
ground. When the mission has gone the ground crews
stand about looking lonesome. They have watched every bit of the take-off and
now they are left to sweat out the day until the ships come home. It is hard to
set down the relation of the ground crew to the air crew, but there is
something very close between them. This ground crew will be nervous and anxious
until the ships come home. And if the Mary Ruth should fail to return
they will go into a kind of sullen, wordless mourning. They have been working
all night. Now they pile on a tractor to ride back to the hangar to get a cup
of coffee in the mess hall. Master Sergeant Pierce says, “That’s a good ship.
Never did have any trouble with her. She’ll come back, unless she’s shot to
pieces.” In the barracks it is very quiet; the beds are unmade, their blankets
hanging over the sides of the iron bunks. The pin-up girls look a little
haggard in their sequin gowns. The family pictures are on the tops of the steel
lockers. A clock ticking sounds strident. The rings go under Brown’s pillow. WAITINGBOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 4, 1943—The
field is deserted after the ships have left. The ground crew go into barracks
to get some sleep, because they have been working most of the night. The flag
hangs limply over the administration building. In the hangars repair crews are
working over ships that have been Injured. Bomb Boogie is brought in to
be given another overhaul and Bomb Boogie’s crew goes disgustedly back
to bed. The crews own a number of small dogs. These
dogs, most of which are of uncertain or, at least, of ambiguous breed, belong
to no one man. The ship usually owns each one, and the crew is very proud of
him. Now these dogs wander disconsolately about the field. The life has gone
out of the bomber station. The morning passes slowly. The squadron was due over
the target at 9:52. It was due home at 12:43. As 9:50 comes and passes you have
the ships in your mind. Now the flak has come up at them. Perhaps now a swarm
of fighters has hurled itself at them. The thing happens in your mind. Now, if
everything has gone well and there have been no accidents, the bomb bays are
open and the ships are running over the target. Now they have turned and are
making the run for home, keeping the formation tight, climbing, climbing to
avoid the flak. It is 10 o’clock, they should be started back—10:20, they
should be seeing the ocean by now. The crew last night had told a story of the
death of a Fortress, and it comes back to mind. It was a beautiful day, they said, a picture
day with big clouds and a very blue sky. The kind of day you see in
advertisements for air travel back at home. The formation was flying toward
St. Nazaire and the air was very clear. They could see the little towns on the
ground, they said. Then the flak came up, they said, and some Messerschmitts
parked off out of range and began to pot at them with their cannon. They didn’t
see where the Fortress up ahead was hit. Probably in the controls, because
they did not see her break up at all. They all agree that what happened seemed to
happen very slowly. The Fortress slowly nosed up and up until she tried to
climb vertically and, of course, she couldn’t do that. Then she slipped in slow
motion, backing like a falling leaf, and she balanced for a while and then her
nose edged over and she started, nose down, for the ground. The blue sky and the white clouds made a
picture of it. The crew could see the gunner trying to get out and then he did,
and his parachute fluffed open. And the ball-turret gunner—they could see him
flopping about. The bombardier and navigator blossomed out of the nose and the
waist gunners followed them. Mary Ruth’s crew was yelling, “Get out, you
pilots.” The ship was far down when the ball-turret gunner cleared. They
thought the skipper and the co-pilot were lost. They stayed with the ship too
long and then—the ship was so far down that they could hardly see it. It must
have been almost to the ground when two little puffs of white, first one and
then the second, shot out of her. And the crew yelled with relief. And then the
ship hit the ground and exploded. Only the tail gunner and ball-turret man had
seen the end. They explained it over the intercom. Beside the no. 1 hangar there is a little mound
of earth covered with short, heavy grass. At 12:15 the ground men begin to
congregate on it and sweat out the homecoming. Rumor comes with the crew chief
that they have reported, but it is rumor. A small dog, which might be a gray
Scottie if his ears didn’t hang down and his tail bend the wrong way, comes to
sit on the little mound. He stretches out and puts his whiskery muzzle on his
outstretched paws. He does not close his eyes and his ears twitch. All the
ground crews are there now, waiting for their ships. It is the longest set of
minutes imaginable. Suddenly the little dog raises his head. His
body begins to tremble all over. The crew chief has a pair of field glasses. He
looks down at the dog and then aims his glasses to the south. “Can’t see
anything yet,” he says. The little dog continues to shudder and a high whine
comes from him. And there they come. You can just see the dots
far to the south. The formation is good, but one ship flies alone and ahead.
“Can you see her number? Who is she?” The lead ship drops altitude and comes in
straight for the field. From her side two little rockets break, a red one and a
white one. The ambulance, they call it the meat wagon, starts down the runway.
There is a hurt man on that ship. The main formation comes over the field and
each ship peels to circle for a landing, but the lone ship drops and the wheels
strike the ground and the Fortress lands like a great bug on the runway. But
the moment her wheels are on the ground there is a sharp, crying bark and a
streak of gray. The little dog seems hardly to touch the ground. He streaks
across the field toward the landed ship. He knows his own ship. One by one the
Fortresses land and the ground crews check off the numbers as they land. Mary
Ruth is there. Only one ship is missing and she landed farther south, with
short fuel tanks. There is a great sigh of relief on the mound. The mission is
over. DAY OF MEMORIESLONDON, July 4, 1943—All the day there
have been exercises and entertainments for the troops on leave in London.
Everything that can be done for a guest has been done. There was a hay ride
this morning. There have been exercises and dances and speeches, excursions to
points of interest. The British and the Canadians and the others have been
extra friendly. The bands in the parks played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and
“Dixie” and “Home, Sweet Home.” Everything has been done that can be done and
this is a city of the most abject homesickness. The speaker said in clipped and concise
English, “We welcome you again on this day that is dear to you.” And the minds
were on the red-necked politician, foaming with enthusiasm and bourbon whisky,
screaming the eagle on a bunting-covered platform while his audience longed for
the watermelon and potato salad to come. The conductors of parties said, “We are going
to the Tower of London. It is in a sense the cradle of English
civilization”—the fat man’s race, the three-legged race, the squeals of women
running with eggs in tablespoons, the smell of barbecuing meat on a deep pit. The band played beautifully in Trafalgar Square
a dignified and compelling march—and Coney Island, in its welter of squalling
children, the smell of ice cream and peanuts and water-soaked cigar butts, the
surf, one-third water and two-thirds people, fighting their way through the
grapefruit rinds, the squeak and bellow of honky-tonk music. Soldiers have paraded in London, men who
marched like clothed machines, towering men, straight as their own rifles and
their hands swinging—at home, the knights of this and that in wilted
ostrich-plumed hats, in uniforms out of the moth-balls again, knights who were
butchers last evening, and clerks and tellers of the local bank, but knights
now, out of step, shambling after their great banner, their tinsel swords at
all angles over their shoulders, the knights of this and that. The hospitable people of London have served
flan and trifle, biscuits and tea, marmalade, gin and lime, scotch and water,
and beer—hot dogs, with mustard drooling from the lower end and running up your
sleeve. Hamburgers, with raw onions spilling out of the round buns. Popcorn
dripping with butter. The sting of neat whisky and the barrels of beer set on
trestles. Chocolate cakes and deviled eggs, but mostly hamburgers with onions,
and which will have you have, piccalilli or dill or mayonnaise, or all of them? The cool girls dance well and they are pleasant
and friendly. They work hard in the war plants, and it’s a job to get a dress
so neatly pressed. The lipstick is hard to get, and the perfume is the last in
the bottle. Neat and pretty and friendly. At home the sticky kisses in the
rumble seat and the swatting at mosquitoes on a hot, vine-covered porch. And in
the joints the juke box howls and its basses thump the air. When you say
something the girl knows the proper answer. None of it means anything, but it
all fits together. Everything fits together. This is a time of homesickness, and Christmas
will be worse. No grandeur, no luxury, no interest can cut it out. No show is
as good as the double bill at the Odeon, no food is as good as the midnight
sandwich at Joe’s, and no one in the world is as pretty as that blond Margie
who works at the Poppy. When they come home they’ll be a little tiresome
about London for a long time. They will recall exotic adventures and strange
foods. Piccadilly and the Savoy and the White Tower, the Normandie Bar and the
place in Soho will drip from their conversation. They will compare notes
enthusiastically with other soldiers who were here. The cool girls will grow to
strange and romantic adventures. The lonesome little glow will be remembered as
a Bacchic orgy. They will remember things they did not know that they saw—St.
Paul’s against a lead-colored sky and the barrage balloons hanging over it.
Waterloo Station, the sandbags piled high against the Wren churches, the
excited siren and the sneak air raid. But today, July 4, 1943, they wander about in a
daze of homesickness, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but the faces and voices
of their own people. THE PEOPLE OF DOVERDOVER, July 6, 1943—Dover, with its
castle on the hill and its little crooked streets, its big, ugly hotels and its
secret and dangerous offensive power, is closest of all to the enemy. Dover is
full of the memory of Wellington and of Napoleon, of the time when Napoleon
came down to Calais and looked across the Channel at England and knew that only
this little stretch of water interrupted his conquest of the world. And later
the men of Dunkerque dragged their weary feet off the little ships and
struggled through the streets of Dover. Then Hitler came to the hill above Calais and
looked across at the cliffs, and again only the little stretch of water stopped
the conquest of the world. It is a very little piece of water. On the clear
days you can see the hills about Calais, and with a glass you can see the clock
tower of Calais. When the guns of Calais fire you can see the flash, while with
the telescope you can see from the castle the guns themselves, and even tanks
deploying on the beach. Dover feels very close to the enemy. Three
minutes in a fast airplane, three-quarters of an hour in a fast boat. Every day
or so a plane comes whipping through and drops a bomb and takes a shot or so at
the balloons that hang in the air above the town, and every few days Jerry
trains his big guns on Dover and fires a few rounds of high explosive at the
little old town. Then a building is hit and collapses and sometimes a few
people are killed. It is a wanton, useless thing, serving no military, naval,
or morale business. It is almost as though the Germans fretted about the
little stretch of water that defeated them. There is a quality in the people of Dover that
may well be the key to the coming German disaster. They are incorrigibly,
incorruptibly unimpressed. The German, with his uniform and his pageantry and
his threats and plans, does not impress these people at all. The Dover man has
taken perhaps a little more pounding than most, not in great blitzes, but in
every-day bombing and shelling, and still he is not impressed. Jerry is like the weather to him. He complains
about it and then promptly goes about what he was doing. Nothing in the world
is as important as his garden and, in other days, his lobster pots. Weather and
Jerry are alike in that they are inconvenient and sometimes make messes.
Surveying a building wrecked by a big shell, he says, “Jerry was bad last
night,” as he would discuss a windstorm. It goes like this—on the Calais hill there is a
flash in the night. Immediately from Dover the sirens give the shelling
warning. From the flash you must count approximately fifty-nine seconds before
the explosion. The shell may land almost anywhere. There is a flat blast that
rockets back from the cliffs, a cloud of debris rising into the air. People
look at their watches. The next one will be in twenty minutes. And at exactly
that time there is another flash from the French coast, and you count seconds
again. This goes on sometimes all night. One hour after the last shell the
all-clear sounds. This does not mean that it is over. Jerry sometimes lobs
another one in, hoping to kill a few more people. In the morning there are wrecked houses; the
dead have been dug out. A little band of men are cleaning the debris out of the
street so that traffic may go by. A policeman keeps the people from coming too
close for fear a brick may fall. That house is probably wrecked and will be
unlivable until the war is over, but the houses all about are hurt. The windows
are all blown out, and there will be no glass until after the war, either. The
people are already sticking paper over the broken windows. Plaster has fallen
in the houses all about. A general house cleaning is in progress. Puffs of
swept plaster come out the doors. Women are on their knees, with pails of
water, washing the floors. The blast of a near shell cleans the chimneys, they
say. The puff of the explosion blows the soot out of the chimney and into the
rooms. There is that to clean up, too. In a front yard
a man is standing in his garden. A flying piece of scantling has broken off a
rose bush. The bud, which was about to open, is wilting on the ground. The man
leans down and picks up the bud. He feels it with his fingers and carries it to
his nose and smells it. He lifts the scantling from the trunk and looks at it
to see whether it may not send out new shoots, and then, standing up, he turns
and looks at the French coast, where five hundred men and a great tube of steel
and high explosive and charts and plans, mathematical formulae, uniforms,
telephones, shouted orders, are out to break a man’s rose bush. A neighbor
passes in the street. “The Boche was bloody bad last night,” he says.
“Broke the yellow one proper,” he says. “And it was just coming on to bloom.” “Ah, well,” the neighbor says, “let’s have a
look at it.” The two kneel down beside the bush. “She’s broke above the graft,”
the neighbor says, “she’s not split. Probably shoot out here.” He points with a
thick finger to a lump on the side of the bush. “Sometimes,” he says,
“sometimes, when they’ve had a shock, they come out prettier than ever.” Across the Channel, in back of the hill that
you can see, they are cleaning the great barrel, studying charts, making
reports, churning with Geopolitik. MINESWEEPERLONDON, July 7, 1943—Day after day the
minesweepers go out. Small boats that in peacetime fished for herring and cod.
Now they fish for bigger game. They are equipped with strange, new fish lines.
The crews are nearly all ex-fishermen and whalers and the officers are from the
same tough breed. Theirs is an unromantic and unpublicized job that must be
done and done very thoroughly. The danger lurks without flags and firing. Very
few decorations are awarded to the minesweeping men. They usually sail out of the harbor in a line,
three boats to sweep and two to drop the buoyed flags, called dans, which mark
the swept channel. Once on the ground to be swept, three of the boats deploy
and travel abreast at exact and set distances from one another. The space
between them is the area that can be reached by their instruments. The little
boats are searching for the two kinds of mines which are usually planted—the
magnetic mines which explode when a ship with its self-created magnetic field
sails over, and the other kind which is exploded by the vibration of a ship’s
engines. The sweepers are equipped with instruments to explode either kind and
to do it at a safe distance from themselves. The three abreast move slowly over the area to
be cleared of mines and behind them the dan ships follow at intervals, putting
out the flags. At the end of their run they turn and come back, overlapping a
little on the old course and the dan ships pick up the flags and set them on
the outer course again. All the boats are armed against airplanes. The
gunners stand at their posts and search the sky constantly, while the radio
operator listens to the spotting instruments on the shore. They take no chances
with the planes. When one comes near them they train their guns in that
direction until they recognize her. And even the friendly planes do not fly too
close. For these men have been bombed and fired on from the air so often that
they will fire if there is any doubt at all. Sticking up out of the water are
the masts of many ships sunk early in the war when the German planes ranged
over the Channel almost with impunity. They do not do it any more. The voice of the radio man comes up through the
speaking tube to the little bridge. “Enemy aircraft in the vicinity,” he says,
and then a moment later, “Red alert.” The gunners swing their guns and the crew
stands by, all eyes on the sky. From the English coast the Typhoons boil out
angrily, fast and deadly ships that fly close to the water. In the distance the
enemy plane is a spot. It turns tail and runs for the French coast. The radio
man calls, “All clear,” and the crew relaxes. On the little bridge the captain directs the
laying down of the colored flags, while his second checks the distance between
the boats. If the dan ship gets too close, a mine may explode under her. With
instruments the distance is checked every few seconds. The little flotilla
moves very slowly, for when it has passed and marked the free channel the
ships with supplies must be able to come through in safety. Suddenly the dan ship is struck by a heavy
blow, the sea about flattens out and shivers, and then a hundred yards ahead a
tower of water and mud bursts into the air with a roar. It seems to hang in the
air for a long time and when it falls back the dan ship is nearly over it. There is a large, dirty place on the ocean,
bottom mud and a black gluey substance, which comes from the explosive. The crew
rush to the side of the ship and search the water anxiously. “No fish,” they
say. “What has happened to the fish? You’d think there would be one or two
killed by the blast.” They have set off one of the most terrible weapons in the
world and they are worried about the fish. The captain marks with great care on his chart
the exact place where the mine was exploded. He takes several sights on the
coast to get the position. Another mine roars up on the other side of the lane.
The second in command takes up the blinker and signals, “Any fish?” and the
answer comes back, “No fish.” The day is long and tedious, sweeping and turning
and sweeping, and when the job is done it is only done until the night, for on
this night the mine layers may creep over from the French coast and sow the
field again with the nasty things, or a plane may fly low in the darkness and
drop the mines on parachutes. The work of the sweepers is never finished. It is late when they turn for home and it is
dark when the little ships file into the harbor and tie up to the pier. Then
the captain and his second relax. The strain goes out of their faces. No matter
how long or uneventful the sweep, the danger is never gone. The gun crew clean
and cover their guns and go to their quarters. The officers climb down to the
tiny wardroom. They kick off their fleece-lined boots and settle back into
their chairs. The captain picks up the work he has been doing for weeks. He is
making a beautifully exact model of—a minesweeper. COAST BATTERYSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, July 8, 1943—The
guns hide in a field of grain and red poppies. You can see the cannon muzzles
protruding and aiming at the sky. The battery is on the south coast, in sight
of France. There was a time when the great flights of German bombers came over
this undefended coast and carried their bomb loads to London and Canterbury.
But the coast is not undefended now. The spotters are all over the hills, the
complicated and delicate listening posts which can hear a plane miles away, and
the spotters are girls. When a strange ship is heard, its position is phoned to
the plotters of position, and the plotters are girls, too. The sighters are
girls. Only the gunners who load and turn the gun itself are men. It is an
amazing institution, the mixed battery, something unique in the history of
armies. The barracks are nearby, one for the girls and
another for the men. The eating hall is common, the recreation room is common,
and the work is common. Twenty-four hours a day the crews are on duty.
They can do what they want within a certain distance from the gun. The girls
read and wash their clothing, sew and cook. The kitchen, a temporary affair, is
built of kerosene tins filled with sand laid like bricks. The new kitchen is
just now being built. The countryside is quiet. The guns are silent.
Suddenly the siren howls. Buildings that are hidden in camouflage belch people,
young men and women. They pour out, running like mad. The siren has not been
going for thirty seconds when the run is over, the gun is manned, the target
spotted. In the control room under ground the instruments have found their
target. A girl has fixed it. The numbers have been transmitted and the ugly
barrels whirled. Above ground, in a concrete box, a girl speaks into a
telephone. “Fire,” she says quietly. The hillside rocks with the explosion of
the battery. The field grass shakes and the red poppies shudder in the blast.
New orders come up from below and the girl says, “Fire.” The process is machine-like, exact. There is no
waste movement and no nonsense. These girls seem to be natural soldiers. They are
soldiers, too. They resent above anything being treated like women when they
are near the guns. Their work is hard and constant. Sometimes they are alerted
to the guns thirty times in a day and a night. They may fire on a marauder ten
times in that period. They have been bombed and strafed, and there is no record
of any girl flinching. The commander is very proud of them. He is
fiercely affectionate toward his battery. He says a little bitterly, “All
right, why don’t you ask about the problem of morals? Everyone wants to know
about that. I’ll tell you—there is no problem.” He tells about the customs that have come into
being in this battery, a set of customs which grew automatically. The men and
the women sing together, dance together, and, let any one of the women be
insulted, and he has the whole battery on his neck. But when a girl walks out
in the evening, it is not with one of the battery men, nor do the men take the
girls to the movies. There have been no engagements and no marriages between
members of the battery. Some instinct among the people themselves has told them
trouble would result. These things are not a matter of orders but of custom. The girls like this work and are proud of it.
It is difficult to see how the housemaids will be able to go back to dusting
furniture under querulous mistresses, how the farm girls will be able to go
back to the tiny farms of Scotland and the Midlands. This is the great exciting
time of their lives. They are very important, these girls. The defense of the
country in their area is in their hands. The manager of the local theater has set aside
two rows of seats this evening for members of the battery who are off duty. The
girls who are to go change from their trousers to neat khaki skirts and
blouses. They spend a good deal of time making themselves pretty. They sit in
the theater, leaning forward with excitement. The film is a little stinker
called War Correspondent, made six thousand miles from any conflict,
where people are not likely ever to see any. It concerns an American war correspondent who
through pure handsomeness, cleverness, bravery, and hokum defeats every
resource of the Third Reich. The Gestapo and the German Army are putty in his
hands. It is a veritable Flynn of a picture. And these girls who have been bombed and
strafed, who have shot enemies out of the sky and then gone back to mending
socks—are these girls scornful? Not in the least. They sit on the edges of
their seats. When the stupid Gestapo men creep up to the hero they shriek to
warn him. This is more real to them than this afternoon, when they fired on a
Focke Wulf 190. The hero who emerges from a one-man Dunkerque, with combed hair
and immaculate dress, is the true, the good, the beautiful. This afternoon the girls were sweaty, dusty,
and they smelled of cordite. That was their job—this is war. And when the film
is done they walk back to their barracks, talking excitedly of the glories of
Hollywood warfare. They go back to their routine job of defending the coast of
England from attack, and as they walk home they sing, “You’d be sooo naice to
come ’ome to, You’d be so naice by a fire.” ALCOHOLIC GOATLONDON, July 9, 1943—His name is Wing
Commander William Goat, DSO, and he is old and honored, and, some say, in
iniquity. But when he joined the RAF wing two years ago he was just able to
totter about on long and knobby legs. For a long time he was treated like any
other recruit—kicked about, ignored, and at times cursed. But gradually his
abilities began to be apparent. He is very good luck to have about. When he is
near, his wing has good fortune and good hunting. Gradually his horns, along
with his talents, developed, until now his rank and his decorations are painted
on his horns in brilliant colors and he carries himself with a shambling strut. He will eat nearly everything. No party nor any
review is complete without him. At one party, being left alone for a few
moments, it is reported that he ate two hundred sandwiches, three cakes, the
arrangements for piano and flute of “Pomp and Circumstance,” drank half a bowl
of punch, and then walked jauntily among the dancers, belching slightly and
regarding a certain lieutenant’s wife, who shall be nameless, with lustful eye. He has the slightly bilious look of the
military of the higher brackets. Being an air-goat, he has rather unique
habits. If you bring an oxygen bottle into view, he rushes to it and demands
it. He puts his whole mouth over the outlet and then, as you turn the valve, he
gently relaxes, grunting happily, and his sides fill out until he nearly bursts.
Just before he bursts he lets go of the nozzle and collapses slowly, but the
energy he takes from the oxygen makes him leap into the air and engage
imaginary goats in horny combat. He also loves the glycol cooling fluid which
is used in the engines of the Typhoons. For hours he will stand under the
barrels, licking the drips from the spouts. He has the confidence of his men. Once when it
was required that his wing change its base of operations quickly, he was left
behind, for in those days it was not known how important he was. At the new
base the men were nervous and Irritable, fearful and almost mutinous. Finally,
when it was seen that they would not relax, a special plane had to be sent to
pick up the wing commander and transport him to the new base. Once he arrived,
everything settled down. The Typhoons had four kills within twenty-four hours.
The nervous tension went out of the air, the food got better as the cook ceased
brooding, and a number of stomach complaints disappeared immediately. Wing Commander Goat lives in a small house
behind the Operations Room. His name and honors are painted over the door. It
is very good luck to go to him and stroke his sides and rub his horns before
going out on operations. He does not go out on operations himself. There is not
room in the Typhoons for him, but if it were possible to squeeze him in he
would be taken, and then heaven knows what great action might not take place. This goat has only truly bad habit. He loves
beer, and furthermore is able to absorb it in such quantities that even the
mild, nearly non-alcoholic English beer can make him tipsy. In spite of orders
to the contrary he is able to seek out the evil companions who will give him
beer. Once inebriated, he is prone to wander about sneering. He sneers at the
American Army Air Force, he sneers at the Labor party, and once he sneered at
Mr. Churchill. The sneer is probably inherent in the beer, since punch has
quite a different effect on him. In appearance this goat is not impressive. He
has a shabby, pinkish fur and a cold, fishlike eye; his legs are not straight,
in fact he is slightly knock-kneed. He carries his head high and his horns,
painted in brilliant red and blue, more than offset any physical oddness. In
every way, he is a military figure. He is magnificent on parade. Eventually he
will be given a crypt in the Air Ministry and will die in good time of that
military ailment, cirrhosis of the liver. He will be buried with full military
honors. But meanwhile Wing Commander William Goat, DSO,
is the luck of his wing, and his loss would cause great unrest and even
despondency. STORIES OF THE BLITZLONDON, July 10, 1943—People who try to
tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and
then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set
and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. Again and again this happens
in conversations. It is as though the mind could not take in the terror and the
noise of the bombs and the general horror and so fastened on something small
and comprehensible and ordinary. Everyone who was in London during the blitz
wants to describe it, wants to solidify, if only for himself, something of that
terrible time. “It’s the glass,” says one man, “the sound in
the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle. That
is the thing I remember more than anything else, that constant sound of broken
glass being swept up on the pavements. My dog broke a window the other day and
my wife swept up the glass and a cold shiver went over me. It was a moment before
I could trace the reason for it.” You are going to dine at a small restaurant.
There is a ruin across the street from the place, a jagged, destroyed stone
house. Your companion says, “On one of the nights I had an engagement to have
dinner with a lady at this very place. She was to meet me here. I got here
early and then a bomb hit that one.” He points to the ruin. “I went out in the
street. You could see plainly, the fires lighted the whole city. That front
wall was spilled into the street. You could see the front of a cab sticking out
from the pile of fallen stone. Thrown clear, right at my feet as I came out of
the door, was one pale blue evening slipper. The toe of it was pointing right
at me.” Another points up at a wall; the building is
gone, but there are five fireplaces, one above another, straight up the wall.
He points to the topmost fireplace, “This was a high-explosive bomb,” he says.
“This is on my way to work. You know, for six months there was a pair of long
stockings hanging in front of that fireplace. They must have been pinned up.
They hung there for months, just as they had been put up to dry.” “I was passing Hyde Park,” says a man, “when a
big raid came over. I went down into the gutter. Always did that when you
couldn’t get a shelter. I saw a great tree, one like those, jump into the air
and fall on its side not so far from me—right there where that scoop is in the
ground. And then a sparrow fell in the gutter right beside me. It was dead all
right. Concussion kills birds easily. For some reason I picked it up and held
it for a long time. There was no blood on it or anything like that. I took it
home with me. Funny thing, I had to throw it right away.” One night, when the bombs screamed and blatted,
a refugee who had been driven from place to place and tortured in all of them
until he finally reached London, couldn’t stand it any more. He cut his throat
and jumped out of a high window. A girl, who was driving an ambulance that
night, says, “I remember how angry I was with him. I understand it a little
now, but that night I was furious with him. There were so many who got it that
night and they couldn’t help it. I shouted at him I hoped he would die, and he
did. “People save such strange things. One elderly
man lost his whole house by fire. He saved an old rocking chair. He took it
everywhere with him; wouldn’t leave it for a moment. His whole family was
killed, but he hung on to that rocking chair. He wouldn’t sit in it. He sat on the
ground beside it, but you couldn’t get it away from him.” Two reporters sat out the blitz in the Savoy
Hotel, playing chess and fortifying themselves. When the bombs came near they
went under the table. “One or the other of us always reached up and cheated a
little,” the reporter says. Hundreds of stories, and all of them end with a
little incident, a little simple thing that stays in your mind. “I remember the eyes of people going to work in
the morning,” a man says. “There was a quality of tiredness in those eyes I
haven’t forgotten. It was beyond a tiredness you can imagine—a desperate kind
of weariness that never expected to be rested. The eyes of the people seemed to
be deep, deep in their heads, and their voices seemed to come from a long
distance. And I remember during a raid seeing a blind man standing on the curb,
tapping with his stick and waiting for someone to take him across through the
traffic. There wasn’t any traffic, and the air was full of fire, but he stood
there and tapped until someone came along and took him to a shelter.” In all of the little stories it is the
ordinary, the commonplace thing or incident against the background of the
bombing that leaves the indelible picture. “An old woman was selling little miserable
sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of
burning buildings made it like day. The air was just one big fat blasting roar.
And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in—a squeaky voice. ‘Lavender!’
she said. ‘Buy Lavender for luck.’ ” The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike.
The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new. LILLI MARLENELONDON, July 12, 1943—This is the story
of a song. Its name is “Lilli Marlene” and it was written in Germany in 1938 by
Norbert Schultze and Hans Leit. In due course they tried to publish it and it
was rejected by about two dozen publishers. Finally it was taken up by a
singer, Lala Anderson, a Swedish girl, who used it for her signature song. Lala
Anderson has a husky voice and is what you might call the Hildegarde type. “Lilli Marlene” is a very simple song. The
first verse of it goes: “Underneath the lanterns, by the barracks square, I
used to meet Marlene and she was young and fair.” The song was as simple as
that. It went on to tell about Marlene, who first liked stripes and then
shoulder bars. Marlene met more and more people until, finally, she met a
brigadier, which was what she wanted all along. We have a song with much the
same amused cynicism. Eventually Lala made a record of the song and
even it was not very popular. But one night the German station in Belgrade,
which sent out programs to Rommel’s Afrika Korps, found that, due to a little
bombing, it did not have many records left, but among a few uninjured disks was
the song “Lilli Marlene.” It was put on the air to Africa and by the next
morning it was being hummed by the Afrika Korps and letters were going in
demanding that it be played again. The story of its popularity in Africa got back
to Berlin, and Madame Goering, who used to be an opera singer, sang the song of
the inconstant “Lilli Marlene” to a very select group of Nazis, if there is
such a thing. Instantly the song was popular and it was played constantly over
the German radio until Goering himself grew a little sick of it, and it is said
that, since inconstancy is a subject which is not pleasant to certain high Nazi
ears, it was suggested that the song be quietly assassinated. But meanwhile
“Lilli Marlene” had got out of hand. Lala Anderson was by now known as the
“Soldiers’ Sweetheart.” She was a pin-up girl. Her husky voice ground out of
portable phonographs in the desert. So far, “Lilli” had been solely a German
problem, but now the British Eighth Army began to take prisoners and among the
spoils they got “Lilli Marlene.” And the song swept through the Eighth Army.
Australians hummed it and fastened new words to it. The powers hesitated, considering
whether it was a good idea to let a German song about a girl who did not have
all the sterling virtues become the favorite song of the British Army, for by
now the thing had crept into the First Army and the Americans were beginning to
experiment with close harmony and were putting an off-beat into it. It wouldn’t
have done the powers a bit of good if they had decided against the song. It was out of hand. The Eighth Army was doing
all right in the field and it was decided to consider “Lilli Marlene” a
prisoner of war, which would have happened anyway, no matter what the powers
thought about it. Now “Lilli” is getting deeply into the American Forces in
Africa. The Office of War Information took up the problem and decided to keep
the melody, but to turn new words against the Germans. Whether this will work
or not remains to be seen. “Lilli Marlene” is international. It is to be
suspected that she will emerge beside the barrack walls—young and fair and
incorruptly inconsistent. There is nothing you can do about a song like
this except to let it go. War songs need not be about the war at all. Indeed,
they rarely are. In the last war, “Madelon” and “Tipperary” had nothing to do
with war. The great Australian song of this war, “Waltzing Matilda,” concerns
itself with sheep-stealing. It is to be expected that some groups in America
will attack “Lilli,” first, on the ground that she is an enemy alien, and,
second, because she is no better than she should be. Such attacks will have
little effect. “Lilli” is immortal. Her simple desire to meet a brigadier is
hardly a German copyright. Politics may be dominated and nationalized, but
songs have a way of leaping boundaries. And it would be amusing if, after all the fuss
and heiling, all the marching and indoctrination, the only contribution to the
world by the Nazis was “Lilli Marlene.” WAR TALKLONDON, July 13, 1943—It is interesting
to see that the nearer one comes to a war zone the less one hears of grand
strategy. There is more discussion of tactics and the over-all picture in the
Stork Club on a Saturday night than in the whole European theater of
operations. This may be, to a certain extent, because of a lack of generals to
give the strategists a social foundation. For that matter, there are more
generals in the Carlton Hotel in Washington at lunch time than in all the rest
of the world. This narrowing point of view may be
geographical. Papers in England are not avidly seized, and as one gets down to
the coast where some action is going on all the time, the discussion of the war
dwindles until it almost disappears. It is further interesting how completely
civilian ferocity disappears from the soldier or the sailor close to action or
in action. In the concrete wardroom over the berths of the
motor torpedo boats the young men gather to drink beer. They are very young
men, but there is an age in their faces that comes of having put their lives
out at stake too often. The dice have rolled right for some of these young men
so far, but a seven has turned up for too many of their friends for them to
take the game or their luck for granted. The little boats are not heavily armed
for defense, but they carry terrible blows in their torpedo tubes. They are the
only lightweights in the world that can deliver a heavyweight punch. For their
own safety they have only their speed and the cleverness of their crews. Tonight they are going out on what the men call
a Thing. A Thing is something bigger than a Scramble, but slightly less large
than The Thing. A Thing is likely to be an attack on a German convoy, slipping
secretly in the night through the Channel, but heavily armed and heavily
guarded and, moreover, hugging the coast so that they are under the shore guns
most of the time. And against them these tiny ships are going to dodge in under
the shellfire, twist and turn in the paths of the tracers, and, finally, shoot
their torpedoes into the largest ship they can find and then race for home. In the wardroom the men speak with a kind of
intense gaiety. You never hear the enemy discussed. By unstated agreement or
because there has just been too much war they do not discuss war. The enemy is
Jerry, or the Boche, and his name is spoken as something disembodied and vague.
Jerry is a problem in navigation, a job, a danger, but not much more
personalized than any other big and dangerous job. The men suffer from strain.
It has been so long applied that they are probably not even conscious of it.
It isn’t fear, but it is something you can feel, a bubble that grows bigger and
bigger in your mid-section. It puffs up against your lungs so that your
breathing becomes short. Sitting around is bad. You have a tendency to think
that everything is very funny. This is the time to bring out the frowsy story
that wouldn’t do so well at any other time. It will get a roar of laughter now. There is a little bar in the wardroom where a
Wren serves the flat beer that no one likes. The beer isn’t good, but everyone
has a glass of it, and it is hard to swallow, because so much of you is taken
up with the big bubble. On the wall there is a clock and the hands
creep slowly, much too slowly, toward the operation time. The waiting is the
terrible part. The weather reports come in, There is wind, but perhaps not
enough to cancel the Thing. Dozens of the little ships are going out. It is an
Allied operation. There are Dutch boats, and Polish boats, and English. The
Poles are great fighters. This is their kind of work. When the little ships
attacked the Scharnhorst, slipping through the Channel, it is said that
a Polish sailor was down on the prow of his torpedo boat, calmly firing at the
great steel battleship with a rifle. The Dutch have a calm, cold courage, and
the British pretend, as usual, it is some kind of a garden party they are going
to. At ten minutes to the time the men start to get
into their suits, complicated coats and trousers of oilskin that tie closely
around the ankles. A towel is wrapped around the neck and the coat buttoned in
tight about it. The little ships are wet. The green water comes over the bow
constantly and there isn’t much cover. In action the men will presumably wear
helmets on their heads, but this is only a presumption. Now they stand about,
padded and wadded, their arms a little out from their sides, held out by the
thick clothing. The leader of this group is a young man of great age. He is
twenty-two and he came from a destroyer to the little MTBs. The big hand of the
clock creeps on to the time of departure. The commander says, almost casually,
and just as it is on the minute, “All ready?” All the young men stride heavily out of the
door, down the steps to the hidden pens where the little stinging fish lie.
There is a roar as engine after engine starts. Now the bubble bursts in your
stomach and you can breathe again. Everything is all right. It’s a good night,
misty and with little visibility. The boats back, one by one, from their berths
and fall into line. A tiny blinker signals from the leader, the great motors
thunder, the boats leap forward, and the white wake Vs out. The green water
comes in over the bow. The crew huddles down, braced against the wind and the
sea—no one has mentioned the war. THE COTTAGE THAT WASN’T THERELONDON, July 14, 1943—The sergeant lay
in the grass and pulled grass and a bit off the tender stems and chewed them.
It was Sunday, and a number of people were lying about, sailors and soldiers
and even a few civilians. Across the path a line of people were fishing in the
Serpentine, sitting on rented chairs, fishing in water that was stirred with
the oars of boats and kicking swans. Each fisherman had his little audience. The sergeant said, “This is a crazy country.
Look at that, there hasn’t been a fish caught there all day, and they go right
on with it. Maybe they’re not after fish. It’s a crazy country, and it’s
getting me nuts, too.” He spat out a little chewed wad of green grass stems.
“I’ve got something bothering me,” he said. “It’s a ghost story. I don’t believe
it happened, and I know it happened. Only I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve been
thinking about it, sniffling around it, and I can’t make any sense out of it. “You see,” he said, “I’m at a little station up
in the country. Not a very big outfit. There is a village about a mile from
camp, and in the evening we walk in and get a couple of glasses of beer and try
to figure out this darts game.” Far up the line of fishermen a man caught a
fish about the size of a sardine and caused so much excitement that he was
surrounded by people in a moment. The sergeant chuckled. “I used to work salmon
in the Columbia River,” he said, and let it go at that. “Well, anyway,” he
said, “it came on toward dark, and I’ve got some paper work to do, so I figured
I’d walk back to camp. The other fellows weren’t ready to go yet. They’re
kidding the barmaid, telling her they know movie stars. So I started out alone. “I’ve been over that little road at least a
hundred times. I know every foot of it, I guess. It’s a narrow, little road,
with hedges on both sides, so you can’t see into the fields. The road is kind
of cut down, like a trench. It’s not a very dark night, at least there is some
starlight, and you can see big clouds, like it was going to rain.” He stopped
and seemed to be considering whether he should go on at all. He was looking
across the Serpentine at the little pavilion where they rent boats, where the line
of people wait all day for their turn to rent a boat. The sergeant made up his mind suddenly. “About
halfway back there was a light out onto the road. There was a little cottage,
kind of, with the hedge coming up to it on both sides. There is a garden in
front, a fence and then this big square window with little panes. Well, the
light is coming out of that window. I looked right through and could see the
room. It was kind of pleasant. There was a lamp on the table, and a fire in a
small fireplace. It was kind of pleasant. It wasn’t a very bright light, but
you could see pretty well. There’s a white cat asleep on the seat of a chair,
and sitting beside the table under the lamp is a woman about fifty, I should
say, and she is sewing on something. I stood there. Peeping-Tommed for a couple
of minutes. It was peaceful and cozy-looking and nice. In a minute I walked on. There was something
bother-big me in the back of my mind. And then I thought, ‘Sure that’s what it
is, no blackout curtains.’ I hadn’t seen a light coming out of the window at
night for ten months—that’s how long I’ve been over. I was going to go back and
tell that woman to pull her blackout curtains in case some country cop came
along. She’d get a stiff fine. I turned around and looked back. I couldn’t see
the cottage, but I could see the light shining out in the road. Well then, I
thought, ‘What the hell, maybe no cop will come by.’ It looked so nice, the
room and the fire that you could look in on. You get awful tired of the blackout.” The sergeant picked up a little twig, dug at a
grass root with it. “I walked along, but there was something that kept ticking
away in my head, something I couldn’t get hold of. It began to sprinkle a
little bit of rain, but not enough to hurt anything. I thought about the work I
had to do, but I couldn’t get away from the feeling that there was something
wrong with something.” He dug out his grass root, and it came up with
a little lump of soil in it. He shook the dirt out of it. “I was just about to
turn into the camp when it plumped into my mind. Now, this is what it is. And
I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t figure it out. There isn’t any cottage
there, just four stone walls all black with fire. Early in the blitz some Jerry
dropped a fire bomb on that cottage.” His fingers were restless. They were trying to
plant the grass roots again in the hole they had come out of. “You see what
worries me about the whole thing is this,” he said. “I just don’t believe stuff
like that.” GROWING VEGETABLESLONDON, July 15, 1943—On the edges of
American airfields and between the barracks of troops in England it is no
unusual thing to see complicated and carefully tended vegetable gardens. No one
seems to know where the idea originated, but these gardens have been constantly
increasing. It is fairly common now that a station furnishes a good part of its
own vegetables and all of its own salad greens. The idea, which had as its basis, probably, the
taking up of some of the free time of men where there were few entertainment
facilities, has proved vastly successful. The gardens are run by the units and
worked by the groups, but here and there a man may go out on his own and try
and raise some strange seed which is not ordinarily seen in this climate. In
every unit there is usually some man who knows about such things who advises on
the planting, but even such men are often at a loss because vegetables are
different here from the vegetables at home. The things that the men want to raise most, in
order of choice, are green corn, tomatoes, and peppers. None of these do very
well in England unless there is a glass house to build up sufficient heat.
Tomatoes are small; there are none of those master beefsteak tomatoes bursting
with juice. It is a short, cool season. Green corn has little chance to mature
and the peppers must be raised under glass. Nevertheless, every care is taken
to raise them. Men who are homesick seem to take a mighty pleasure in working
with the soil. The gardens usually start out ambitiously.
Watermelons and cantaloupes are planted and they have practically no chance of
maturing at this latitude, where even cucumbers are usually raised in glass
houses, but gradually some order grows out of the confusion. Lettuce, peas,
green beans, green onions, potatoes do very well here, as do cabbages and
turnips and beets and carrots. The gardens are lush and well tended. In the
evenings, which are very long now, the men work in the beds. It does not get
dark until eleven o’clock, there are only so many movies to be seen, English
pubs are not exciting, but there does seem to be a constant excitement about
the gardens, and the produce that comes from them tastes much better than that
purchased in the open market. One station has its headquarters in a large
English country house which at one time must have been very luxurious. Part of
the equipment of this place is a series of glass houses, and here the gardens
are exceptional. There has never been any need to exert pressure to get the men
to work in the gardens. They have taken it up with enthusiasm and in many cases
men from the cities, who have never had a garden in their lives, have become enthusiastic.
There is some contact with the normal about the garden, a kind of relationship
with peace. Now and then a garden just coming in to produce
must be deserted as the unit is shifted to another area. But this does not seem
to make any difference. The new unit takes over the garden, and the old one, if
there is none at the new station, starts afresh. The value is in the doing of
it. The morale value of the experiment is very high, so high that it is being
suggested that supply officers should be equipped with an assortment of seeds
as a matter of course. The seed takes up little room and gardening equipment
can be made on the spot or is available nearly everywhere. There is a great difference in the ordinary
preparation of vegetables by the English and by us. The English usually boil
their vegetables to a submissive, sticky pulp, in which the shape and, as some
say, the flavor have long since been overcome. Our cooks do not cook their vegetables
nearly so long, are apt to like them crisp. The English do not use nearly as
many onions as we do and they use practically no garlic at all. The little
gardens are a kind of symbol of revolt against foreign methods. For example, the average English cook regards a
vegetable with suspicion. It is his conviction that unless the vegetable is
dominated and thoroughly convinced that it must offer no nonsense, it is likely
to revolt or to demand dominion status. Consequently, only those vegetables are
encouraged which are docile and capable of learning English ways. The Brussels sprout is a good example of the
acceptable vegetable. It is first allowed to become large and fierce. It is
then picked from its stem and the daylights are boiled out of it. At the end of
a few hours the little wild lump of green has disintegrated into a curious,
grayish paste. It is then considered fit for consumption. The same method is followed with cabbage. While
the cabbage is boiling it is poked and beaten until, when it is served, it has
given up its character and tastes exactly like brussels sprouts, which in turn
taste like cabbage. Carrots are allowed to remain yellow but nothing else of
their essential character is maintained. No one has yet explained this innate fear the
English suffer of a revolt of the vegetables. The easy-going American attitude
of allowing the vegetable a certain amount of latitude short of the ballot is
looked upon by the English as soft and degenerate. In the American gardens
certain English spies have reported they have seen American soldiers pulling
and eating raw carrots and turnips and onions. It is strange to an American that the English,
who love dogs and rarely eat them, nevertheless are brutal with vegetables. It
is just one of those national differences which are unfathomable. THE SHAPE OF THE WORLDLONDON, July 16, 1943—This is no war,
like other wars, to be won as other wars have been won. We remember the last
war. It was a simple, easy thing. When we had destroyed the Kaiser and a little
military clique, the evil thing was removed and all good things came into flower.
It was not so, but the war was fought on that basis by troops who sang and then
ran home for the millennium. It is said that this is not a singing war and
that is true. The soldiers fight and work under a load of worry. They know
deeply that the destruction of the enemy is not the end of this war. And almost
universally you find among the soldiers not a fear of the enemy but a fear of
what is going to happen after the war. The collapse of retooled factories, the
unemployment of millions due to the increase of automatic machinery, a
depression that will make the last one look like a holiday. They fight under a banner of four unimplemented
freedoms—four words, and when anyone in authority tries to give these freedoms
implements and methods the soldiers hear that man assaulted and dragged down.
It doesn’t matter whether the methods or the plans are good or bad. Any
planning is assorted at home. And the troops feel they are going to come home
to one of two things—either a painless anarchy, or a system set up in their
absence with the cards stacked against them. Ours is not a naive Army. Common people have
learned a great deal in the last twenty-five years, and the old magical words
do not fool them any more. They do not believe the golden future made of words.
They would like freedom from want. That means the little farm in Connecticut is
safe from foreclosure. That means the job left when the soldier joined the Army
is there waiting, and not only waiting but it will continue while the children
grow up. That means there will be schools, and either savings to take care of
illness in the family or medicine available without savings. Talking to many
soldiers, it is the worry that comes out of them that is impressive. Is the
country to be taken over by special interests through the medium of special
pleaders? Is inflation to be permitted because a few people will grow rich
through it? Are fortunes being made while these men get $50 a month? Will they
go home to a country destroyed by greed? If anyone could assure them that these
things are not true, or that, being true, they will not be permitted, then we
would have a singing Army. This Army can defeat the enemy. There is no doubt
about that. They know it and will accomplish it, but they do not want to go
home to find a civil war in the making. The memory of the last depression is
still fresh in their memories. They remember the foreclosed farms, the
slaughtered pigs to keep the prices up, the plowing under of the crops, because
there was not intelligence enough in the leaders to devise a means of
distributing an oversupply of food. They remember that every plan for general
good life is dashed to pieces on the wall of necessary profits. These things cannot be overstated. Anyone who
can reassure these soldiers that such things will not happen again will put a
weapon in their hands of incredible strength. What do the soldiers hear?—that
Mr. Jones is calling Mr. Wallace names; that Mr. Jeffers is fighting with Mr.
Ickes; czars of this and that are fighting for more power and more
jurisdiction. Congress, in a kind of hysteria of immunity
from public criticism, has removed even the machinery of relief which might
take up the impact of a new depression; black markets are flourishing and the
operators are not little crooks, but the best people. The soldiers hear that
the price of living is going up and wages are following them. A soldier is not
a lone man. He usually has a family dependent to a large extent on the money he
can allot, and his pay does not increase with the cost of living. These are the things that he hears. The papers
are full of it, the letters from home are full of it—quarreling, anxiety,
greed. And, being a soldier, he cannot complain. He is forbidden to complain.
You cannot have that kind of thing in an army. He is not cynical, but he is
worried. He wants to get this war over with, and to get home to find what they
have done to his country in his absence. The Four Freedoms define what he wants
but unless some machinery, some foundation, some clear method is shown, he is
likely to believe only in that freedom which Anatole France defined—the equal
freedom of rich and poor to sleep under bridges. THEATER PARTYLONDON, July 18, 1943—It was late afternoon of
the English summer and in one of London’s innumerable outlying districts the
motion-picture house was comfortably filled. There were some soldiers who had
been wounded and were on their way to recovery. There were women of the
services off duty for a few hours. Some civilian women were there for a quick
picture after shopping and there were factory workers off shift. Down in front
were rows of children, crowding as close to the screen as they could get. It was just an average afternoon at the
pictures. The house was comfortably filled but not crowded. In special places
were some men in wheel chairs from the hospital. The picture was I Married a
Witch with Veronica Lake—a fantasy comedy wherein a New England witch of
Puritan times returns to life and falls straight into the traditional bedroom
comedy—neither a distinguished piece of work nor a bad one. The children loved
the picture and believed it because they believe all moving pictures. Outside there was low cloud and it looked as
though there might be rain later in the evening and there had not been enough
rain. While Veronica Lake, long blond hair over one
eye, sat in pajamas on a man’s bed and he worried for his good and respectable
name and the children crowed with delight—ten German fighter-bombers whirled
in over the coast. The spotters picked them up. The Spitfires took the air. The
anti-aircraft guns fired and two of the raiders were shot down. A third crashed
against a little hill. Then a crazy, ragged chase started in the gray cloud. Spitfires
ranging and searching in the cloud. The raiders separated and lunged on toward London,
and on the ground the sirens howled and the tremendous system of alarms and
defenses went into action. Only one of the raiders got through, twisting
and dodging through the defenses. He came racing down out of the cloud and
right under him was the theater. He was very low when he released his bombs.
The top of the theater leaped into the air and then settled back into a rubble.
The screen went blank. The raider banked his plane, whipped around, came back,
and poured his guns into the wreck. Then he jerked his ship into the gray
clouds and ran for the coast. And he left behind him the screaming of children
in pain and fear. The communities are organized for things like
this. In a matter of minutes the rescue squads were at work; the firemen were
on the ground. The squads are well trained. They forced themselves into the
torn and shredded building. The broken children were carried out and rushed to
the hospital, crushed and shot and destroyed. The dead ones were set aside for
burial, but those who still breathed and kicked and whimpered went to the
waiting doctors. All night long the operations went on. Probing
for bullets, hands and arms and legs cut off and put aside. Eyes removed. The
anesthetists worked delicately against pain, dripping unconsciousness onto the
masks. It went on through the night, the procession of the maimed to the
hospital. The doctors worked carefully, speedily. Quick judgments—this one
can’t live—kept consciousness away. This one has a chance if both legs are
sliced off. Judgments and quick work. From the depots the blood plasma was rushed In
and the strength from other people’s veins dripped into the arteries of the
children. It was nine in the morning when the operating
was finished. At the theater the tired squads were still finding a few bodies.
And in the hospital beds—great wads of bandage and wide, staring, unbelieving
eyes and utter weariness—the little targets, the seven-year-old military
objectives. Workmen were digging a great, long, common
grave for the dead. Veronica Lake had flared up with the quick flash of burning
film and only the reels she was wound on were left. And in the houses in the
morning people were just beginning to be aware enough to cry. It was very quiet
in the streets. At a bar a tired doctor got a drink before he
went to bed. His eyes were ringed with red sorrow and his hand shook as he
lifted the whiskey to his lips. DIRECTED UNDERSTANDINGLONDON, July 19, 1943—International
amity, good fellowship, and mutual understanding between the British and
Americans often reaches a pitch where war between the two seems very close.
This is usually directed understanding, and it gives rise to some very silly
situations. Directed understanding and tolerance ordinarily
begin with generalizations. Our troops approaching England are told in
pamphlets what the British are like, where they are tender and where hard, what
words, innocent at home, are harsh and ugly on the British ear. This has much
the same effect as telling a friend, “You must meet Jones—wonderful fellow. You
two will get along.” With a start like that, Jones has got two strikes on him
before you ever meet him. He has to live down being a charming fellow before
you can tolerate him. In this case it is even worse, because the British are
told that they will like us when they just get to know us. The result is that
the two come together like strange dogs, each one looking for trouble. It takes
a long time to live down this kind of understanding. The second phase of getting along is carried on
in innumerable attempts to describe each other. The British are so and so. The
Americans are so and so. The British are just like other people only more so. The
Americans are boasters who love money. This love of money is, of course, unique
with Americans. Every other people detests money. The Americans are fine,
sturdy people. The British are fine, sturdy people. This is obviously a lie. There
are good ones and stinkers on both sides. Setting them up doesn’t do any good.
Just about the time you get a liking and a respect for a number of Englishmen,
someone comes along and tells you about the English and you have to start from
scratch again. This same thing, undoubtedly, happens to the English too. The third little pitfall concerns the qualities
of the fighting men. A big, rangy old mountain boy comes rolling down the
street with his knuckles just barely clearing the pavement, and right behind is
a Guardsman, shoulders back, chin up, nine buttons glowing like mad. Immediately
the comparison is made. One is a fine soldier and the other is a lout. The fact
of the matter is that they are both covering ground at the same rate, and each
one could probably cover the same ground with a full pack. And then, having
learned about soldierly qualities, you see a little twist-faced,
wide-shouldered Tommy who walks sideways like a crab, and you realize that he’s
as good a fighting man as the world had produced, but on his record, not on his
soldierly bearing. The whole trouble seems to lie in generalities.
Once you have made a generality you are stuck with it. You have to defend it.
Let’s say the British and/or American soldier is a superb soldier. The British
and/or American officer is a gentleman. You start in with a lie. There are good
ones and bad ones. You find out for yourself which is which if you can be let
alone. And when you see an American second lieutenant misbehaving in a London
club, it is expected that you will deny it. Or if you meet an ill-mannered,
surly popinjay of a British officer, the British are expected to deny that he
exists. But he does exist, and they hate him as much as we do. The trouble with
generalities, particularly patriotic ones, is that they force people to defend
things they don’t normally like at all. It must be a great shock to an Englishman who
is convinced that Americans are boasters when he meets a modest one. His sense
of rightness is outraged. Preconceived generalities are bad enough without
trying consciously to start new ones. Recently a Georgia boy with a face like
a catfish and the fine soldierly bearing of a coyote complained bitterly that
he had been here four days and hadn’t seen a duke. He had got to believing that
there weren’t any dukes and he was shocked beyond words. Somewhere there is truth or an approximation of
it. If there is an engagement and the British say, “We got knocked about a bit,”
and the Americans say, “They shot the hell out of us,” neither statement is
true. Understatement is universally admired here and overstatement is
detested, whereas neither one is near the truth and neither one had anything to
do with the fighting quality of the soldier involved. We know that you can’t
say the Americans are something or other when those Americans are crackers and
long-legged men from the Panhandle and the neat business men in bifocals and
shoddy jewelry salesmen and high riggers from the woods in Oregon. And it is
just as silly to try to describe the British when they are Lancashiremen and
Welshmen and cockneys and Liverpool longshoremen. We get along very well as individuals,
but just the moment we become the Americans and they become the British
trouble is not far behind. BIG TRAINLONDON, July 25, 1943—Private Big Train
Mulligan, after induction and training and transfer overseas, found himself,
with a minimum of goldbricking, in a motor pool in London, the driver of a
brown Army Ford, and likely to take any kind of officers anywhere. It is not a
job the Big Train dislikes. He drives generals or lieutenants where he is told to
drive them at the speed he is told to drive them. Leaves them. Waits. Picks
them up. You have only to tell him what time you want to get there and he will
have you there, and although the strain on you and pedestrians and wandering
dogs and cats will be great, Big Train will not be affected at all. In his position he probably knows more military
secrets than anyone in the European theater of operations. But he explains,
“Mostly I don’t listen. If I do, it goes in one ear and out the other. I’ve got
other things to think about.” He has arrived at a certain philosophy regarding
the Army and his private life. About promotion he has this to say: “If you want
to be a general, then it’s all right for you to take stripes, but if you figure
that maybe you personally can’t win the war, then you’re better off as a
private and you have more fun.” He doesn’t like to order other people about any
more than he likes to be ordered about. He can’t avoid the second, but he gets
around the first by just staying a private. “Not that I’d mind,” he said. “I’d
take the hooks for a job like this, but I don’t want to tell a bunch of men
what to do.” Having decided (1) that he couldn’t win the war
single-handed, (2) that the war was going to last quite a long time, (3) that
he wasn’t going to get home on any given day, and (4) what the hell anyways,
the Big Train settled down to enjoy what he couldn’t resist. He probably knows England as well as any living
American. He knows the little towns, the by-roads, north and south, and he has
what is generally considered the best address book in Europe. He talks to
everyone and never forgets a name or address. The result of this is that when
he deposits his colonel, two majors, and a captain at some sodden little hotel in
a damp little town, there to curse the beds and the food, when the Big Train
gets dismissed for the night he consults his address book. Then he visits one
of the many friends he has made here and there. The Big Train gets a piece of meat and fresh
garden vegetables for supper. He drinks toasts to his friends. He sleeps in
clean white sheets and in the morning he breakfasts on new-laid eggs. Exactly
on time he arrives at the sodden little hotel. The colonel and the majors are
exhausted from having fought lumps in their beds all night. Their digestions
are ruined by the doughy food, but the Big Train is rested and thriving. He is
alert and eventually will leave his officers in another tavern and find a
friend for lunch. The Big Train is not what you call handsome,
but he is pleasant-looking and soft-spoken and he particularly likes the
company of women, the casual company or any other kind. He just feels happy if
there is a girl to talk to. How he finds them no one has ever been able to discover.
You can leave the Big Train parked in the middle of a great plain, with no
buildings and no brush, no nothing, and when you come back ten minutes later
there will be a girl sitting in the seat beside him, smoking the colonel’s
cigarettes and chewing a piece of the major’s gum, while the Big Train
carefully writes down her address and the town she comes from. His handling of women and girls is neither
wolfish nor subtle. It consists in his being genuinely interested in them. He
speaks to them with a kind of affectionate courtesy. Is a stickler for decorum
of all kinds. He addresses all women, whether he knows them or not, as “dear”
and he manages to make it convincing, probably because it is true. The result
is that the women always want to see him again and, if the war lasts long enough,
this wish will be granted in time. Mulligan is perfectly honest. If he should
give the colonel’s cigarettes to the girl, a whole package of them, he explains
this fact to the colonel and agrees to replace them as soon as he gets back to
London. The colonel invariably refuses to consider such a thing, as being
ungallant on his part. Of course the girl should have his cigarettes. He puts
the girl at her ease, a place she has never left. Goggles at her, puffs out his
chest and drives away. Big Train knows where she lives and who lives with her
and he has already calculated what he will be likely to have for dinner when
he calls on her. About the English the Big Train has terse and
simple ideas. “I get on all right with the ones I like and I don’t have nothing
to do with the ones I don’t like. It was just the same at home,” he says. It is
probable that he has more good effect on Anglo-American relations than two
hundred government propagandists striving to find the fundamental differences
between the nations. Big Train is not aware of many differences except in
accent and liquor. He likes the ones he likes and he refuses to like for any
reason whatever a man he wouldn’t like at home. His speech is picturesque. He refers to a
toothy, smiling girl as looking like a jackass eating bumblebees. He refuses
to worry about the war. “When they want me to do that let them pin stars on my
shoulders,” he says. “That’s what we got generals for.” Big Train Mulligan,
after two years in the Army and one year overseas, is probably one of the most
relaxed and most successful privates the war has seen. When they want him to
take up his rifle and fight he is quite willing to do so, but until someone suggests
it, he is not going to worry about it. There are good little dinners waiting
for him in nice little cottages all over England. And so long as the colonel’s
cigarettes hold out the Big Train will not leave his hostess empty-handed. BOB HOPELONDON, July 26, 1943—When the time for recognition
of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be
high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to
see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can
be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most
people. Moving about the country in camps, airfields,
billets, supply depots, and hospitals, you hear one thing consistently. Bob
Hope is coming, or Bob Hope has been here. The Secretary of War is on an
inspection tour, but it is Bob Hope who is expected and remembered. In some way he has caught the soldiers’
imagination. He gets laughter wherever he goes from men who need laughter. He
has created a character for himself—that of the man who tries too hard and
fails, and who boasts and is caught at it. His wit is caustic, but is never
aimed at people, but at conditions and at ideas, and where he goes men roar
with laughter and repeat his cracks for days afterward. Hope does four, sometimes five, shows a day. In
some camps the men must come in shifts because they cannot all hear him at the
same time. Then he jumps into a car, rushes to the next post, and because he
broadcasts and everyone listens to his broadcasts, he cannot use the same show
more than a few times. He must, in the midst of his rushing and playing, build
new shows constantly. If he did this for a while and then stopped and took a
rest it would be remarkable, but he never rests. And he has been doing this
ever since the war started. His energy is boundless. Hope takes his shows all over. It isn’t only to
the big camps. In little groups on special duty you hear the same thing. Bob
Hope is coming on Thursday. They know weeks in advance that he is coming. It
would be rather a terrible thing if he did not show up. Perhaps that is some of
his drive. He has made some kind of contract with himself and with the men
that nobody, least of all Hope, could break. It is hard to over-estimate the
importance of this thing and the responsibility involved. The battalion of men who are moving half-tracks
from one place to another, doing a job that gets no headlines, no public
notice, and yet which must be done if there is to be a victory, are forgotten,
and they feel forgotten. But Bob Hope is in the country. Will he come to them,
or won’t he? And then one day they get a notice that he is coming. Then they
feel remembered. This man in some way has become that kind of bridge. It goes
beyond how funny he can be or how well Frances Langford sings. It has been
interesting to see how he has become a symbol. This writer, not knowing Hope, can only
conjecture what goes on inside the man. He has seen horrible things and has
survived them with good humor and made them more bearable, but that doesn’t
happen without putting a wound on a man. He is cut off from rest, and even from
admitting weariness. Having become a symbol, he must lead a symbol life. Probably the most difficult, the most tearing
thing of all, is to be funny in a hospital. The long, low buildings are
dispersed in case they should be attacked. Working in the gardens, or reading
in the lounge rooms are the ambulatory cases in maroon bathrobes. But in the
wards, in the long aisles of pain the men he, with eyes turned inward on
themselves, and on their people. Some are convalescing with all the pain and
itch of convalescence. Some work their fingers slowly, and some cling to the
little trapezes which help them to move in bed. The immaculate nurses move silently in the
aisles at the foot of the beds. The time hangs very long. Letters, even if they
came every day, would seem weeks apart. Everything that can be done is done,
but medicine cannot get at the lonesomeness and the weakness of men who have
been strong. And nursing cannot shorten one single endless day in a hospital
bed. And Bob Hope and his company must come into this quiet, inward, lonesome
place, and gently pull the minds outward and catch the interest, and finally
bring laughter up out of the black water. There is a job. It hurts many of the
men to laugh, hurts knitting bones, strains at sutured incisions, and yet the
laughter is a great medicine. This story is told in one of those nameless
hospitals which must be kept safe from bombs. Hope and company had worked and
gradually they got the leaden eyes to sparkling, had planted and nurtured and
coaxed laughter to life. A gunner, who had a stomach wound, was gasping softly
with laughter. A railroad casualty slapped the cast on his left hand with his
right hand by way of applause. And once the laughter was alive, the men laughed
before the punch line and it had to be repeated so they could laugh again. Finally it came time for Frances Langford to
sing. The men asked for “As Time Goes By.” She stood up beside the little GI
piano and started to sing. Her voice is a little hoarse and strained. She has
been working too hard and too long. She got through eight bars and was into the
bridge, when a boy with a head wound began to cry. She stopped, and then went
on, but her voice wouldn’t work any more, and she finished the song whispering
and then she walked out, so no one could see her, and broke down. The ward was
quiet and no one applauded. And then Hope walked into the aisle between the
beds and he said seriously, “Fellows, the folks at home are having a terrible
time about eggs. They can’t get any powdered eggs at all. They’ve got to use
the old-fashioned kind that you break open.” There’s a man for you—there is really a man. A COZY CASTLELONDON, July 27, 1943—The jeep turns off
the main road and pulls to a stop. The great gate of gray stone arches over the
driveway. When it was built America was a wilderness with a few colonies
clinging passionately to its edges. From the stone sentry room an American
sentry emerges and stands by the jeep. He looks at passes. He salutes and opens
a huge iron gate. The jeep moves on into an ascending driveway
overarched with oaks and beeches six feet through the trunks. The road curves
and climbs a little hill and ahead you can see a gray tower poking above the
enormous trees. Then you come out of the neat, ancient forest and there is a
perfect castle against a hill, with lawns in front of it. It is a little
castle, only about forty rooms, a cottage for its period. And it was built by a
certain English king for a certain English mistress. It is odd that this ancient scandal must not be
identified but it is so. If, for instance, it were known which king and which
mistress were involved in the building of the little castle, then it would be
known by the enemy which castle it is and if, further, it were known that American
troops are quartered in this castle, it would become a target for enemy
aircraft. But since a wholesome number of English kings had mistresses and
built little castles for them, so much information does not give the enemy a
target or rather it gives him a number of targets too great to concentrate on. On the lawn in front of the castle, where once
perhaps gentlemen in heavy armor challenged one another with spears, a platoon
of American soldiers, helmeted and with full packs, are doing close-order drill,
marching, countermarching, opening and closing ranks, their bayonets gleam-in
the summer English sunshine. In the gardens leading to the pointed door the
roses are blooming. Red roses and white roses. Great-grand-children of the
bushes from which perhaps the symbols of Lancaster and York were picked and
worn as insignia in the Civil War. The stones of the entrance are deeply worn,
concave as basins, and beyond is a dark hall, so high and shadow-deep in the
midday that you must get your eyes used to it before you can see the carved
oaken ceiling from which thousands of little oak faces look out. And in this
great hall an American Army sergeant sits behind a pine table and does his
work. Beyond, through an open door, is an even larger
room but this one is lighter, for one side of it has large leaded windows,
constructed in diamonds and lozenges and circles and moons of glass. And this
also looks on the rose garden, the lawn, and finally to the forest. There is a great fireplace in this room, a
fireplace so high that a tall man can walk inside without stooping and could
lie down without scrunching. The mantel over the fireplace is deep with
heraldic carving. This is the lounge. On chairs procured somewhere the GIs sit
and read and listen to the radio. A fine bar has been built against one wall,
where Coca-Cola and pop are sold. And overhead, the arching roof of carved oak,
chiseled and fitted long before America was born. And a soldier leaning back in
his chair is staring fascinated at the ceiling. There is a copy of Yank
in his lap. He squints his eyes and studies the ceiling. He withdraws his
attention and calls, “Hey, Walter, have the Dodgers got twenty-four or
twenty-five games?” Up the broad stairway is a gallery and then the
thirty rooms or so in which the guests of the couple were made comfortable, for
it is probable that only five or six hundred people knew about this old
scandal, including the lady’s husband. The rooms are large, and each one has
its carved fireplace and its little leaded, diamond-paned window, looking dimly
on the gardens. But the rooms themselves are squad rooms with the cots arranged
in a line, the shoes at attention underneath, the lockers with drawn-up blouses
and trousers and towels and the helmets squarely on top. The rooms are probably
much cleaner than they were when the king’s mistress lived there. Downstairs in a kind of cave is the kitchen,
where an Army cook is baking square apple pies by the quarter-acre. The floor
is so deeply worn that he has to step over some of the high places. His coal
stove is roaring, and he has arrived at that quiet hopelessness that cooks get
on finally realizing that their work is never going to be finished, that there
is no way of feeding a man once for all. The CO of the post is a first lieutenant from
Texas and the second in command is a Chicago second lieutenant. They are young
and stern and friendly. The job of keeping the castle in order is just a job to
them. There is no point to any of this except the
change of pageantry. The place, which was built for heralds and courtiers, for
soldiers in body armor, is in no way outraged by the new thing. The jeeps and
armored cars, the half-tracks that came in through the gates, the helmeted
soldiers on the lawn do not seem out of place. They belong here. They are
probably very little different from the earlier inhabitants. Certainly the king
in question would have been glad for them, because he had his international
troubles too. THE YANKS ARRIVELONDON, July 28, 1943—The little gray
English station is set in the green, rolling fields where the grass is being
cut and, where the mowing machine has gone, the cut grass is wilting and the
red poppies are wilting. The double tracks go by the front of the station and a
“Y” siding runs in back of the station. At 4:03 the American commandant and
four officers drive to the station. A British officer comes out of the
signal-man’s room. “The train will be four minutes late,” he says. All the
officers look at their watches. On the main line a through train roars through
at about seventy miles an hour. The young lieutenant says, “I thought British
trains were slow.” “They used to hold the world’s record for
speed,” the commandant says. On another track a freight train moves rapidly
through the station. The flat cars are loaded with tanks, a solid line of tanks
the whole length of the train. A hundred yards from the station a clubmobile is
parked, a bus converted into a kitchen for the cooking of doughnuts and coffee
and run by two Red Cross girls. Their coffee urns are steaming and great
baskets of doughnuts are accumulating. They lift out the doughnuts and load
the baskets with them. On top of the bus is a loudspeaker connected with a
phonograph. The commandant says, “That big girl is a great
one. We got five hundred men at six o’clock this morning. They were pretty
tired. That big girl put on a record and did a Highland fling to some hot
music. She’s a funny one.” The smell of the cooking doughnuts comes down the
breeze. The British officer comes out of the signalman’s
house again. “It will be here in three minutes,” he says. And again the
officers look at their watches. The little train comes around the bend. It
passes the station, puts its tail into the “Y,” and backs into the siding. The
compartments are solid with helmeted men and their equipment is piled in front
of them to the knees. Their faces are almost as brown as their uniforms. They
are sitting with their packs on. It is a hot afternoon, one of the few of the
summer. As the train pulls in, the phonograph in the
clubmobile howls, “Mr. Five by Five.” The sound carries a long way. The
soldiers turn their heads slowly and look toward the music. Now a sergeant runs
down the side of the train and opens the doors of the compartments but the men
do not move. A stout captain, with a very black mustache, shouts, “All right,
men. Pile out of it.” And the little compartments disgorge the men. They stand
helplessly on the platform, their shoulders damp with sweat under the pack
straps and their backs wet under the packs. They carry their barracks bags too
and the things which won’t go in, a guitar here, and a mandolin, a pair of
shoes. One man has a mongrel fox terrier on a string and it stands beside him
panting with excitement. The stout, worried captain gets the men lined
up and marches them to the clubmobile. Swing music is still shrieking from the
loudspeaker on the roof. A single file of men passes a little counter on a side
of the truck and each one gets a big cup of coffee and two doughnuts. Then they
break their ranks and stand about drinking the coffee and looking lost. The big
girl comes out of the truck and works on them. “Where you from, boy?” “Michigan.” “Why, we’re neighbors. I come from Illinois.” A local wolf, a slicker at home, a dark boy
with sideburns, says wearily and just from a sense of duty, “What you doing
tonight, baby?” “What are you doing?” the big girl asks, and
the men about laugh loudly as if it were very funny. The tired wolf puts an arm about her waist.
“Plant me,” he says, and the two do a grotesque shag, a kind of slow-motion
jitterbug. A blond boy with a sunburned nose and red
eyelids shyly approaches a lieutenant. He has his coffee in one hand and his
two doughnuts in the other. Too late he realizes that he is in trouble. He
balances the two doughnuts on the edge of his cup and they promptly fall into
the coffee. He salutes and the lieutenant returns it gravely. “Excuse me, sir,” the boy says. “Aren’t you a
movie star?” “I used to be,” the lieutenant says. “I used to
be.” “I knew I’d seen you in pictures,” the boy
says. “I’ll write home about seeing you here. Say,” he says with excitement,
“would you write your name here on something and I could send it home and then
they’d have to believe me and they could keep it for me.” “Sure,” the lieutenant says, and he signs his
name with a pencil on the back of a grubby envelope from the soldier’s pocket.
The boy regards it for a moment. “What’re you doing here?” he asks. “Why, I’m just in the Army, the same as you
are.” “Oh, yes, of course. Yes, I see you are. Well,
they’ll have to believe I saw you now.” “How long have you been over?” the lieutenant
asks. “We’re not supposed to say anything about stuff
like that.” “Sure, I forgot. Good boy to remember it.” The doughnuts in the coffee have become
semi-liquid by now. The boy drinks the coffee and the doughnuts without
noticing. “Do you suppose we’ll ever be let to go to
London?” he asks. “Sure. When you get a pass.” “Well, that’s a long way off, isn’t it?” “Not so far. You could make it on a forty-eight
hour pass easy and have lots of time.” “Well. Are there lots of girls there?” “Sure. Plenty.” “And will they, will they talk to a guy?” “Sure they will.” “Hot damn!” says the boy. “Oh, hot damn!” “Fall in,” the stout, worried captain shouts,
and, “Fall in,” the sergeants shout. The blond boy gets in line, still holding
his cup. The big girl yells at him over the music, “Hey, sonny. We need those
cups.” She rushes fiercely up to him and grabs the cup
and then quickly pats him once on the shoulder. The men on both sides of him
laugh loudly, as if it were very funny. A HANDLONDON, July 29, 1943—The soldier wears
a maroon bathrobe and pajamas and slippers, the uniform of the Army hospital.
He is a little pale and shaky, the way convalescents are. His left arm he
carries crooked and high, and the fingers of his left hand hook over helplessly.
In front of him on a table is a half-built model of a Liberator. Not covered
yet, but a mass of tiny struts and ribs and braces. And he has a sheet of balsa
wood, stamped with the patterns, and he has a razor blade and a little bowl of
glue, with a match sticking out of it. “I got hurt in Africa,” he says. “Got hit in
the stomach, but they fixed that up pretty good.” He holds up his left arm.
“This is what bothers me,” he says. “That was broke awful bad. I haven’t been
out of a cast long.” He moves the fingers slightly. “Not much feeling in them,”
he says. “I can’t make a fist. I can’t grab hold of anything. At least, I
couldn’t. It’s kind of numb. “I got hold of this model,” he says. “I can
hold things down with my hand, like this.” He puts the side of his hand down on
the sheet of balsa. “I did all of that with my right hand. I guess it’s lucky
I’m right-handed.” He regards his left hand and moves the fingers. “The doctor
says I’ll be able to use it to grab hold of things if I just exercise it. But
it’s hard to exercise it when you can just barely feel it’s there. “A funny thing happened yesterday,” he says.
“Here, I’ll show you the exact place.” He takes a pencil and sticks it into the
maze of tiny braces. “There, you see that piece in there? The one with the
little pencil mark on it? I marked it so I’d remember which one it was. “Yesterday I was trying to get that set in
right, and you can see it’s a hard place to get at. You’ve got to hold it here
and work it up under. Well, I didn’t even know I was doing it. I came to, and I
was holding that little piece in my left hand.” He regards the wizened finger
with amazement. “I told the doctor about it and he said that was all right and
I should try to use it every bit I could. Well, sir, when I think about it I
can’t do it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I can later, a little bit at a time. I roll
a pencil under my fingers. They say that’s a good thing to do. I can feel it some,
too.” He holds a sheet of balsa pattern down with the
side of his left hand and with a razor blade carefully cuts out the tiny curved
piece he is going to use next. It is an intricate piece, and his hand shakes a
little, but the razor blade runs through on the black line, and he lifts the
little piece free and puts it down on the table to apply a spot of glue to each
end of it. Then carefully, with his right hand, he sets the piece in its place.
“I let my nails grow long,” he says. “I can use my fingernails for lots of things.”
With the long fingernail of his right forefinger he scrapes off a little drop
of glue that is squeezed out of the joint and wipes it on a piece of paper. “I’m worried about this hand,” he says. “Of
course, I guess I can get a job. I’m not worried about that so much. I can
always get a job. But I’ve got to get this hand into shape so that it will grab
ahold of things.” He turns the model plane over and then studies the pattern
sheet for the next piece. He is silent for a long time. “My wife knows I was
hurt. She doesn’t know how bad. She knows I’m going to get well all right and
come home, but—she must be thinking pretty hard. I got to get that hand
working. She wouldn’t like a cripple with a hand that wouldn’t work.” His eyes are a little feverish. “Well, how
would you like a cripple to come home? What would you think about that? “It will always be a little crooked,” he says,
“but I wouldn’t mind that so much if it worked. I don’t think she would mind so
much if it worked. She has got a job in a plane factory out on the Coast—doing
a man’s work. She says she is doing fine and I’m not to worry. Here. I’ll show
you a picture of her.” He reaches in his bathrobe pocket. “Where is it?” he
says. “The nurse always puts it in here.” He puts his left hand in his pocket
and brings out a little leather wallet. And suddenly he sees what he has done
and the fingers relax and the wallet drops to the table. “God Almighty!” he
says. “Did you see that?” He looks at the crooked hand still suspended in the
air. “That’s twice in two days,” he says softly. “Twice in two days.” THE CAREER OF BIG TRAIN MULLIGANSOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, August 4, 1943—It
has been possible to compile further data on the life and methods of Private
Big Train Mulligan, a man who has succeeded in making a good part of the Army
work for him. It has been said of him by one of his enemies, of whom he has
very few, that he would be a goldbrick but he is too damn lazy. In a course of close study, extending over
several days, certain qualities have stood out in the private in addition to
those mentioned in the previous report. Big Train has a very curious method. If
you are not very careful, you find yourself carrying his luggage and you never
know how it happened. Recently, in one of the minor crises which are an
everyday occurrence to Big Train, this writer came out of a kind of a haze of
friendship to find that he had not only lent Mulligan Ј2 10s, but had forced it
on him without security and had, furthermore, emerged from the transaction with
a sense of having been honored. How this was accomplished is anybody’s guess.
Sometime in the future, no doubt, Mulligan will pay this money back, but in
such a manner that it will seem that he has been robbed. Mulligan has carried looting, requisitioning,
whatever you want to call it, to its highest point. He is a firm believer in
the adage that an army moves on its stomach, a position he rather likes. He
loves nice foods and he usually gets them. A few days ago a party was visiting
a ship which had recently put into a port in England with war materials. The
party went to the bridge, met the master and the other officers, drank a small
cup of very good coffee, and ate a quarter-ounce of cookies, conversing
politely the while. On coming back to the dock where the car stood and where
Mulligan should conceivably be on duty, of course, no such thing was true. Mulligan was not in sight. One of this party
who has known the private and admired him for some time remarked, “If I were
to look for Mulligan right now I should find the icebox on that ship with a
good deal of confidence that Mulligan would not be far from it.” Accordingly,
the party found its way to the ship’s refrigerator and there was Mulligan,
leaning jauntily back against a table. He was holding the thickest roast-beef
sandwich Imaginable in his hand. He has learned to eat very rapidly while
talking on all subjects. He never misses a bite or a word. His pace seems slow
but his execution is magnificent. Not between bites but during bites he was
telling an admiring circle, made up of a steward and three naval gunners, a
story of rapine and other amusements which completely distracted them from
noticing that Big Train had a foot-high stack of sandwiches behind him on the
table. The senior officer said, “Mulligan, don’t you
think it is about time we went along?” Mulligan said, “Yes, sir. I was just coming
along but I thought the captain might be a little hungry. I was just getting a
snack ready for the captain.” He reached behind him and brought out the great
pile of roast-beef sandwiches, which he passed about. Now, whether these sandwiches
had been prepared for just such an emergency or whether Mulligan had intended
to eat them himself will never be known. We prefer to believe that it was just
as he said. Mulligan is a thoughtful friend and an unselfish man. Besides this,
he never goes into a blind alley. He has always a line of retreat, which simply
proves that he is a good soldier. Should his officer be faint with hunger,
Mulligan has a piece of chocolate to tide the captain over. What difference
that the chocolate belonged to the captain in the first place and he was led to
believe that it was all gone? The fact of the matter is that when he needs his
own chocolate Mulligan is happy to give him half of it. The Big Train has been in England now something
over a year and he has acquired a speech which can only be described as
Georgia-Oxford. He addresses people as “mate” or even “mait.” He refuses to
learn that he cannot get petrol at a gas station but he refers to lifts and
braces. Many an officer has tried to get Mulligan
promoted to a corporalcy, if only to have something to break him from, but he
is firmly entrenched in his privacy. There is nothing you can do to Mulligan
except put him in jail and then you have no one to drive you. If he were a
corporal you could break him, but Mulligan has so far circumvented any such
move on the part of his superiors. When the recommendation has gone in, at just
the right moment he has been guilty of some tiny infraction of the rules—not
much, but just enough to make it impossible to promote him. His car is a little
bit dirty at inspection. Mulligan does six hours’ full-pack drill and is safe
from promotion for a good time. Mulligan has nearly everything he wants—women,
leisure, travel, and companionship. He wants only one thing and he is trying
to work out a way to get it. He would like a dog, preferably a Scottie, and he
would like to take it in his car with him. So far he has not worked out his
method, but it is a foregone conclusion that he will not only get his dog but
that his officer will feed it, and when Mulligan has a date in the evening his
officer will probably take care of the dog for him and will feel very good
about it, too. The Army is a perfect setting for this Mulligan. He would be
foolish ever to leave it. And he is rarely foolish. CHEWING GUMLONDON, August 6, 1943—At the port the
stevedores are old men. The average age is fifty-two, and these men handle the
cargo from America. Their pace does not seem fast, but the cargo gets unloaded
and away. The only men on the docks anywhere near military age who are not in
uniform are the Irish from the neutral Free State, who are not subject to Army
call. They stay pretty much to themselves; for while they may approve of then:
neutrality, it is not pleasant to be a neutral in a country at war. They feel
like outsiders. Little old Welshmen with hard, grooved faces
handle the cargo. There is a shrunken man directing the big crane. He stands
beside the open hatch and with his hands directs the cargo slings as though he
were directing an orchestra. Palm down and the fingers fluttering brings down
the sling. Palm up raises it, and by the tempo of his motions the operator
knows whether to go slowly or rapidly. This man has a thin, high voice which
nevertheless cuts through the noise of the pounding engine and grinding gears.
His fingers flutter upward and the locomotive rises into the air on the end of
a sling. The man seems to waft it over the side with his hands. Eighty-seven
tons of locomotive, and he lowers it to the tracks on the docks with his hands. On an imaginary line the children stand and
watch the cargo come out. They are not permitted to go beyond their line for
fear they might be hurt. There are at least a hundred of them, a little shabby,
as everyone in England is after four years of war. And not too clean, for they
have been playing on ground that is largely coal dust. How they cluster about
an American soldier who has come off the ship! They want gum. Much as the
British may deplore the gum-chewing habit, their children find it delightful.
There are semi-professional gum beggars among the children. “Penny, mister?”
has given way to “Goom, mister?” When you have gum you have something permanent,
something you can use day after day and even trade when you are tired of it.
Candy is ephemeral. One moment you have candy, and the next moment you haven’t.
But gum is really property. The grubby little hands are held up to the
soldier and the chorus swells. “Goom, mister?” “I don’t have any,” the soldier says, but they
pay no attention to that. “Goom, mister?” they shriek and crowd in closer. A
steward comes down the gangplank from the ship. He is a little tipsy and he is
dressed for the town. He is going to have a time for himself. A few children go
to him and test him out. “Goom, mister?” they ask. The steward grins genially,
pulls a handful of coins from his pocket and throws them into the air. The dust
rises and covers a little riot, and when it clears the steward is in full
flight with the pack baying after him. Only one small boy has stayed with the
soldier—a very little boy with blond hair and gray eyes. He holds the soldier’s
hand and the soldier blushes with pleasure. “Is it as nice in America as it is
here?” the boy asks. “No—it’s just about the same as here,” the
soldier says. “It’s bigger, but just about the same.” “I guess you really have no goom?” “No, not a piece.” “Is there much goom in America?” “Oh, yes, lots of it.” The little boys sighs deeply. “I’ll go there
sometime,” he says gravely. The pack returns slowly. They have lost their
quarry and are looking for new game. Then over the side the garbage is lowered
in a large box. It is golden with squeezed orange skins. The children hesitate,
because it is against all their training to break rules. But the test is too
great. They can’t stand it. They break over the line and tumble on the garbage
box. They squeeze the skins for the last drop of juice that may conceivably be
there. A bobby comes up quickly, his high hat making
him seem a foot taller than he is. “Get ahn naow, get ahn,” he says mildly. The rebels cram the skins into their pockets
and then, dutifully, they go back to their boundary, but their pockets bulge
with the loot. “That’s naught naice,” the bobby says. “But
they do get very ’ungry for horanges. They really do. I ’avent ’ad a horange in
four years. It’s the law; no one hover five years old can ’ave a horange. “They need them most, you see,” he explained. MUSSOLINILONDON, August 9, 1943—The ship was in
mid-ocean when Mussolini resigned. Rumor ran among the soldiers and the crew
and the Army nurses that something important had happened. Then, down from the
bridge, came the corroboration—“Mussolini has resigned”—on that. For five days
the people on board had that for their minds and their hopes to play with. And
the process went something like this: Two sergeants and a PFC stood out of the wind
in the lee of a life raft. “Well, you’ve got to admit it’s good news if it’s
true,” the PFC said. “Yes,” said the technical sergeant, “but you
know how it is when a guy is quitting. He gets kicked in the pants. There must
be plenty of people who would like to take a sock at old Musso. I wouldn’t be
surprised if he didn’t live too long.” “You got right,” the staff sergeant said. “I’d
hate to be in Musso’s shoes.” The ship plowed through the sea and the escorts
hovered about like worried chickens. ... A second lieutenant sat in the lounge, talking
to an Army nurse. “Gin rummy?” he asked. “Sure,” said the nurse. The lieutenant leaned toward her. “A private in
my outfit got it pretty straight. Somebody knocked off the Duce.” “How do you mean?” The second lieutenant shuffled and passed the
deck for cut. “Got him. That’s what I mean. Cut his throat. I hope he bled
some.” The nurse ignored the cards. She frowned. “I
wonder whether he really had power or whether he was just a figurehead.” “Why? What difference does it make if he’s
dead?” “Well, said the nurse, “if he had power, than
the Fascists go out with him gone. They’ll all get killed. There’ll be a
revolution. That’s what I mean.” “I guess you’re right,” said the lieutenant.
“You want to keep score ...?” The captain lay on his back in his bunk in the
crowded stateroom. He talked to the bunk above him. “You’ve got to hand it to
those Wops,” he said. “When they’ve got something to fight for, they sure put
up a fight.” A major’s head appeared over the edge of the
upper bunk. “What are you talking about?” “Didn’t you hear? After Mussolini got bumped
off, the Wops revolted. They’ve got the nicest little revolution going you ever
heard. Rome is a shambles. They’re hunting down the Fascists like rats.” “God Almighty,” said the major, “this would be
the right time to invade. From a military point of view, you couldn’t ask for a
better time. I wonder if we’ve got the stuff ready to do it?” A steward lingered in the passageway near the
icebox. A KP came furtively near. “Stay out of those strawberries,” the
steward said sternly. “We ain’t got no strawberries,” said the
furtive one. “The nurses went through them strawberries like we’re going
through Italy. I didn’t get none of them strawberries.” “Have we got into Italy?” “Got in? Where you been? We’re halfway up the
calf right now. There’s MPs walkin’ the streets of Rome this minute and the
Wops puttin’ flowers in the hair.” The captain interrupted the sleepy poker game.
“We’ve got to have a drink on this,” he said. “Who’s got some whisky?” “Don’t be silly,” said a lieutenant colonel.
“We haven’t had any whisky since the second day out. What are you drinking to? The
invasion of Italy?” “Invasion, hell. Italy is in our hands.” “I’ve got a bottle,” said the lieutenant
colonel, and he climbed over legs and dug in his briefcase. They stood together
and clinked the glasses and tossed off the whisky. The captain turned and threw
his glass out of the porthole. “That’s a pretty important drink,” he said. “I
wouldn’t want any common drink to get into that glass.” He peered out the
porthole. “A seagull picked us up. We can’t be very far out,” he said. The lieutenant colonel said, “You know, with
Italy out, Germany is going to have a time holding the Balkans down. They’re
going to want to get out from under. I bet Greece revolts, too. And Turkey was
about ready to come in. This may be the push she needs.” ... Three GIs sat in a windblown cave, made by
slinging their shelter halves between a rail and a davit and a ventilator.
They watched the whitecaps go surging by. “I’d like to get there before it’s
over, Willie. I won’t get a chance to see any action if we don’t hurry up.” “You’ll see plenty action and you’ll tote
plenty bales before you’re through, brother.” “I don’t know about that. With those Turks
running wild, Germany can’t hold out forever. Why, Germany’s so busy now, I’ll
bet we could even get in across the Channel. This is a slow damn scow.” ... “Gentlemen,” said a twenty-year-old lieutenant
to three other twenty-year-old lieutenants, “gentlemen, I give you Paris.” “My old man took Paris in the last war,” said one
of the gentlemen. “Gentlemen,” said the first speaker, his voice
shaking, “we’ve crossed the Channel. Oh, boy, oh, boy! We’re in.” The three joined hands in a kind of fraternal
cat’s cradle. ... And so the ship came into port with the war
fought and won. It took them a little time to get over it. CRAPSLONDON, August 12, 1943—This is one of
Mulligan’s lies and it concerns a personality named Eddie. Mulligan has
soldiered with Eddie and knows him well. Gradually it becomes apparent that
Mulligan has soldiered with nearly everyone of importance. At any rate this Eddie was a crap shooter, but
of such saintly character that his integrity in the use of the dice was never
questioned. Eddie was just lucky, so lucky that he could flop the dice against
the wall and bounce them halfway across the barracks floor on a Sunday and
still make a natural. From performances like this the suspicion grew
that Eddie had the ear of some force a little more than human. Eddie, over a
period of a year or two, became a rich and happy man, not so lucky in love, but
you can’t have everything. It was Eddie’s contention that the dice could get
him a woman any time, but he never saw a woman who could make him roll
naturals. Sour grapes though this may have been, Eddie abode by it. Came the time finally when Eddie and his
regiment were put on board a ship and started off for X. It wasn’t a very large
ship, and it was very crowded. Decks and staterooms and alleys, all crowded.
And it just happened that the ship sailed within reasonable time of payday. That first day there were at least two hundred
crap games on the deck, and while Eddie got into one, he did it listlessly,
just to keep his hand in, and not to tire himself, because he knew that the
important stuff was coming later. Between the chicken games Eddie moped about
and did a good deed or two to get himself into a state of grace he knew was
necessary later. He helped to carry a “B” bag for a slightly tipsy GI and
reluctantly accepted a pint of bourbon, which canceled out the good deed, to
Eddie’s way of thinking. He wrote a letter to his wife, whom he hadn’t seen for
twelve years, and would have posted it if he could ever have found a stamp. Occasionally he drifted back to the deck and
got into a small game to keep his wrist limber and his head clear, but he
didn’t have to. Eddie had a roll. He didn’t have to build up a bank in the
preliminaries. He steered clear of spectacular play for two reasons. First, it
was a waste of time. It was just as well to let the money get into a few hands
before he exerted himself, and second, Eddie, at a time like this, preferred a
kind of obscurity and anonymity. There was another reason too. The ship sailed
on Tuesday and Eddie was waiting for Sunday, because he was particularly hot on
Sundays, a fact he attributed to a clean and disinterested way of life. Once on
a Sunday, and, understand, this is Mulligan’s story, Eddie had won a small
steam roller from a road gang in New Mexico, and on another Sunday Eddie had
cleaned out a whole camp meeting, and in humility had devoted 10 per cent of
his winnings to charity. As the week went on the games began to fade
out. There were fewer games and the stakes were larger. On Saturday there were
only four good ones going, and at this time Eddie began to take interest. He
played listlessly Saturday morning, but in the afternoon became more active
and wiped out two of the games because his time was getting short and he didn’t
want too many games going the next day. At ten o’clock the next day Eddie appeared on
the deck, clean and combed and modest and bulging at the pockets of his field
jacket. The game was going, but there were only three players in it. Eddie said
innocently, “Mind if I get in for a pass or two?” The three players scrutinized
him cynically. A Pole with one blue eye and one brown eye spoke roughly to him.
“Froggy skins it takes, soldier,” he said, “not is playing peanuts.” Eddie delicately exposed the butt end of a bank
that looked like a rolled roast for a large supper. The Pole sighed with happiness,
and the other two, who were remarkable and successful for no other reason than
that they could disappear in a crowd, rubbed their hands involuntarily, as
though to keep their fingers warm. Eddie concealed his poke as modestly as a
young woman adjusts the straps of an evening gown that has no straps. He
kneeled down beside the blanket and said, “What about is the tariff?” A wall of
spectators closed behind him. Eddie faded thirty of a hundred. The Pole
rolled and won and let it lie, and Eddie took a hundred of the two hundred and
the Pole shot a six and made it. Behind the dense circle of spectators running
feet could be heard. This was to be a game. The ship took a slight list as GIs
ran from all over just to be near a game like this, even if they couldn’t see
it. The four hundred lay on the blanket like a
large salad. The two disappearing men looked at Eddie, and Eddie went into his
roll and undid four hundred in small bills and laid them timidly out. This Pole
glared at him with his brown eye, and smiled at him with his blue eye, a trick
which served him very well in poker, but had little effect on a crap game. He
breathed on the dice and didn’t speak to them. He rolled an eight and smiled
with both his eyes. Again he breathed on the dice and cast them backhanded to
show how easy that point was, and a four and a three looked up at him. Eddie, breathing easily, relaxed and sure,
pulled the big green salad gently to his side of the blanket. He unrolled two
hundred more from his roll like toilet tissue, and laid them down. “One grand,”
he said, “all or part.” The Pole took half and the two anonymous men
split up the rest, and Eddie rolled a rocking chair natural, a six and a five.
“Leaving it lay,” he said softly. Only the Pole listened to him. He picked up the
dice and looked them over carefully to be sure they were the ones he had put in
himself. And then, scowling with both eyes, he covered Eddie. The pile of money
was ten inches high now, and spilling down like a loose haycock. Eddie hummed a little to himself as he rolled,
and a seven settled firmly. The Pole snorted. Eddie said, “And leaving that
lay, all or part, anybody.” Breathing had stopped on the ship, only the engines
went on. Mouths were open. Figures frozen in the dense crowd about the blanket.
Only once in a while word was passed back about what was happening. Scowling at Eddie, the Pole scraped bottom. A
whole week of very tiring play for the Pole lay on the blanket, and the pot was
set. Eddie was magnificent. He moved easily. He did not shake or rattle the
dice or speak to them or beseech them. He simply rolled them out with childlike
faith. For a long moment he stared uncomprehendingly at the snake eyes that
stared back at him. And then his expression changed to one of horror. “No,” he
said, “somepins wrong. I win on Sunday, always win on Sunday.” A sergeant shuffled his feet uneasily.
“Mister,” he said. “Mister, you see, it ain’t Sunday. We’ve went and crossed
the date line. We lost Sunday.” Anyway, it’s one of Mulligan’s lies. AfricaPLANE FOR AFRICAA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), August
26, 1943—At nine o’clock in the morning word comes that you have been
accepted for Africa. You go to the office of the transportation officer. “Can
you go tonight?” he asks. “Your baggage must be in at three. You will report to
such and such an address at seven-thirty. Do not be late.” It is then about noon. You do the thousand
things that are necessary for a shift of continents. You pack the one bag and
store the other things which you will not take, the warm clothes and the papers
and books. You call the people with whom you have made appointments and call
them off. At seven-thirty you arrive at the address given
and from then on the process is out of your hands and it works very smoothly.
At a quarter of eight you get in an Army truck and are taken to the station. An
Army train is waiting. It is called a ghost train because it has no given
destination. All kinds of units are getting on board the train: combat crews
going out to get their ships, colonels who are going home after months in the
field, couriers with bags and packages of mail. The combat crews carry pistols
and knives and they have the huge bags of flying equipment with them. They are
brown officers who have been serving in the desert and they look a little sick
with fatigue. A bomber crew that has not yet gone into action,
indeed has not had a ship since it got overseas, has been working on English
beer and has managed to get to the singing state. The whistle blows and
everyone piles into the train. It is a sleeper. There is no place to gather. You go to bed
right away. In the corridor the singing crew leans out of the window and the
men shriek at girls as the train starts. Then they break into “Home On the
Range,” but the noise of the train drowns them out. The beer was not strong
enough to give them much of a lift. The blacked-out train roars through the
night. The windows are shut and painted so that no light can shine out. The
singing collapses and the crews retire to their staterooms. At four-thirty in the morning the steward
knocks on your door, sets a cup of tea on the little shelf over your bed, and
leaves. You quickly drink the tea and shave in time to be out of the train at
five. It is cold and rainy when you get out of the train. You don’t know where
you are. You were never told. Army trucks are waiting to take you to the
airfield. Deep puddles of rain water are standing all about the little
station. You climb into a truck and in a short while you have come to a huge
airfield. This is one of the fields of Air Transport Command, which moves men
and goods all over the world. Fighter planes are dispersed about the field,
dimly visible through the rain. The C-54s stand ready to go. This is a large and comfortable station. There
are club-rooms and a bar and a large restaurant. It is cold outside and inside
the fireplaces are piled high with glowing coals. In the largest clubroom are
many people waiting their time to go. There are men who have been here a week
and some crews which just got in. A phonograph is playing something sung by
Dinah Shore. The men sleep on the couches and wait for their time. The control-desk officer says, “Come back at
one-thirty and you will be told when you go.” The nearest town is several miles away. The
crews wander about for a while and then go back to the club-room to read comic
books—Superman and the rest. They read them without amusement, but with great
concentration. The officer says, “You will probably go in
eight hours,” and again the wandering. A ship is warming up. It is going home.
The men on it will be in New York tomorrow. Even the ones who recently came
over look longingly at these lucky ones. Just before they go they are cornered
and messages given. “Call my wife and tell her that you saw me. Here is the
telephone number.” There would be letters to carry, but that is forbidden. The men going home actually write the numbers
down. They look a little self-conscious to be going home, and very happy about
it, too. They get into the big ship and the door closes. It is a four-motored
ship and you have to climb high to get into it. The little crowd stands in the
entrance and watches it go and then it has disappeared into the rain almost
before it is off the ground. The field has suddenly become very lonely. The men
go back to the coal fires and to old copies of magazines, Esquires and New
Yorkers, months old, copies of Life from April and May. The officer says, “The plane will leave for
Africa in fifteen minutes.” It would seem the plane would be crowded, but it
isn’t. There are on board only one combat crew and two civilians. It is a
C-54-A, which means that it has bucket seats and is more than half cargo plane.
Now the crew are gathering together their bags and their parachutes, slinging
on their pistols and knives and web equipment. They are being very nonchalant
about the whole thing. Africa means nothing to them. For a while we stand shivering in the rain
while our names are called off. Then each one climbs the ladder and goes
through the door. The windows of the plane are not blacked out, the way they
are at home. They don’t mind if you see. The big door slams, and outside you
can hear the motors begin to turn over. ALGIERSALGIERS (Via London), August 28, 1943—Algiers
is a fantastic city now. Always a place of strange mixtures, it has been
brought to a nightmarish mess by the influx of British and American troops and
their equipment. Now jeeps and staff cars nudge their way among camels and
horse-drawn cars. The sunshine is blindingly white on the white city, and when
there is no breeze from the sea the heat is intense. The roads are lined with open wagons loaded
high with fresh-picked grapes, with military convoys, with Arabs on horseback,
with Canadians, Americans, Free French native troops in tall red hats. The
uniforms are of all colors and all combinations of colors. Many of the French
colonial troops have been issued American uniforms since they had none of their
own. You never know when you approach American khaki that it will not clothe an
Arab or a Senegalese. The languages spoken in the streets are
fascinating. Rarely is one whole conversation carried out in just one language.
Our troops do not let language difficulties stand in their way. Thus you may
see a soldier speaking in broad Georgia accents conversing with a Foreign
Legionnaire and a burnoosed Arab. He speaks cracker, with a sour French word
thrown in here and there, but his actual speech is with his hands. He acts out
his conversation in detail. His friends listen and watch and they answer
him in Arabic or French and pantomime their meaning, and oddly enough they all
understand one another. The spoken language is merely the tonal background to a
fine bit of acting. Out of it comes a manual pidgin that is becoming
formalized. The gesture for a drink is standard. Gestures of friendship and
anger and love have also become standard. The money is a definite problem. A franc is
worth two cents. It is paper money and comes in five, ten, twenty, fifty, one
hundred, and one thousand franc notes. The paper used is a kind of blotting
paper that wads up and tears easily. Carried in the pocket, it becomes wet and gummy
with perspiration, and when taken out of the pocket often falls to pieces in
your hands. In some stores they will not accept torn money, which limits the
soldier, because most of the money he has is not only torn but wadded and used
until the numbers on it are almost unrecognizable. A wad of money feels like a
handful of warm wilted lettuce. In addition there are many American bills, the
so-called invasion money, which is distinguished from home money by having a
gold seal printed on its face. These bills feel cool and permanent compared
with the Algerian money. A whole new tourist traffic has set up here. A
soldier may buy baskets, bad rugs, fans, paintings on cloth, just as he can at
Coney Island. Many GIs with a magpie instinct will never be able to get home,
such is their collection of loot. They have bits of battle debris, knives,
pistols, bits of shell fragments, helmets, in addition to their colored
baskets and rugs. In each case the collector has someone at home in mind when
he makes the purchases. Grandma would love this Algerian shawl, and this
Italian bayonet is just the thing to go over Uncle Charley’s fireplace, along
with the French bayonet he brought home from the last war. Suddenly there will come
the order to march with light combat equipment, and the little masses of
collections will have to be left with instructions to forward that will never
be carried out. Americans are great collectors. The next station will start the
same thing all over again. The terraces of the hotels are crowded at five
o’clock. This is the time when people gather to get a drink and to look at one
another. There is no hard liquor. Cooled wine and lemonade and orange wine are
the standard drinks. There is some beer made of peanuts, which does have a
definite peanut flavor. The wine is good and light and cooling, a little bit of
a shock to a palate used to bourbon whiskey, but acceptable. On these terraces the soldiers come to sit
about little tables and to meet dates. The French women here have done
remarkably well. Their shoes have thick wooden soles, but are attractive, and
the few clothes they have are clean and well kept. Since there is little
material for dyeing the hair or bleaching it, a new fashion seems to have
started. One lock of the hair is bleached and combed back over the unbleached
part. It has a strange and not unattractive effect. About five o’clock the streets are invaded by
little black Wog boys with bundles of newspapers. They shriek, “Stahs’n
Straipes. Stahs’n Straipes.” The Army newspaper is out again. This is the
only news most of our men get. In fact, little news comes here. New York and
London are much better informed than this station, which is fairly close to
action. But it seems to be generally true that the closer to action you get,
the more your interest in the over-all picture diminishes. Soldiers here are not so much interested in the
trend of war as the soldiers are in training camps at home. Here the qualities
of the mess, the animosities with the sergeant, the price of wine are much more
important than the world at war. This is a mad, bright, dreamlike place. It is
probable that our soldiers will remember it as a whirl of color and a polyglot
babble. The heat makes your head a little vague, so that impressions run
together and blot one another up. Outlines are hazy. It will be a curious
memory when the soldiers try to sort it out to tell about after the war, and it
will not be strange if they improvise a bit. A WATCH CHISELERA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), August
37, 1943—It was well after midnight. The sergeant of MPs and his lieutenant
drove in a jeep out of Sidi Belle Road from Oran. The sergeant had carved the
handles of his gun from the Plexiglas from the nose of a bomber and he had
begun to carve figures in it during off times with his pocket knife. It was a
soft African night with abundant stars. The lieutenant was quite young and sensible
enough to depend a good deal on his sergeant. The jeep leaped and rattled over
cobblestones. “Let’s go up to the Engineers and get a cup of coffee and a
sandwich,” the lieutenant said. “Turn around at the next corner.” At that moment a weapons carrier came roaring in
from the country, going nearly sixty miles an hour. It flashed by the jeep and
turned the corner on two wheels. “Jeezus,” said the sergeant, “shall I go after
him?” “Run him down,” said the lieutenant. The sergeant wheeled the jeep around and put
his foot to the floor. Around the corner he could see the tail lights in the
distance and he seemed to gain on it rapidly. The weapons carrier was stopped,
pulled up beside a field. The jeep skidded to a stop and the sergeant leaped
out with the lieutenant after him. Three men were sitting in the weapons carrier,
three in the front seat. They were quite drunk. The sergeant flashed his light
in the back. There were two empty wine bottles on the floor of the truck. “Get
out,” said the sergeant. As the men got out he frisked each one of them,
tapping the hind pockets and the trousers below the knees. The three soldiers
looked a little bedraggled. “Who was driving that car?” the lieutenant
asked. “I don’t know him,” a small fat soldier said.
“I never saw him before. He just jumped out and ran when he saw you coming. I
never saw him before. We were just walking along and he asked us to come for a
ride with him.” The small fat soldier rushed the words out. “That’ll be enough out of you,” the sergeant
said. “You don’t have to tell your friends the alibi. Where did you dump the
stuff?” “What stuff, Sergeant? I don’t know what stuff
you mean.” “You know what I mean all right. Shall I take a
look about, sir?” “Go ahead,” the lieutenant said. The sergeant
went to the border of the field and flashed his light about in the stubble.
Then he came back. “Can’t see anything,” he said, and to the men, “Where’d you
get this truck?” “Just like I told you—this soldier asked us to
come for a ride, and then he saw you coming and he jumped out and ran.” “What was his name?” “I don’t know. We called him Willie. He said
his name was Willie. I never saw him in my life before. Said his name was
Willie.” “Get in the jeep,” said the sergeant. “I’ve got
the keys, lieutenant. We’ll send out for the truck. Go on now, you guys, get in
that jeep.” “We ain’t done anything wrong, Sarge. What you
going to take us in for? Guy named Willie just asked—” “Shut up and get in,” said the sergeant. The three piled uncomfortably into the back
seat of the jeep. The sergeant got behind the wheel and the lieutenant
loosened his gun in its holster and sat on the little front seat with his body
screwed around to face the three. Only the little man wanted to talk. The jeep
rattled into the dark streets of Oran and pulled up in front of the MP
station, jumped up on the sidewalk, and parked bumper against the building.
Inside brilliant lights were blinding after the blacked-out streets. A sergeant
and a first lieutenant sat behind a big, high desk and looked over at the three
ranged in front of them. “Take off your dog tags and put them up here,”
said the sergeant. He began to make notes on a pad from the dog tags. “Put
everything in your pockets in this box.” He shoved a cigar box to the edge of
his desk. “But this here’s my stuff,” the little man
protested. “You’ll get a receipt. Put it up and roll up
your sleeves.” The two men who had been with the little fat
man were silent and watchful. “Who was driving the truck?” the desk sergeant
asked. “A fellow named Willie. He jumped out and ran
away.” The sergeant turned to the other two. “Who was
driving the truck?” he asked them. They both nodded their heads toward the little
fat man and neither one of them spoke. “You bastards,” the little fat man said
quietly. “Oh, you dirty bastards.” “Roll up your sleeves,” the desk sergeant said,
and then: “Good God, four wrist watches. Say, this one is a GI watch. That’s
government property. Where did you get it?” “I lent a fellow money for it. He’s going to
get it back when he pays me.” “Put your wallet up here.” The little fat man brought out a wallet of red
morocco leather and hesitantly put it up. “I want a receipt for this. This is
my savings.” The desk sergeant shook out the wallet. “God Almighty,”
he said, and he began to count the mounds of bills and he made notes on his
pad. “Ten thousand Algerian francs and three thousand dollars, American,” he
said. “You really are packing the stuff away, aren’t you, buddy?” “That’s my life savings,” the little fat man
said plaintively. “I want a receipt for that, that’s my money.” The lieutenant behind the desk came to life.
“Lock them up separately,” he said. “I’ll talk to them. Sergeant, you send a
detail out for that truck and tell them to search the place all around there.
Tell them to look out for watches, Elgins, GI watches. It will be a case about
this size. It would have a thousand in it if they are all there. The Arabs are
paying forty bucks for them. Okay, lock these men up.” “A guy named Willie,” the fat man complained,
“a guy named Willie just asked us to come for a ride.” He looked at the other
two and his soft face was venomous. “Oh, you dirty bastards,” he said. OVER THE HILLA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), September
1, 1943—Sligo and the kid took their forty-eight hour pass listlessly. The
bars close in Algeria at eight o’clock but they got pretty drunk on wine before
that happened and they took a bottle with them and lay down on the beach. The
night was warm and after the two had finished the second bottle of wine they
took off their clothes and waded out into the quiet water and then squatted
down and sat there with only their heads out. “Pretty nice, eh, kid?” said
Sligo. “There’s guys used to pay heavy dough for stuff just like this and we
get it for nothing.” “I’d rather be home on Tenth Avnoo,” said the
kid. “I’d rather be there than any place. I’d like to see my old lady. I’d like
to see the World Series this year.” “You’d like maybe a clip in the kisser,” said
Sligo. “I’d like to go into the Greek’s and get me a
double chocolate malted with six eggs in it,” said the kid. He bobbed up to
keep a little wavelet out of his mouth. “This place is lonely. I like Coney.” “Too full of people,” said Sligo. “This place is lonely,” said the kid. “Talking about the Series, I’d like to do that
myself,” said Sligo. “It’s just times like this a fella gets kind of tempted to
go over the hill.” “S’posen you went over the hill—where the hell
would you go? There ain’t no place to go.” “I’d go home,” said Sligo. “I’d go to the
Series. I’d be first in the bleachers, like I was in ’forty.” “You couldn’t get home,” the kid said; “there
ain’t no way to get home.” The wine was warming Sligo and the water was
good. “I got dough says I can get home,” he said carelessly. “How much dough?” “Twenty bucks.” “You can’t do it,” said the kid. “You want to take the bet?” “Sure, I’ll take it. When you going to pay?” “I ain’t going to pay, you’re going to pay.
Let’s go up on the beach and knock off a little sleep.” ... At the piers the ships lay. They had brought
landing craft and tanks and troops and now they lay, taking in the scrap, the
broken equipment from the North African battlefields which would go to the
blast furnaces to make more tanks and landing craft. Sligo and the kid sat on a
pile of C-ration boxes and watched the ships. Down the hill came a detail with
a hundred Italian prisoners to be shipped to New York. Some of the prisoners
were ragged and some were dressed in American khaki because they had been too
ragged in the wrong places. None of the prisoners seemed to be unhappy about
going to America. They marched down to a gangplank and then stood in a crowd,
awaiting orders to get aboard. “Look at them,” said the kid, “they get to go
home and we got to stay. What you doing, Sligo? What you rubbing oil all over
your pants for?” “Twenty bucks,” said Sligo, “and I’ll find you
and collect, too.” He stood off and took off his overseas cap and tossed it to
the kid. “Here’s a present, kid.” “What you going to do, Sligo?” “Don’t you come follow me, you’re too dumb.
Twenty bucks, and don’t you forget it. So long, see you on Tenth Avnoo.” The kid watched him go, uncomprehending. Sligo,
with dirty pants and a ripped shirt, moved gradually over, near to the
prisoners, and then imperceptibly he edged in among them and stood bareheaded,
looking back at the kid. An order was called down to the guards, and
they herded the prisoners toward the gangplank. Sligo’s voice came plaintively.
“I’m not supposed to be here. Hey, don’t put me on dis ship.” “Shut up, wop,” a guard growled at him. “I
don’t care if you did live sixteen years in Brooklyn. Git up that plank.” He
pushed the reluctant Sligo up the gangplank. Back on the pile of boxes the kid watched with
admiration. He saw Sligo get to the rail. He saw Sligo still protesting and
righting to get back to the pier. He heard him shrieking, “Hey, I’m Americano,
Americano soldier. You canna poot me here.” The kid saw Sligo struggling and then he saw
the final triumph. He saw Sligo take a sock at a guard and he saw the guard’s club
rise and come down on Sligo’s head. His friend collapsed and was carried out of
sight on board the ship. “The son of a gun,” the kid murmured to himself. “The
smart son of a gun. They can’t do nothing at all to him and he got witnesses.
Well, the smart son of a gun. My God, it’s worth twenty bucks.” The kid sat on the boxes for a long time. He
didn’t leave his place till the ship cast off and the tugs pulled her clear of
the submarine nets. The kid saw the ship join the group and he saw the
destroyers move up and take the convoy under protection. The kid walked dejectedly
up to the town. He bought a bottle of Algerian wine and headed back toward the
beach to sleep his forty-eight. THE SHORT SNORTER WAR MENACESOMEWHERE IN AFRICA (Via London), September
2, 1943—The growth of the Short Snorters is one of the greatest single
menaces to come out of the war so far. The idea started as a kind of joke in a
time when very few people flew over an ocean in an airplane. It became the
custom then for the crew of the airplane to sign their names on a one-dollar
bill which made the new ocean flyer a Short Snorter. He was supposed to keep
this bill always with him. If at any time he were asked if he were a Short
Snorter and he did not have his signed bill with him he was forced to pay a
dollar to each member present at the time when the question was asked. It was
good fun and a kind of general joke and also a means of getting someone to pay
for the drinks. But then came the war and the building of
thousands of ships and the transporting of thousands of men overseas by
airplane and every single one becomes a Short Snorter. There are hundreds of
thousands of Short Snorters now who have actually flown over an ocean and there
are further hundreds of thousands who carry signed bills. And the new Short
Snorter goes much farther than having his bill signed by the crew which carried
him on his initial crossing. The custom has grown to have the bill signed by
everyone you come across. At a bar you ask your drinking companion to sign
your bill. You ask generals and actors and senators to sign your bill. With the growing autographing one bill soon was
not enough. You procured another bill and stuck it with Scotch tape to your
first bill. Then the thing went farther. You began to collect bills from other
countries. To your American dollar bill you stuck a one-pound English note, and
to it a fifty-franc Algerian note, and to it a hundred-lira bill. Every place
you went you stuck the money to your growing Short Snorter until now there are
people who have streamers eight and ten feet long, which, folded and rolled,
make a great bundle in the pocket, and these streamers are covered with
thousands of names and represent besides considerable money. Even the
one-dollar original is disappearing. Many new Short Snorters use $20 bills and
some even $100 bills. These are the new autograph books. The original
half of the joke has been lost. In bars, in airports, in clubs, the first thing
that must be done is a kind of general exchange of signatures. Serious and
intelligent gentlemen sign one another’s bills with an absolute lack of humor.
If the party is fairly large it might take an hour before everyone has signed
the bill of everyone else. Meanwhile the soup gets cold. There are favorite places on the bill for
honored and desirable autographs. The little space under Morgenthau’s name is
one such. The wide space beside the portrait on the bill is another. If you get
an autograph you want to show, you have it written on a clear space, but if it
is just one of the run-of-the-mill signatures it is put any place in the green
part, where it hardly shows up at all. It is a frantic, serious-minded, insane
thing. Men of dignity scramble for autographs on their Short Snorters. A
special case, usually made of cellophane, is sometimes carried to house the
bill, or the long streamers of bills, because these treasures are handled so
much that they would fall to pieces if they were not protected. The effort and time involved in this curious
thing is immense. Entertainers who travel about to our troops sign literally
thousands of Short Snorter bills. For no longer do people have to fly an ocean
to be members. The new method is that any Short Snorter can create a new Short
Snorter. The club is pyramiding. Probably there are ten million Short Snorters
now and every day new thousands begin to scribble on their bills. It would be
interesting to know how many bills are withdrawn from circulation to be used
as autograph books. They must run into the millions. The use of large bills as Short Snorter bills
has a curious logic behind it. The man or woman who used a $20 or $100 bill
feels that he or she will not spend this money because of the signatures on it,
but he also feels that if he needs to he can spend it. Thus he has a nest egg
or mad money and a treasure, too. He will not toss it over a bar nor put it in
a crap game, but if he really should get into a hole he has this money with
him. Very curious practices grow out of a war and
surely none more strange than this one has taken over the public recently. THE BONE YARDA NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), September
5, 1943—On the edge of a North African city there is a huge used tank yard.
It isn’t only tanks, either. It is a giant bone yard, where wrecked tanks and trucks
and artillery are brought and parked, ready for overhauling. There are General
Shermans with knocked-out turrets and broken tracks, with engines gone to
pieces. There are trucks that have fallen into shell holes. There are hundreds
of wrecked motorcycles and many broken and burned-out pieces of artillery, the
debris of months of bitter fighting in the desert. On the edge of this great bone yard are the
reconditioning yards and the rebuilding lines. Into the masses of wrecked
equipment the Army inspectors go. They look over each piece of equipment and
tag it. Perhaps this tank, with a German .88 hole drilled neatly through the
turret, will go into the fight again with a turret from the one next to it,
which has had the tracks shot from under it. Most of the tanks will run again,
but those which are beyond repair will furnish thousands of spare parts to take
care of the ones which are running. This plant is like the used-car lots in
American cities, where you can, for a small price, buy the gear or the wheel
which keeps your car running. The engines are removed from the wrecked trucks
and put on the repair lines. Here a complete overhaul job is done, the linings
of the motors rebored, with new rings, tested and ready to go finally into the
paint room, where they are resprayed with green paint. Housings, gears, clutch
plates are cleaned with steam, inspected, and placed in bins, ready to be drawn
again as spare parts. One whole end of the yard is piled high with repaired
tires. Hundreds of men work in this yard, putting the wrecked equipment back to
work. Here is an acre of injured small artillery, 20-
and 37-mm. anti-tank guns. Some of them have been fired so long that their
barrels have burned out. Some of them have only a burst tire or a bent trail.
These are sorted and put ready for repair. The barrels are changed for new
ones, and the old ones go to the scrap pile. For when everything usable has
been made use of there is still a great pile of twisted steel which can be used
as nothing but scrap metal. But the ships which bring supplies to the Army from
home are going back. They take their holds full of this scrap to go into the
making of new steel for new equipment. It is interesting to see the same American who,
a few months ago, was tinkering with engines in a small-town garage now
tinkering with the engine of a General Grant tank. And the man hasn’t changed a
bit. He is still the intent man who is good with engines. He isn’t even dressed
very much differently, for the denim work clothes are very like the overalls he
has been wearing for years. Beside these men work the French and the Arabs.
They are learning from our men how to take care of the machinery that they may
use. They learn quickly but without many words, for most of our men cannot
speak the language of the men who are helping them. It is training by sign
language and it seems to work very well. The wrecked equipment comes in in streams from
the battlefields. Modern war is very hard on its tools. While in this war fewer
men are killed, more equipment than ever is wrecked, for it seems almost to be
weapon against weapon rather than man against man. But there are many sad little evidences in the
vehicles. In this tank which has been hit there is a splash of blood against
the steel side of the turret. And in this burned-out tank a large piece of
singed cloth and a charred and curled shoe. And the insides of a tank are full
of evidences of the men who ran it, penciled notes written on the walls, a
telephone number, a sketch of a profile on the steel armor plate. Probably
every vehicle in the whole Army has a name, usually the name of a girl but
sometimes a brave name like Hun Chaser. That one got badly hit. And there is a
tank with no track and with the whole top of the turret shot away by a heavy shell,
but on her skirt in front is still her name and she is called Lucky Girl.
Every one of these vehicles lying in the wreck yard has some tremendous story,
but in many of the cases the story died with the driver and the crew. There are little tags tied to the barrels of
the guns. One says: “The recoil slaps sideways. I’m scared of it.” And another
says: “You can’t hit a barn with this any more.” And in a little while these
guns, refitted and painted, with their camouflage, will be back in the fight
again. There is hammering in the yard, and fizz of
welders and hiss of steam pipes. The men are stripped to the waist, working
under the hot African sun, their skins burned nearly black. The little cranes
run excitedly about, carrying parts, stacking engines, tearing the hopeless
jobs to pieces for their usable parts. ItalyREHEARSALSOMEWHERE IN MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, September
29, 1943—American troops trained on the beaches of North Africa for the
beaches of Italy. It was hot and dusty on the land, and back from the coast
there were many training props for them to work with. There were wooden landing
barges standing on the ground in which dusty men crouched, until at a signal
the ramp went down and they charged out and took cover. To get ashore quickly,
and to get down behind some hummock of earth where the machine guns can’t get
at you, is very important stuff in landing. And so they practiced over and over, and
instead of getting wet they only raised clouds of dust, the light, reddish
dust of Africa, in colors little like the red soil of Georgia. And when the men had learned to leap out and
charge and take cover and to run forward again, presenting as little of
themselves as possible to the observing officers, they went to the set to learn
how to conduct themselves on entering an enemy town. There were sets like those in a Hollywood
studio in the old silent days, wooden fronts and tall and short buildings with
open windows and little streets between, and there the men learned how to
crouch on a corner and how to slink under the cover of walls. They learned with
practice grenades how to blast out a machine gun set up in a building. It was
strange to see them rehearsing, as though for a play. It went on for weeks. And when they had become used to the method and
when they reacted almost instinctively, they were taken finally to the
Mediterranean beaches, the long, white beaches, which are not very unlike the
beaches at Salerno. The water is incredibly blue there and the beaches are
white. And the water is very salty. You float like a cork on it. On the beaches
they practiced with real landing barges. The teams put out to sea and then
turned and made runs for the shore and the iron ramps clattered down and the
men rushed ashore and crept and wriggled their way up to the line of the shore
where the grapevines began, for there are vineyards in Italy, too. When they had practiced a little while, machine
guns with live ammunition fired over their heads, but not very far over their
heads, to give them a real interest in keeping low. Now in larger groups they rushed in from the
sea and charged up into the vines and crept up through the vineyards and moved
inland. An amazing number of men can disappear into a vineyard so that you
can’t see them at all. The dark Algerian grapes were ripe and as they
crawled the men picked the grapes and ate them and the incidence of GI
dysentery skyrocketed, but there is no way of keeping a dusty, thirsty man
from eating ripe grapes, particularly if they are hanging right over his head,
when he lies under the vines. Over and over again they captured this little
sector and climbed up and captured the heights. They had to learn to do it in
the daytime because when they would really do it it would be in the dark of the
early morning. But when the training for each day was finished, the men went
back to the beaches and took off their clothes and played in the water. The
water was warm and delightful and the salt stung their eyes. Their bodies grew
browner day by day until they were only a little lighter than the Arabs. At night they were very tired and there is not
much to do in Africa after dark anyway. No love is lost for the Arabs. They are
the dirtiest people in the world and among the smelliest. The whole countryside
smells of urine, four thousand years of urine. That is the characteristic smell
of North Africa. The men were not allowed to go into the native cities because
there was a great deal of disease and besides there are too many little
religious rules and prejudices that an unsuspecting dogface can run afoul of.
And there wasn’t much to buy and what there was cost too much. The prices have
skyrocketed on the coming of the troops. The men slept in their pup tents and drew their
mosquito nets over them and scratched and cursed all night until, after a time,
they were too tired to scratch and curse and they fell asleep the moment they
hit the blankets. Their minds and their bodies became machine-like. They did
not talk about the war. They talked only of home and of clean beds with white sheets
and they talked of ice water and ice cream and places that did not smell of
urine. Most of them let their minds dwell on snow banks and the sharp winds of
Middle Western winter. But the red dust blew over them and crusted their skins
and after a while they could not wash it all off any more. The war had narrowed
down to their own small group of men and their own job. It would be a lie to
suggest that they like being there. They wish they were somewhere else. SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
1, 1943—Week after week the practice of the invasion continued, gathering
impetus as the day grew nearer. Landing operations and penetrations, stealthy
approaches and quick charges. The whole thing gradually took on increased speed
as the day approached. The roads back of the coast were crowded with
staff cars dashing about. The highways were lined with trucks full of the
incredible variety of war material for the invasion of Italy. There are
thousands of items necessary to a modern army and, because of the complexity of
supply, a modern army is a sluggish thing. Plans, once made, are not easily
changed, for every move of combat troops is paralleled by hundreds of moves
behind the lines, the moves of food and ammunition, trucks that must get there on
time. If the whole big, sluggish animal does not move with perfect cooperation,
it is very likely that it will not move at all. Modern warfare is very like an
automobile assembly line. If one bolt in the whole machine is out of place or
not available, the line must stop and wait for it. Improvisation is not very
possible. And all over in the practice zones in North
Africa the practice went on to make sure that every bolt would be in its place.
The men went on field rations to get used to them. Canteens must always be
full, but full of the evil-tasting, disinfected water which gets your mouth wet
but gives you very little other pleasure. While the men went through their final training
on the beaches the implements of war were collecting for their use. In huge
harbors, whose names must not be mentioned, transports and landing craft of all
kinds were accumulating. They crept up to the piers and opened the doors in
their noses and took on their bellyfuls of tanks and loaded tracks and then
slipped out and sat at anchor and waited for the “D” day at the “H” hour, which
very few in the whole Army knew. On the freighters cranes slung full-loaded
tracks and laden two-and-a-half-ton “ducks,” which are perhaps America’s real
secret weapon of this war. The “ducks,” big tracks which lumber down the
beaches and enter the water and become boats, or the boats which, coming loaded
to the beach, climb out, and drive as tracks along the dusty roads. In the harbors the accumulations of waiting
ships collected, tank-landing craft and troop-landing craft of all kinds. The
barges, which ran up on the beaches and disgorge their loads and back off and
go for more. And on the piers Arab workers passed the hundreds of thousands of
cases of canned rations to the lighters and the lighters moved out and filled
the ships with food for the soldiers. The fleets accumulated until they choked
the harbor. Now the enemy knew what was going on. They had
to know. The operation was too great for them not to know. They sent their
planes over the harbor to try to bomb the gathering fleets and they were driven
off and destroyed by the protecting Beaufighters and P-38s. They did not
succeed in doing damage, for finally the enemy had lost control of the skies
and the fleets could load at least in peace. But at night they tried to get through and the
flak rose up at them, like all the Fourth of Julys in history, the ships and
the shore batteries put up a wall of fire against the invading planes so that
some of them unloaded their bombs in the open countryside and some of them
exploded with their own bombs and some went crashing into the sea. But they had
lost control. Now “D” day was coming close and at
headquarters the officers collected and held conference after conference and
there was a growing tautness in the whole organization. Staff officers dashed
in to their briefs and rushed back to their units to brief those under them. It
would have been easy to know how close the time had come by the tempo, and then
suddenly it was all done and a curious quiet settled on the whole invasion
force. Somewhere an order passed and in the night the
ships began to move out to the places of rendezvous. And in the night the
columns of men climbed into trucks and the trucks came down the piers to the
ships, and the men, like ants, crawled on the ships and sat down on their
equipment. And the troopships slipped out to the rendezvous to wait for the
moment to leave. It was no start with bugles and flags or
cheering men. The radios crackled their coded orders. Messages went from radio
rooms to the bridges of the ships. The word was passed to the engine rooms and
the great convoys put out to sea. And on the decks of troopships and on the flat
iron floors of the landing craft, the men sat on their lumpy mountains of
equipment and waited. The truck drivers sat in their trucks on the ship and
waited. The tank men stayed close to their iron monsters and waited. The ships
moved out into their formations and the destroyers came tearing in and took up
their places on the flanks and before and after the ships. Out of sight, in
all directions, the fighting ships combed the ocean for submarines and the
listening devices strained for the signal which means a steel enemy is creeping
near. Over the convoy the silver balloons hung in the
southern sunlight, balloons to keep the dive-bombers off. And then the sun went
down. The balloons kept the sun for half an hour after it had gone from the
surface of the sea. There was radio silence now and the darkness came down and
the great convoy crept on toward Italy. The sea was smooth and only the weakest
stomachs were bothered. There were no lights showing, but a pale moon
lighted the dark ships somberly and the slow wakes disturbed the path of the
moon on the ocean. The combat troops sat on the luggage and
waited. This was what it was all for. They had left home for this. They had
studied and trained, changed their natures and their clothing and their habits
all toward this time. And still there were only a very few men who knew “D” day
and “H” hour. INVASIONSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
3, 1943—On the iron floors of the LCIs, which stands for Landing Craft
Infantry, the men sit about and for a time they talk and laugh and make jokes
to cover the great occasion. They try to reduce this great occasion to
something normal, something ordinary, something they are used to. They rag one
another, accuse one another of being scared, they repeat experiences of recent
days, and then gradually silence creeps over them and they sit silently because
the hugeness of the experience has taken them over. These are green troops. They have been trained
to a fine point, hardened and instructed, and they lack only one thing to make
them soldiers, enemy fire, and they will never be soldiers until they have it.
No one, least of all themselves, knows what they will do when the terrible
thing happens. No man there knows whether he can take it, knows whether he will
run away or stick, or lose his nerve and go to pieces, or will be a good
soldier. There is no way of knowing and probably that one thing bothers you
more than anything else. And that is the difference between green troops
and soldiers. Tomorrow at this time these men, those who are living, will be
different. They will know then what they can’t know tonight. They will know how
they face fire. Actually there is little danger. They are going to be good
soldiers, for they do not know that this is the night before the assault. There
is no way for any man to know it. In the moonlight on the iron deck they look at
each other strangely. Men they have known well and soldiered with are strange
and every man is cut off from every other one, and in their minds they search
the faces of their friends for the dead. Who will be alive tomorrow night? I
will, for one. No one ever gets killed in the war. Couldn’t possibly. There
would be no war if anyone got killed. But each man, in this last night in the
moonlight, looks strangely at the others and sees death there. This is the most
terrible time of all. This night before the assault by the new green troops.
They will never be like this again. Every man builds in his mind what it will be
like, but it is never what he thought it would be. When he designs the assault
in his mind he is alone and cut off from everyone. He is alone in the
moonlight and the crowded men about him are strangers in this time. It will not
be like this. The fire and the movement and the exertion will make him a part
of these strangers sitting about him, and they will be a part of him, but he does
not know that now. This is a bad time, never to be repeated. Not one of these men is to be killed. That is
impossible, and it is no contradiction that every one of them is to be killed.
Every one is in a way dead already. And nearly every man has written his letter
and left it somewhere to be posted if he is killed. The letters, some
misspelled, some illiterate, some polished and full of attitudes, and some
meager and tight. All say the same thing. They all say: “I wish I had told you,
and I never did, I never could. Some obscure and impish thing kept me from ever
telling you, and only now, when it is too late, can I tell you. I’ve thought
these things,” the letters say, “but when I started to speak something cut me
off. Now I can say it, but don’t let it be a burden on you. I just know that it
was always so, only I didn’t say it.” In every letter that is the message. The
piled-up reticences go down in the last letters. The letters to wives, and
mothers, and sisters, and fathers, and, such is the hunger to have been a part
of someone, letters sometimes to comparative strangers. The great ships move through the night though
they are covered now, and the engines make no noise. Orders are given in soft
voices and the conversation is quiet. Somewhere up ahead the enemy is waiting
and he is silent too. Does he know we are coming, and does he know when and in
what number? Is he lying low with his machine guns ready and his mortars set on
the beaches, and his artillery in the hills? What is he thinking now? Is he afraid
or confident? The officers know H-hour now. The moon is going
down. H-hour is 3:30, just after the moon has set and the shore is black. The
convoy is to moonward of the shore. Perhaps with glasses the enemy can see the
convoy against the setting moon, but ahead where we are going there is only
misty pearl-like grayness. The moon goes down into the ocean and ships that
have been beside you and all around you disappear into the blackness and only
the tiny shielded position-lights show where they are. The men sitting on the deck disappear into the
blackness and the silence, and one man begins to whistle softly just to be
sure he is there. SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
4, 1943—There is a good beach at Salerno, and a very good landing at Red
Beach No. 2. The ducks were coming loaded ashore and running up out of the
water and joining the lines of trucks, and the pontoon piers were out in the
water with large landing cars up against them. Along the beach the bulldozers
were at work pushing up sand ramps for the trucks to land on and just back of
the beach were the white tapes that mean land mines have not been cleared out. There are little bushes on the sand dunes at
Red Beach, south of the Sele River, and in a hole in the sand buttressed by sandbags
a soldier sat with a leather-covered steel telephone beside him. His shirt was
off and his back was dark with sunburn. His helmet lay in the bottom of the
hole and his rifle was on a little pile of brush to keep sand out of it. He had
staked a shelter half on a pole to shade him from the sun, and he had spread
bushes on top of that to camouflage it. Beside him was a water can and an empty
C-ration can to drink out of. The soldier said, “Sure you can have a drink.
Here, I’ll pour it for you.” He tilted the water can over the tin cup. “I hate
to tell you what it tastes like,” he said. I took a drink. “Well, doesn’t it?” he said. “It sure does,” I said. Up in the hills the .88s were popping and the
little bursts threw sand about. His face was streaked where the sweat had run
down through the dirt, and his hair and his eyebrows were sunburned almost
white. But there was a kind of gaiety about him. His telephone buzzed and he
answered it and said, “Hasn’t come through yet, sir, no sir I’ll tell him.” He
clicked off the phone. “When’d you come ashore?” he asked. And then,
without waiting for an answer, he went on. “I came in just before dawn
yesterday. I wasn’t with the very first, but right in the second.” He seemed to
be very glad about it. “It was hell,” he said, “it was bloody hell.” He seemed to
be gratified at the hell it was, and that was right. The great question had
been solved for him. He had been under fire. He knew now what he would do under
fire. He would never have to go through that uncertainty again. “I got pretty
near up to there,” he said, and pointed to two beautiful Greek temples about a
mile away. “And then I got sent back here for beach communications. When did
you say you got ashore?” And again he didn’t wait for an answer. “It was dark as hell,” he said, “and we were
just waiting out here,” He pointed to the sea where the mass of the invasion
fleet rested. “If we thought we were going to sneak ashore we were nuts,” he
said. “They were waiting for us. They knew just where we were going to land.
They had machine guns in the sand dunes and .88s on the hills. “We were out there all packed in an LCI, and
then all hell broke loose. The sky was full of it and the star shells lighted
it up and the tracers crisscrossed and the noise—we saw the assault go in, and
then one of them hit a surf mine and went up, and in the light you could see
them go flying about. I could see the boats land and the guys go wiggling and running,
and then maybe there’d be a lot of white lines and some of them would waddle
about and collapse and some would hit the beach. “It didn’t seem like men getting killed, more
like a picture, like a moving picture. We were pretty crowded up in there,
though, and then all of a sudden it came on me that this wasn’t a moving
picture. Those were guys getting the hell shot out of them, and then I got kind
of scared, but what I wanted to do mostly was move around. I didn’t like being
cooped up there where you couldn’t get away or get down close to the ground. “Well, the firing would stop and then it would
get pitch black even then, and it was just beginning to get light too, but the
.88s sort of winked on the hills like messages, and the shells were bursting
all around us. They had lots of .88s and they shot at everything. I was just
getting real scared when we got the order to move in, and I swear that is the
longest trip I ever took, that mile to the beach. I thought we’d never get
there. I figured that if I was only on the beach I could dig down and get out
of the way. There was too damned many of us there in that LCI. I wanted to
spread out. That one that hit the mine was still burning when we went on by it.
Then we bumped the beach and the ramps went down and I hit the water up to my
waist. “The minute I was on the beach I felt better. It
didn’t seem like everybody was shooting at me and I got up to that line of
brush and flopped down and some other guys flopped down beside me and then we
got feeling a little foolish. We stood up and moved on. Didn’t say anything to
each other, we just moved on. It was coming daylight then and the flashes of
the guns weren’t so bright. I felt a little like I was drunk. The ground heaved
around under my feet and I was dull. I guess that was because of the firing. My
ears aren’t so good yet. I guess we moved up too far because I got sent back
here.” He laughed openly. “I might have gone on right into Rome if someone
hadn’t sent me back. I guess I might have walked right up that hill there.” The cruisers began firing on the hill and the
.88s fired back. From over near the hill came the heavy thudding of .59-caliber
machine guns. The soldier felt pretty good. He knew what he could do now. He
said, “When did you say you came ashore?” MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October 6, 1943—You
can’t see much of a battle. Those paintings reproduced in history books which
show long lines of advancing troops are either idealized or else times and
battles have changed. The account in the morning papers of the battle of
yesterday was not seen by the correspondent, but was put together from
reports. What the correspondent really saw was dust and
the nasty burst of shells, low bushes and slit trenches. He lay on his stomach,
if he had any sense, and watched ants crawling among the little sticks on the
sand dune, and his nose was so close to the ants that their progress was
interfered with by it. Then he saw an advance. Not straight lines of
men marching into cannon fire, but little groups scuttling like crabs from bits
of cover to other cover, while the high chatter of machine guns sounded, and
the deep proom of shellfire. Perhaps the correspondent scuttled with them
and hit the ground again. His report will be of battle plan and tactics, of
taken ground or lost terrain, of attack and counter-attack. But these are some
of the things he probably really saw: He might have seen the splash of dirt and dust
that is a shell burst, and a small Italian girl in the street with her stomach
blown out, and he might have seen an American soldier standing over a twitching
body, crying. He probably saw many dead mules, lying on their sides, reduced to
pulp. He saw the wreckage of houses, with torn beds hanging like shreds out of
the spilled hole in a plaster wall. There were red carts and the stalled
vehicles of refugees who did not get away. The stretcher-bearers come back from the lines,
walking in off step, so that the burden will not be jounced too much, and the
blood dripping from the canvas, brother and enemy in the stretchers, so long as
they are hurt. And the walking wounded coming back with shattered arms and
bandaged heads, the walking wounded struggling painfully to the rear. He would have smelled the sharp cordite in the
air and the hot reek of blood if the going has been rough. The burning odor of
dust will be in his nose and the stench of men and animals killed yesterday and
the day before. Then a whole building is blown up and an earthy, sour smell
comes from its walls. He will smell his own sweat and the accumulated sweat of
an army. When his throat is dry he will drink the warm water from his canteen,
which tastes of disinfectant. While the correspondent is writing for you of
advances and retreats, his skin will be raw from the woolen clothes he has not
taken off for three days, and his feet will be hot and dirty and swollen from
not having taken off his shoes for days. He will itch from last night’s
mosquito bites and from today’s sand-fly bites. Perhaps he will have a little
sand-fly fever, so that his head pulses and a red rim comes into his vision.
His head may ache from the heat and his eyes burn with the dust. The knee that
was sprained when he leaped ashore will grow stiff and painful, but it is no
wound and cannot be treated. “The 5th Army advanced two kilometers,” he will
write, while the lines of trucks churn the road to deep dust and truck drivers
hunch over their wheels. And off to the right the burial squads are scooping
slits in the sandy earth. Their charges lie huddled on the ground and before
they are laid in the sand, the second of the two dog tags is detached so that
you know that that man with that Army serial number is dead and out of it. These are the things he sees while he writes of
tactics and strategy and names generals and in print decorates heroes. He takes
a heavily waxed box from his pocket. That is his dinner. Inside there are two
little packets of hard cake which have the flavor of dog biscuits. There is a
tin can of cheese and a roll of vitamin-charged candy, an envelope of lemon
powder to make the canteen water taste less bad, and a tiny package of our
cigarettes. That is dinner, and it will keep him moving for
several more hours and keep his stomach working and his heart pumping. And if
the line has advanced beyond him while he eats, dirty, bug-like children will
sidle up to him, cringing and sniffling, their noses ringed with flies, and
these children will whine for one of the hard biscuits and some of the vitamin
candy. They will cry for candy: “Caramela—caramela—caramela—okay,
okay, shank you, good-by.” And if he gives the candy to one, the ground will
spew up more dirty, bug-like children, and they will scream shrilly, “Caramela—caramela.”
The correspondent will get the communiquй and will write your morning dispatch
on his creaking, dust-filled portable: “General Clark’s 5th Army advanced two
kilometers against heavy artillery fire yesterday.” SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATRE, October
8, 1943—The invasion and taking of the beachhead at Salerno had been very
rough. The German was waiting for us. His .88s were on the surrounding hills
and his machine guns in the sand dunes. His mines were in the surf and he sat
there and waited for us. There was no other way. He had to be pushed out. And,
for a time, it looked as though we might be pushed out. But gradually, what
with the naval ships firing and the determined holding out of recently green
troops and the coming of our reserves from the sea, the picture has changed.
Now the invasion fleet lies in comparative safety off the shore and the beach
is secure. The sea has been smooth during the whole thing.
Any storm would have made it more difficult, but the sea has been kind to us.
It is as slick as silk and littered for many miles with little twinkling
C-ration cans floating in the sea and glittering under the sun. The water is
oily, too, and there are bits of wreckage floating everywhere and all the
garbage of this huge fleet, the crates and cans and bottles and debris that men
have the ability to scatter about. Near shore the cruisers and battleships
continue to fire, but now their guns are elevated and they fire over the
mountains at targets unseen from the sea. The command ship lies protected in the middle
of the invasion fleet. She is a floating radio station. From her all the orders
have gone out and to her all the news has come in. And the staffs are brutally
tired. This has not been the usual thing. The command ship has been bombed at
constantly. Her crew has been alerted every half-hour in the twenty-four. The
bugle is blown and then the boatswain’s pipe over the loudspeaker and then the
crackling horn that means battle stations. Then tired staff officers have taken
off their helmets and their lifebelts and made for the deck for their assigned
stations, while the anti-aircraft roared over their heads and the bombs came
down and burst the water into the air. Not many German planes have got through the air
cover, but some have and nearly every one was after the command ship. They have
straddled her with bombs. There have been near misses that jerked her in the
water and it is a wonder her plates aren’t sprung. And this has been going on for four days. No
one has had any sleep. What has made it even worse, the Jerry planes have been
talking to each other on their radios and not bothering to code their messages.
They have been looking for this particular ship and aiming for her. They know
that if they get this ship they may get the controlling brains of the whole
operation. There are very tired colonels and generals on
board, waiting for the order to go ashore and establish headquarters. They
will feel much better when they are ashore. It is not nice to be aboard the
target of the whole fleet. But the command ship has not been hit. Other ships
about her have been blasted, but not the command. The feeling aboard has been
that the luck is getting pretty thin and that the next one must get her. Meanwhile, the litter spreads out to sea on
little currents. There will be C-ration cans come ashore for a thousand miles.
The litter will coat the shores of Italy. What has made the command ship’s life even more
lively is that the Germans have a new bomb. At least, that is the rumor. This
bomb is released and then controlled from the plane. It is directed by radio,
and if it seems about to miss it can be turned by its master. At least that is
what is said. And surely these bombs do not seem to act like other ones. They
come down more slowly, and they glow as they come, with something like a phosphorescence
that you can even see in the daytime. When the red signal for an air attack goes out,
the destroyers move in circles, belching smoke, and the small smoke carriers
dart busily among the big ships, trailing ribbons of white, choking smoke which
smells like sulphur. The little boats weave in and out, until they have
covered the fleet with their artificial fog. The sound of coughing is
deafening. At least it is until the anti-aircraft starts. And then, through the
smoke, you hear the deep blow of the bombs. They don’t sound like anything
else. And their explosions come through the water and strike the ship. You can
feel them in your feet. The endless lines of landing craft go ashore,
carrying the supplies for men who are lying off in the bushes on the forward
lines. Cases of food and tons of shells and cartridges. A hell of them lines
the shore, waiting to be transported inland. And the battle line has moved up. The beach is
taken now and the invasion moves ahead. The white hospital ships move inshore
to take on their cargoes. PALERMOSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October
1, 1943—The sea off Sicily was running in long, smooth waves without
whitecaps and the day was bright and the sea that Mediterranean blue that is
unlike any other blue in the world. The PT boat ground its way through, making
a great churned wake and taking even what little sea there was over the bow.
It’s the wettest boat of all, the torpedo boat. The crew, in their rubber
clothes, huddled on the deck trying to keep out of the constant spray, and on
each side of the bridge the machine-gunners, at their stations, sat in their
turrets behind their guns and the water glistened on their faces. The cartridge
cases of the .50-caliber shells were green from contact with the sea water. Off to the right a body was floating in the
sea, rising and falling on the long waves. It was pretty swollen, and the brown
lifebelt and collar made it float high in the water. The captain was dressed in a bathing suit and
he was barefooted. The First had a rubber coat on but his trousers were rolled
up and his feet were bare, too. The two of them looked off across the port
torpedo tube at the floating body. “Should we go over and take a look?” the First
said. “Not in the shape it’s in,” the captain said.
“Besides, we have to make our schedule.” The first said, “I think that’s the loneliest
thing in the world. A body floating at sea. I don’t know anything that looks so
alone.” The captain let go his hold on the torpedo tube
and turned and held onto the rail behind the port gun turret. “Before you came
on I had one that gave me the willies,” he said. He broke abruptly into his
story. “After Palermo fell,” he said, “there was a
night and a part of a day before the Seventh Army got to the city. I was on
patrol with five PTs and we got the flash and we were in the neighborhood
anyway, so we came to take a look. You know what Palermo looks like. That
great, big, strong mountain right beside the city and the crazy lights that get
on it and then the city spilled down there at the base. It looks like Ulysses
has just left there. You can really get the sense of Virgil from that mountain,
from the whole northern coast of Sicily, for that matter. It just stinks of the
classics. “Anyway, it was fairly late in the afternoon
when we came opposite the city and crept in next to the mole and sneaked
through. We were fixed to run if anything shot at us, but nothing did. We went
into the harbor and it was really shot to pieces. There were ships sunk all
over and twisted cranes and one little Italian destroyer lying over on its
side. “The Air Force really did a job on the
waterfront there. Buildings and docks and machinery and boats just blasted into
junk. What a junkman’s dream that was! What made me think of it was that the
water was oily from the blasted ships and there was a dead woman floating on
the oily water, face down and with her hair fanned out and floating behind her.
She bobbed up and down when our wake spread out in the harbor. “At first,” the captain said, “I didn’t know
what gave me a queer feeling and then it came to me. There wasn’t anybody
moving about on the shore at all. You take a wrecked city, why, there’s usually
someone poking around. But not here. I got the idea I’d like to go ashore. So
the First I had then and I, we pulled up between two wrecked fishing boats and
we got out a tommy gun apiece and we tied up and jumped ashore. “It’s kind of hard to imagine. Palermo is a
pretty big city. Except for the harbor and the waterfront, our bombers hadn’t
hurt it very much. Oh, there were some wrecks, but not to amount to anything. I
tell you, there wasn’t one living soul in that city. The population moved right
out into the hills and the troops hadn’t come yet. There wasn’t a soul. “You’d walk up a street where there were big
houses and the doors would be open and—just not anybody. I did see a cat go
streaking across the street, a pure white cat, but that’s the only living thing
there was. “You know those little painted carts the
Sicilians have, with scenes painted on them? Well, there were some of those
lying on their sides and the donkeys that pulled them were lying there dead, too. “The First and I walked up into the town. Every
once in a while I’d get the idea of going into one of the houses and just
seeing what they were like, but I couldn’t. It was quiet and there wasn’t a
breath of wind and the doors were open and I just couldn’t make myself go into
one of those houses. “We’d walked quite a good distance up into the
town, farther than we thought, when it began to get dark. Neither of us had
thought to bring a flashlight. Well, when we saw the dark coming, I think we
both got panicky without any reason. We started to walk back to the waterfront
and we kept going faster and faster and then we finally broke into a run. “There was something about that town that
didn’t want us there after dark. The open doors were black already and the
deep shadows were falling. We dog-trotted through the narrow streets and then I
got to thinking—there’s nobody here, but now if I see anybody it’s going to
scare me. It gets dark awfully quick there. It was pitch black in the narrow
streets, but you could see light above the houses. “It got so we were really running and when we
broke out on the dock and climbed over the wrecks, we were panting. The First
said to me, ‘A guy might have got lost in there and not got back all night.’
But he knew we had been scared, and I knew it too.” A hard dash of spray came over the bow of the
PT and splashed him in the face. “That gave me the willies,” the captain said.
“I think that scared me more than I’ve been scared for a long time. I got to
thinking about it and once or twice I had a dream about it. Come to think of
it, the whole thing was like a dream anyway, from that dead woman right on
through. But if I ever wanted to say how it was to be alone and panicky, I
think I’d think of that right away.” SOUVENIRSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
12, 1943—It is said, and with some truth, that while the Germans fight for
world domination and the English for the defense of England, the Americans
fight for souvenirs. This may not be the final end for our dogfaces, but it
helps. It is estimated that two divisions of American troops could carry away
the Great Pyramid, chip by chip, in twenty-four hours. This writer has seen pup
tents piled nearly to the ridge rope with nearly valueless mementos of places the
soldiers occupied. Dark back rooms of houses in Algeria and Palermo and
Messina, and by now probably Salerno, are roaring with the industry of making
bits of colored cloth and celluloid into gadgets to sell the soldiers. A soldier has been seen struggling down a
street in Palermo carrying a fifty-pound statuette of an angel in plaster of
Paris. It was painted blue and pink and had written on its base in gold paint,
“Balcome too Palermo.” How he ever expected to get it home no one will ever
know. If the homes of America ever receive the souvenirs that are being
collected by our troops there will be no room for living. The post office at an
African station recently stopped a sentimental present a soldier was sending
his wife. It was a prized possession and he had bought it from a Goum for 1000
francs. It was a quart jar of fingers pickled in brandy. It is reported that the pre-Roman Greek temples
at Salerno have suffered more from chipping by American soldiers in two weeks
than they did during the preceding three thousand years, and whereas they have
suffered the destructive rage of invaders for centuries they are not expected
to survive the admiring souvenir-hunting of our troops, who only want to send a
small chip home to the little woman. True souvenir-hunting has its rules. It does
not apply to the fighter group who transported a grand piano, piece by piece,
over a thousand miles. Nor to the bomber swing band who rescued a crushed bull
fiddle and mended it with airplane fix-it until it was four inches thick. They
wanted to use these things. Souvenir hunting, if properly done, only takes
notice of things that can’t possibly be used for anything at all and are too
big or too fragile ever to get home. Probably the greatest souvenir hunter of this
whole war is a private first class who must be nameless but is generally
called Bugs. Bugs, when the battle for Gela in Sicily had
abated, was poking about among the ruins, when he came upon a mirror—but such a
mirror as to amaze him. It had survived bombing and shellfire in some
miraculous manner, a matter which created wonder in Bugs. The mirror was six
feet two in height and four feet wide, and it was in a frame of carved and
painted wood which represented hundreds of small cupids wrestling and writhing
about a length of blue ribbon, which accidentally managed to cover every cupid
from indecency. The whole thing must have weighed about seventy-five pounds,
and it was so beautiful that it broke Bug’s heart. He just couldn’t leave it
behind. Bugs probably fought the toughest war in all
Sicily, for he carried the mirror on his back the whole way. When the shellfire
was bad, he turned his mirror face down and covered it with dirt. On advances
he left it and always came back in the night and got it again, although it entailed
marching twice as far as the rest of his outfit. Finally Bugs arranged a kind of sling, so that
while advancing he had the appearance of a charging billboard. He gradually
came to devote a good part of his life to the care, transportation, and protection
of the biggest souvenir in the whole Seventh Army. When he finally marched into
Palermo he did so in triumph, for his mirror was un-chipped and its frame was
only a little chewed up from handling. Now, for the first time, Bugs was billeted in a
house, one of those tall houses with iron balconies and narrow stairs. Bugs
tried in vain to get the mirror around a corner of the narrow stairway and
finally he got a rope and, tying one end of it to the balcony, he went back to
the street and tied the other end of it to his mirror. Then he went back and
hauled it up to the second floor, where he was billeted. There he surveyed the
room and decided where to hang his mirror. He drove a nail in the wall, hung
the mirror, and stepped back to admire it. And he had just stepped clear when
the nail pulled out and the whole thing crashed and broke into a million
pieces. Bugs regarded the mess sadly, but then the
great philosophy of the “blowed in the glass” souvenir-hunter took possession
of him. He said, “Oh, well, maybe it wouldn’t have looked good in our flat,
anyways.” WELCOMESOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
14, 1943—The Italian people may greet conquering American and British
troops with different methods in different parts of the country, but they act
always with enthusiasm that amounts to violence. One of their methods makes
soldiers a little self-conscious until they get used to it. Great crowds of
people stand on the sidewalks as the troops march by and simply applaud by
clapping their hands as though they applauded a show. This makes the troops
walk very stiffly, smiling self-consciously, half soldiers and half actors. But this hand-clapping is the most restrained
thing that they do. The soldiers get more embarrassed when they are overwhelmed
by Italian men who rush up to them, overpower them with embraces, and plant
great wet kisses on their cheeks, crying a little as they do it. A soldier
hates to push them away, but he is not used to being kissed by men, and all he
can do is to blush and try to get away as quick as possible. A third method of showing enthusiasm at being
conquered is to throw any fruit or vegetable which happens to be in season at
the occupying troops. In Sicily the grapes were ripe and many a soldier got a
swipe across the face with a heavy bunch of grapes tossed with the best will in
the world. The juice ran down inside their shirts, and
after a march of a few blocks troops would be pretty well drenched in grape
juice, which, incidentally, draws flies badly, and there is nothing to do about
it. You can’t drown such enthusiasm by making them not throw grapes. One of the most ridiculous and most dangerous
occupations, however, was the investment and capture of the island of Ischia.
There the people, casting about for some vegetable or floral tribute, found
that the most prominent and showy flower of the season was the pink amaryllis.
This is not a pleasant flower at the best, but in the hands of an enthusiastic
Italian crowd it can almost be a lethal weapon. A reasonable-sized bunch of amaryllis, with
big, thick stems, may weigh four pounds. In a short drive through the streets
of the city of Ischia, some of the troops were nearly beaten to death with
flowers, while one naval officer was knocked clear out of a car by a well-aimed
bouquet of these terrible flowers. His friends proposed him for a Purple Heart,
and wrote a report on his bravery in action. “Under a deadly hail of
amaryllis,” the report said, “Lieutenant Commander So-and-So fought his way through
the street, although badly wounded by this new and secret weapon.” A man could
easily be killed by an opponent armed with amaryllis. The pressures on the Italians must have been
enormous. They seem to go to pieces emotionally when the war is really and
truly over for them. Groups of them simply stand and cry—men, women, and
children. They want desperately to do something for the troops and they haven’t
much to work with. Bottles of wine, flowers, any kind of little gift. They rush
to the churches and pray, and then, being afraid to miss something, they rush
back to watch more troops. The Italian soldiers in Italy respond instantly to
an order to deliver their arms. They pile their rifles up in the streets so
quickly that you have the idea they are greatly relieved to get the damned
things out of their hands once for all. But whatever may have been true about the
Fascist government, it is instantly obvious that the Italian little people were
never our enemies. Whole towns could not put on such acts if they did not mean
it. But in nearly every community you will find a fat and sleek man, sometimes
a colonel, sometimes a civil administrator. Now and then he wears the silver
dagger with the gold tip on the scabbard, which indicates that he was one who
marched on Rome with Mussolini. In a country which has been hungry this man is
well fed and beautifully dressed. He has been living on these people since
Fascism came here, and he has not done badly for himself. On the surrender of a
community he is usually the first to offer to help in the government. He will
do anything to help if only he can just keep his graft and his power. It is to be hoped that he is never permitted
either to help or to stay in his position. Indeed, our commanders are usually
visited by committees of townspeople and farmers who ask that the local Fascist
be removed and kept under wraps. They know that if he ever gets power again he
will avenge himself on them. They hate him and want to be rid of him. And if
you ask if they were Fascists, most Italians will reply, “Sure, you were a
Fascist or you didn’t get any work, and if you didn’t work your family
starved.” And whether or not this is true, they seem to believe it thoroughly. As the conquest goes on up the length of Italy,
the crops are going to change. Some soldiers are already feeling an
apprehension for the cabbage districts and the potato harvest, if they too are
used as thrown tokens of love and admiration. THE LADY PACKSSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
15, 1943—There is a little island very close to the mainland near Naples
which has on it a very large torpedo works, one of the largest in Italy. When
Italy had surrendered, the Germans took the island, mined it thoroughly, and
ran the detonating wires under the water to the mainland, so that they could
blow up the torpedo works if it seemed likely to be captured. The Germans left
a few guards, heavily armed, and they also left an Italian admiral and his wife
as a sort of hostage to the explosives planted all over the little island. To a small Anglo-American naval force a curious
order came. One single torpedo boat was to take on some British commandos, who
were to go ashore in secrecy, cut the wires to the mainland, kill the German
guards, and evacuate the Italian admiral and his wife. The boat assigned was a motor torpedo boat and
it lay alongside a pier in the afternoon and waited for the commandos to come
aboard. The celebrated commandos, the great swashbucklers, took their time in
arriving. In fact, they arrived nearly at dusk, five of them, which to their
mind is a large military force. And these were very strange men. They were small, tired-looking men who might
have been waiters or porters at a railroad station. Their backs were slightly
bent and their knees knobby and they walked with a shuffling gait. Their huge
shoes, with thick rubber soles, looked far too large for them. They were
dressed in faded shorts and open shirts, and their arms were an old-fashioned
revolver and a long, wicked knife for each. Their leader looked like a weary
and petulant mouse who wanted more than anything else in the world to get back
to a good safe job in an insurance office with the certainty that his pension
would not be held up. These five monsters came shambling aboard and
went immediately below decks to get a cup of tea and a slice of that cake which
tastes a little like fish. They sat mournfully in the tiny wardroom, mooning
over their tea and scratching the mosquito bites on their lumpy knees. When it was dark the MTB slipped from the dock
and crept out to sea toward the island. The moon was very bright and had to be
taken into account. But it was thought that in the indefinite light the action
would be easier to accomplish. The motors were muffled, and the small, powerful
boat pushed quietly through a smooth, moonlit sea. On the deck the rubber boat which was to take
the raiders ashore was inflated and ready. The gun crew sat quietly at their
stations. Just before midnight the boat lay to, and the black outline of the
island was not far ahead. Then the commandos came stumbling out of the
companionway and stood about on the deck. The captain of the torpedo boat said,
“You have all the plans now—cut the wires, kill the guards if possible, and
bring out the admiral and his lady. How long do you think that will take you?” The leader of the commandos gave the subject
his consideration, tapping his lips with his finger. “We should be back in an
hour,” he said at last. “An hour? Why, it can’t take that long. If you
take that long you won’t be able to do it at all.” “Oh, the guards business and the wires,” the
commandos explained, “that won’t take long.” “What will, then?” the captain demanded. “Well, the admiral’s wife will need time to
pack,” the commando said. “She doesn’t know we’re coming. She won’t have her
things ready.” And with that they laid the rubber boat over the side and
paddled silently away. For an hour the MTB lay in the moonlight,
waiting. The sailors kept close watch on the dark island and nothing happened.
There were no shots, there were no lights on the blacked-out island. The whole
thing was dead and quiet in the misty moonlight. At ten minutes of the hour the captain began to
look at his watch every half-minute, and he muttered to himself about E-boat
patrols and the necessity for not putting his ship in danger for nonsense. If
there had been any activity ashore he would at least know there was fighting of
some kind. At five minutes of the hour a big shape showed
on the water, and because everything is potentially dangerous the gunners swung
their machine guns on it and waited for it to identify itself. It approached,
and it was a rubber boat. It gently nudged the side of the MTB and a little,
slender woman was helped over the side, and then a quite stout admiral in a
beautiful overcoat, although the night was warm. These figures went immediately
below, but the leader of the commandos said, “Bert, you will go back with me.”
Three of the men climbed aboard the MTB, and the rubber boat shoved off again
and moved back toward the island. The three remaining commandos stood limply on
the deck. The MTB captain was impatient. “Accomplish the mission?” he asked. “Yes, sir, there were eight guards, not seven.” “You didn’t take them?” “No, sir.” The captain’s eyes went quickly to the long,
thin knife at the man’s belt, and the commando nervously, almost
apologetically, fingered its steel hilt. “What have they gone back for?” “The lady’s trunk, sir. We couldn’t get it in
the boat. There wasn’t room with the rest of us. They’ve gone back for her
trunk. Quite a large one. Old-fashioned kind with a hump on it, you know.” The captain put his hands on his hips and
studied the little man. “Sir?” the commando began. “Yes, I know. And I wish it was beer, but there
isn’t any.” He called softly into the companionway, “Joel,
oh, Joel, get some water on. There’ll be five teas wanted in a moment.” CAPRISOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
18, 1943—The day after the island of Capri was taken and before any of the
admirals and generals had found it necessary to inspect the defenses of its
rocky cliffs and hazardous wine cellars a group of sailors from a destroyer in
the harbor strolled along one of the beautiful tree-lined paths. They were
inspecting defenses too, the island’s and their own, and they found their own
lacking in initiative. The hill was steep and there were gardens above and
below the path. As they strolled along a shrill little voice
came from under a grape arbor below the way. “I say,” said the voice. The naval men looked over the low wall and saw
a tiny old woman—a little bit of a woman—dressed in black, who came scrambling
from under the grapevines and climbed up the steps like a puppy. She was
breathless. “I hope you won’t mind,” she panted. “It was
very good to hear English spoken. I am English, you know.” She paused to let this tremendous fact sink in.
She was dressed in decent and aging black. She never had made the slightest
concession to Italy. Her costume would have done her honor and protected her
from scandal in Finchley. Her eyes danced with pleasure, wise, small,
humorous eyes. “They speak Italian here,” she said brightly, and it was obvious
that she did not if she could help it. “And the Germans came,” she said, “and I
haven’t heard much English. That is why I should like just to hear you talk. I
like Americans,” she explained, and you could see that she was willing to take
any kind of criticism for this attitude. “I haven’t heard any English. The
Germans came, but I said that, didn’t I? Well, anyway, the war came and I
couldn’t get out, and that is three years, isn’t it? And do you know it has
been a year since I have had a cup of tea, over a year—you will hardly believe
that.” The communications officer said, “We have tea
aboard. I could bring you a packet this afternoon.” The little woman danced from one foot to the
other like a child. “N-o-o-o,” she said excitedly. “Why—what fun, what fun.” Signals said, “Is there anything else you need,
because maybe I could bring that to you too?” For a moment the old bright eyes surveyed him,
measuring him. “You couldn’t—” she began, and paused. “You couldn’t bring a
little pat of—butter?” “Sure I could,” said Signals. “N-o-o-o,” she cried, and she began to hop like
a child at hopscotch. She held up a finger. “If you’ll bring me a little pat of
butter I will make some scones, real scones, and we’ll have a party. Won’t that
be fun? Won’t that be fun?” She danced with excitement. “Imagine,” she
said. “I’ll bring it this afternoon,” said Signals. “You see, I was caught here and then the
Germans came. They didn’t do me really any harm. They were just here,” she said
seriously. “All of my people are in Australia. I have no family in England any
more.” Her old eyes became sad without any transition. “I don’t know how they
are,” she said. “I have had two letters in three years. It takes nearly a year
to get a letter.” Signals said, “If you will write a letter I’ll
pick it up when I bring the butter and tea and will mail it at the first port.” She looked at him sternly. “And how long will
that take to get to Australia?” she demanded. “Oh, I don’t know. A few weeks.” “N-o-o-o,” she cried, and she began to dance
again, little dainty dancing steps, with her arms held slightly out from her
sides and her wrists bent down. Her shrill little bird voice laughed and her
pale old eyes were wet. “Why,” she cried. “Why, that will be more fun than
tea.” SEA WARFARESOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
19, 1943—The plans for Task Force X were nearly complete. The officers had
coffee in a restaurant in a North African city. The tall, nervous one, a
lieutenant commander and a student of mines—contact, magnetic, and those
vibration mines which react to the engine of a ship—leaned over the table. “I conceive naval warfare to be much like chamber
music,” he said. “Thirty-caliber machine guns, those are the violins, the
fifties are the violas, six-inch guns are perfect cellos.” He looked a little sad. “I’ve never had
sixteen-inch guns to compose with. I have never had any bass.” He leaned back
in his chair. “The composition—the tactics of chamber music—are much the same
as a well-conceived and planned naval engagement. Destroyers out, why, that
will be the statement of theme, the screening attack, and all preparing for the
great statement of the battleships.” He leaned back farther and tipped his
chair against the wall and hooked his heels over the lower rung. A lieutenant (j.g.) laughed. “He always talks
like that. If he didn’t know so much about mines we would think he was crazy.” “You haven’t been in battle, in a good naval
engagement, and you don’t know anything about chamber music,” said the
lieutenant commander. “I’ll show you something tonight if you’ll go with me.” The jeep moved through the blackout. The
streets of the city were fined with military trucks and heavy equipment, all
moving toward the harbor where the ships were loading for Italy. The jeep,
running counter to the traffic, climbed the hill and went over the ridge and
into the valley on the other side, into a valley which had at one time been a
place of vineyards and small country houses. But now it was a vast storage
ground for shells and trucks and tanks, lined and stacked and parked, waiting
to get aboard the ships for Italy. The moon lighted the masses of material getting
ready for war. “Where are you taking us?” the lieutenant
asked. “You’ll see. Just be patient.” The jeep pulled up to a very white wall that
extended off into the distance and disappeared into the pearly in-definiteness
of the moonlight. A high gate of iron bars and spikes opened in the wall. The
lieutenant commander went to the gate and pulled a rope that hung there, and a
small bell called softly. In a moment a white-robed figure appeared at the
gate, a tall man with a long, dark beard. “Yes?” he asked softly. “May we come in?” the lieutenant commander
asked. “May we come in for evensong?” “Yes. of course,” the brother said. He pulled
at one side of the gate and the hinges cried a little. Inside the wall was a lovely garden in the
moonlight. No war material at all. Everything was cut out except flowers and
the little sound of running water and the thick outline of a sturdy church
against a luminous sky. The lieutenant (j.g.) said, “You speak very good
English.” “I should,” said the brother. “I was born in
Massachusetts.” “American?” “We come from all over. We have Germans and
French, and even a Chinese. Some Russians, too.” The party moved slowly up the path and came to
the little fountain which made the dripping sound and put a cool emphasis on a
hot night. “The song has already started,” the brother said. “Walk quietly.” The way went among the walls of flowering
shrubs and then up two outside steps, and then into a dark hallway, and finally
through an entrance into a place that was familiar and strange. Over the rail
and below was the body of the church, only you could not see it, for only one
candle was burning, and it merely suggested the size and height. It picked out
a corner and an arch and a point of gold, and your mind filled in the rest.
Lined below, just visible, were the rows of the white brothers. And then their
voices came softly and swelling, singing the ancient music, the disembodied and
unimpassioned music, of which Mozart said he would rather have written one
chant than all his own. The evensong rose higher and higher, and it was rather
like the dimness of the arched roof overhead. The great, vague room swelled and
pulsed with the sound, and then it died and one single voice took it up and the
others joined in and the candle flame darted about on its wick. The sound of the trucks and the half-tracks and
the pound of the tanks came vaguely from the distance and the music rose to a
high note and stopped. The lines of white figures filed slowly out and a hand
came into the candlelight and pinched out the flame. The jeep went back into the city, and this time
it went very slowly because it was caught between a weapons carrier and a troop
truck loaded with sleepy, upright soldiers who swayed when the truck struck a
rough stretch of street. The lieutenant (j.g.) was very quiet. Some
paradox worried him. He said, “The change from one thing to another was too
quick. There was no time to get used to it. You should have time to get used to
things like that.” “There was actually no change,” the lieutenant
commander said. “I’ve always thought that naval warfare was composed like
chamber music. There wasn’t any change. You just saw two sides of the same
thing. You can’t make islands of experiences. They relate just exactly as the
strings relate in a quartet. Maybe you’ll see in a day or two when we get into
action. You haven’t been in action, have you?” THE WORRIED BARTENDERSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
20, 1943—When our small American force had captured the island of Capri
with no resistance whatsoever on its part or on ours, it was only natural that sooner
or later we should meet Luigi the bartender. Luigi had kept warm during the
whole war a love of Americans based, he freely admitted, on a memory of tips in
the nicer days when American tourists came to bathe in the Blue Grotto and the
pink wine. When sailors and officers from the little force inspected the
defenses of Luigi’s bar and found them formidable. Luigi was cordial but sad. He
spoke the English we know, the English of the banana pushcarts and the
pizzerias, of the spaghetti joints and grind organs. Luigi’s dialect sounded like
home. Luigi was gay but sad. His joy had a habit of
falling off in the middle and dissipating. One afternoon, after each one of us
had tried to remember a man named Giuseppe Marinari, of Gary, Indiana, who was
Luigi’s third cousin, we inquired into his sadness. And only then did his
trouble come out with a rush. It seemed that Luigi had a daughter and, more
than that, he had an incipient grandchild. But this daughter and this
expectation were across the little stretch of water in Castellammare. And what
was worse, the Germans were moving up on Castellammare and we were not there in
enough force either to repel or to intercept them. Consequently it seemed that
Luigi’s daughter was very likely to have her child in a shell hole, illuminated
by star shells and parachute flares and possibly speeded up by bomb bursts.
Luigi was worried and upset because, he explained, it was not as though he had
other daughters or grandchildren. This was his sole chick, due to some
misfortune or deformity, the reason for which was known only to God. And as
Luigi poured out his story he also poured out Scotch whisky that had been
buried in the earth in back of his bar ever since the war started. Going back to the ship, the little group could
not lose the sadness that Luigi had planted in it. “How would you like it to
happen to your family?” Lieutenant Blank said. “Why, you can look across to
Castellammare.” On this basis the group visited the commodore
in the wardroom of his flagship. They told their story and the commodore looked
gravely over his coffee cup at them. And his very calm blue eyes got bright
with amusement. “What do you want me to do,” he asked, “attack Castellammare?” “No, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank. “But we have
six captured Italian MS boats. How would it be if we took one of them and just
went over and got her? It would only take an hour or less.” “And suppose you lost the boat and got yourself
killed?” “We wouldn’t do that, sir. We would just run
over and get her. We could do it in practically a few minutes.” The commodore said, “I can’t permit it. The
thing is out of the question. The thing is silly. We’re trying to run a war,
not a maternity hospital. And besides, I have work for you to do. You can’t go
running about like this.” “Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank. “These are your orders,” said the commodore.
“You are to take one of the MS boats and patrol the coast of the mainland,
particularly in the area about Castellammare. You will report the presence of
any German shipping there and if you see any hostile craft you will report it
and engage it. It may be necessary for you to go pretty far inshore to carry
out these orders. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank, “but I sure
wish we could have got that girl off.” “This is no time for sentiment,” the commodore
said. The thing was very quick. It required only to
pull up to the little dock at the little town and to ask for Luigi’s daughter.
In ten minutes she was at the dock carrying a bundle of clothing and, in our
estimation, she was a little closer than even Luigi suspected. And then the
Isotta-Fraschini engines of the MS boat purred and the white wake spread away
from the boat and she cut through the water back to Capri, for MS boats do not
ride on top of the water, they knife through it. The rest was very silly. Luigi was at the
waterfront and he cried and his daughter cried and about a thousand Caprianos
cried and the sound of kissing was deafening and a lot of sailors looked gruff
and a kind of triumphant procession went up the hill on the funicular railway
and there was something in the nature of a party at Luigi’s bar. The child, no
matter what its sex, is going to have Lieutenant Blank’s first name, and not
only Luigi but all Luigi’s relatives are going to remember all of us in their
prayers for hundreds of years to come. So much for the assurances. But the next
morning a party of five went up on the hill to get haircuts. We were sitting reading
copies of The London Pictorial for 1937 and waiting for the one barber
chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a
little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in
the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi
appeared with his little tray. It was a pretty nice day. THE CAMERA MAKES SOLDIERSSOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October
21, 1943—I suppose that there is no weapon which so slyly and surely
attacks the souls of men as a moving-picture camera does. Men who are disgusted
or hurt or just plain ignorant react to a Bell & Howell Eyemo as a frog
does to a hot rock. One of our best sports writers suggested one time that the
best way to get touchdowns in football was to mount a newsreel camera between
the goal posts. It is a secret weapon which dissects people and brings out the
curious childish ego that everyone has and lays it spread out thick on the
surface. Recently in Africa and Sicily and Italy we (not
editorial we, but a cameraman and I) were working on a technical picture for
the Army and there we discovered that the same force that operates at Long
Island garden parties and at tennis matches also works on a battle line. It
worked everywhere. Weary troops straightened up and marched stiffly and some of
them tried to hog the camera and some of them looked fierce and soldierly. All
shoulders went back and steps quickened. The thinly covered actor in everyone
came out. A line of Army stevedores on a dock in a North African port suddenly,
on seeing the camera, began to pass boxes of C-rations with a speed and rhythm
which has probably never been duplicated in Army history. Of course the moment
the camera was moved they went back to a much more sensible, goldbricking pace,
but for the few feet of film we have, the boxes shot by and piled up in a
mountain out of camera range. The impact of the camera is by no means limited
to the Americans. Our picture had to do with all kinds of work and all kinds of
men. One day we set up on a barge where a number of Arabs were employed to
unload cargo and, incidentally, were doing the finest bit of sleepwalking I
have ever seen. Each Arab regarded each box as a personality he didn’t like,
touched with reluctance, and got rid of with relief. His repugnance, however,
did not make him carry it to its destination with any speed that required
streamlining. With these people we did not find any speedup when the camera
was produced. The moment it began to turn, every Arab stood up grandly and
presented his profile and looked sternly toward Mecca. Time and time again we
tried to catch them in what is called a natural pose, not of work, because that
would be a contradiction in terms, but just relaxed and looking Arab. But
either they had seen too many Hollywood films of Valentino as an Arab, or a
Valentino had studied Arabs under the impact of the camera. We never caught
them any other way except looking sternly offstage, always in profile and
always noble. We had wanted to get them relaxed because I suppose Arabs have as
few noble moments as anyone in the world. Bushmen may compete with them in this
respect but I doubt it. And they could not be fooled. They knew when the camera
was turning and when it wasn’t. They were as highly trained in stealing scenes
from each other as dress extras in Hollywood. Finally we gave up. They will
continue noble as far as we are concerned. We will perpetuate this myth of the
noble Arab. The moment we stopped shooting they collapsed into natural Arabs,
but we never got it on film. The camera works everywhere. There is no
ferocity like that on the face of a quarterback who is running, not at an
opponent but at newsreel coverage on a tripod. And this may all be egotism, but
there was one example of something that seemed to be much more than this. One
day we set up the camera to photograph the discharge of the cargo of a hospital
ship which had been loaded in Sicily. The side doors of the ship were opened
and the wooden platform was extended. The lines of ambulances were drawn up on
the pier, and then the stretcher-bearers came down in a steady line with the
wounded men sitting and lying and huddled and stretched out in positions indicated
by the nature of their wounds. Some of them were sick with pain, were gray with
pain, and some were only slightly hurt so that their eyes were clear. And not
one single man as he passed the camera failed to respond to it. Everyone gave
it either a smile or a little nod. Some saluted it gravely. The rigid features
changed and the eyes brightened, and if an arm could move it moved in greeting.
I think this was not egotism. I think these men, each one of them, had a quick
thought. “Someone at home will see this picture. I must appear less badly hurt
than I am. Otherwise they might worry.” I think those tired smiles were a great
hunk of consideration and courage. THE STORY OF AN ELFMonday, November 1, 1943—This story
could not be written if there were not witnesses—not vague unknown men, but
Quentin Reynolds and H. R. Knickerbocker and Clark Lee and Jack Belden, who was
hurt at Salerno, and John Lardner and a number of others who will come
clamoring forward if anyone doubts the facts here to be presented. The thing began when a British consul met
Quentin Reynolds in the hall of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers. The consul was a
small, innocent, well-mannered man who liked to think of the British and
Americans as allies and who was willing to make amicable gestures. In good
faith he asked Reynolds where he was staying and in equal good faith Reynolds
replied that he had not yet been billeted. “There’s an extra bed in my room,” the consul
said. “You’re welcome to it if you like.” That was the beginning, and what happened was
nobody’s fault. It was just one of those accidents. The consul had a nice room
with a balcony that overlooked the harbor and from which you could watch air
raids. It wasn’t Reynolds’ fault. He accepted hospitality for himself, not for
the nine other war correspondents who moved in with him. Nine is only a working
number. Sometimes there were as many as eighteen. They slept on the floor, on
the balcony, in the bathroom, and some even slept in the hall outside the door
of Room 140, Alletti Hotel, Algiers. It was generally agreed that the consul should
have his own bed, that is, if he kept it. But let him get up to go to the
bathroom and he returned to find Knickerbocker or Lee or Belden, or all three,
in it. Another thing bothered the consul a little. Correspondents don’t sleep
much at night. They talked and argued and sang so that the poor consul didn’t
get much rest. There was too much going on in his room. He had to work in the
daytime, and he got very little sleep at night. Toward the end of the week he
took to creeping back in the middle of the afternoon for a nap. He couldn’t get
his bed then. Someone always had it. But at three in the afternoon it was
usually quiet enough so that he could curl up on the floor and get a little
rest. The foregoing is not the unbelievable
part—quite the contrary. It is what follows that will require witnesses. It was
during one of the all-night discussions of things in general that someone,
perhaps Clark Lee, perhaps Dour Jack Belden, suggested that we were getting
very tired of Algerian wine and wouldn’t it be nice if we had some Scotch. From
that point on this is our story and we intend to stick to it. Someone must have rubbed something, a ring or a
lamp or perhaps the utterly exhausted British consul. At any rate, there was a
puff of blue smoke and standing in the room was a small man with pointed ears
and a very jolly stomach. He wore a suit of green leather and his cap and the
toes of his shoes ended in sharp points and they were green too. “Saints of Galway,” said Reynolds. “Do you see
what I see?” “Yes,” said Clark Lee, “Well, do you believe it?” “No,” said Lee, who is after all a realist and
was at Corregidor. Jack Belden has lived in China for many years
and he knows about such things. “Who are you?” he asked sternly. “I’m little Charley Lytle,” the elf said. “Well, what do you want, popping in on us?”
Belden cried. The British consul groaned and turned over and
pulled the covers over his head. Knickerbocker has since admitted that his
first impulse was to kill the elf and stuff him to go beside the sailfish in
his den. In fact, he was creeping up when Charley Lytle held up his hand. “When war broke out I tried to enlist,” he
said. “But I was rejected on political grounds. It isn’t that I have any
politics,” he explained. “But the Army’s position is that if I did have, heaven
knows what they would be. There hasn’t been a Republican leprechaun since
Coolidge. So I was rejected pending the formation of an Elves-in-Exile
Battalion. I decided then that I would just make people happy, soldiers and war
correspondents and things like that.” Reynolds’ eyes narrowed dangerously. He is very
loyal. “Are you insinuating that we aren’t happy?” he gritted. “That my friends
aren’t happy?” “I’m not happy,” said the British consul, but
no one paid any attention to him. Little Charley Lytle said, “I heard some
mention made of Scotch whisky. Now it just happens that I have—” “How much?” said Clark Lee, who is a realist. “Why, all you want.” “I mean how much money?” Lee demanded. “You don’t understand,” said little Charley.
“There is no money involved. It is my contribution to the war—I believe you
call it effort.” “I’m going to kill him,” cried Knickerbocker.
“Nobody can sneer at my war and get away with it.” Reynolds said, “Could we get a case?” “Surely,” said little Charley. “Three cases?” “Certainly.” Lee broke in. “Now don’t you strain him. You
don’t know what his breaking point is.” “When can you deliver?” Reynolds asked. Instead of answering, little Charley Lytle made
a dramatic and slightly ribald gesture. There was one puff of smoke and he had
disappeared. There followed three small explosions, like a series of tiny depth
charges, and on the floor of Room 140 of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers lay three
cases of Haig and Haig Pinch Bottle, ringed with the hot and incredulous eyes
of a platoon of thirsty correspondents. Reynolds breathed heavily the way a man does
when he has a stroke. “A miracle!” he whispered. “A miracle straight out of the
middle ages or Mary Roberts Rinehart.” Dour Jack Belden has lived a long time in
China. On top of a basic pessimism, he has seen everything and is difficult to
impress. His eyes now wandered out the arched window to the sweltering streets
and the steaming harbor below. “It’s a medium good trick,” he said. “But it’s a
cold-weather trick. I’d like to give him a real test.” He ignored the growl of
growing rage from his peers. “If this so-called Elf could produce a bottle of
say La Batt’s Pale India Ale on a day like this, I’d say he was a commer—” He
was interrupted by a slight fall of snow from the hot and fly-specked ceiling.
Our eyes followed the lazy white flakes to the floor, where they fell on a box
of slim-necked bottles. The snow swirled and spelled out Courtesy of Canada
in the air. I think Jack Belden went too far. He said
lazily, “But is it cold?” Reynolds flung himself forward and touched the
neck of a bottle. “Colder than a (two words deleted by censor),” he said. That night there was an air raid, and even the
British consul enjoyed it. And anyone who doesn’t believe this story can ask
any of the people involved, even dour Jack Belden. MAGIC PIECESNovember 3, 1943—A great many soldiers
carry with them some small article, some touchstone or lucky piece or symbol
which, if they are lucky in battle, takes on an ever-increasing importance. And
being lucky in battle means simply not being hurt. The most obvious magic
amulets, of course, are the rabbits’ feet on sale in nearly all gift stores.
St. Christopher medals are carried by Catholics and non-Catholics alike and in
many cases are not considered as religious symbols at all, but as simple lucky
pieces. A novelty company in America has brought out a
Testament bound in steel covers to be carried in the shirt pocket over the
heart, a gruesome little piece of expediency which has faith in neither the
metal nor the Testament but hopes that a combination may work. Many of these
have been sold to parents of soldiers, but I have never seen one carried. That
particular pocket is for cigarettes and those soldiers who carry Testaments, as
many do, carry them in their pants pockets, and they are never considered as
lucky pieces. The magic articles are of all kinds. There will
be a smooth stone, an odd-shaped piece of metal, small photographs encased in
cellophane. Many soldiers consider pictures of their wives or parents to be
almost protectors from danger. One soldier had removed the handles from his
Colt .45 and had carved new ones out of Plexiglas from a wrecked airplane. Then
he had installed photographs of his children under the Plexiglas so that his
children looked out of the handles of his pistol. Sometimes coins are considered lucky and rings
and pins, usually articles which take their quality from some intimacy with
people at home, a gift or the symbol of some old emotional experience. One man
carries a locket his dead wife wore as a child and another a string of amber
beads his mother once made him wear to ward off colds. The beads now ward off
danger. It is interesting that, as time in action goes
on, these magics not only become more valuable and dear but become more secret
also. And many men make up small rituals to cause their amulets to become
active. A smooth stone may be rubbed when the tracers are cutting lines about a
man’s head. One sergeant holds an Indian-head penny in the palm of his left
hand and against the stock of his rifle when he fires. He is just about
convinced that he cannot miss if he does this. The employment of this kind of
magic is much more widespread than is generally known. As time goes on, and dangers multiply and
perhaps there is a narrow escape or so, the amulet not only takes on an
increasing importance but actually achieves a kind of personality. It becomes a
thing to talk to and rely on. One such lucky piece is a small wooden pig only
about an inch long. Its owner, after having tested it over a period of time and
in one or two tight places, believes that this little wooden pig can accomplish
remarkable things. Thus, in a bombing, he held the pig in his hand and said,
“Pig, this one is not for us.” And in a shelling, he said, “Pig, you know that
the one that gets me, gets you.” But in addition to simply keeping its owner
safe from harm, this pig has been known to raise a fog, smooth out a high sea, procure
a beefsteak in a restaurant which had not had one for weeks. It is rumored
further that this pig in the hands of a previous owner has commuted an execution,
cured assorted cases of illness, and been the direct cause of at least one
considerable fortune. This pig’s owner would not part with him for anything. The association between a man and his amulet
becomes not only very strong but very private. This is partly a fear of being
laughed at, but also a feeling grows that to tell about it is to rob it of some
of its powers. Also there is the feeling that the magic must not be called on
too often. The virtue of the piece is not inexhaustible. It can run down,
therefore it is better to use it sparingly and only to call on it when the need
is great. Novelty companies have taken advantage of this
almost universal urge toward magic. They turn out lucky rings by the thousands
and coins and little figures, but these have never taken hold the way the
associational gadgets do. Whatever the cause of this reliance on magic
amulets, in wartime it is so. And the practice is by no means limited to
ignorant or superstitious men. It would seem that in times of great danger and
great emotional tumult a man has to reach outside himself for help and comfort,
and has to have some supra-personal symbol to hold to. It can be anything at
all, an old umbrella handle or a religious symbol, but he has to have it.
There are times in war when the sharpest emotion is not fear, but loneliness
and littleness. And it is during these times that the smooth stone or the
Indian-head penny or the wooden pig are not only desirable but essential.
Whatever atavism may call them up, they appear and they seem to fill a need.
The dark world is not far from us—from any of us. SYMPTOMSNovember 5, 1943—During the years
between the last war and this one, I was always puzzled by the reticence of
ex-soldiers about their experiences in battle. If they had been reticent men it
would have been different, but some of them were talkers and some were even
boasters. They would discuss their experiences right up to the time of battle
and then suddenly they wouldn’t talk any more. This was considered heroic in
them. It was thought that what they had seen or done was so horrible that they
didn’t want to bring it back to haunt them or their listeners. But many of
these men had no such consideration in any other field. Only recently have I found what seems to be a
reasonable explanation, and the answer is simple. They did not and do not
remember—and the worse the battle was, the less they remember. In all kinds of combat the whole body is
battered by emotion. The ductless glands pour their fluids into the system to
make it able to stand up to the great demand on it. Fear and ferocity are
products of the same fluid. Fatigue toxins poison the system. Hunger followed
by wolfed food distorts the metabolic pattern already distorted by the
adrenalin and fatigue. The body and the mind so disturbed are really ill and
fevered. But in addition to these ills, which come from the inside of a man and
are given him so that he can temporarily withstand pressures beyond his
ordinary ability, there is the further stress of explosion. Under extended bombardment or bombing the nerve
ends are literally beaten. The ear drums are tortured by blast and the eyes
ache from the constant hammering. This is how you feel after a few days of
constant firing. Your skin feels thick and insensitive. There is a salty taste
in your mouth. A hard, painful knot is in your stomach where the food is
undigested. Your eyes do not pick up much detail and the sharp outlines of objects
are slightly blurred. Everything looks a little unreal. When you walk, your
feet hardly seem to touch the ground and there is a floaty feeling all over
your body. Even the time sense seems to be changed. Men who are really moving
at a normal pace seem to take forever to pass a given point. And when you move
it seems to you that you are very much slowed down, although actually you are
probably moving more quickly than you normally do. Under the blast your eyeballs are so beaten
that the earth and the air seems to shudder. At first your ears hurt, but then
they become dull and all your other senses become dull, too. There are
exceptions, of course. Some men cannot protect themselves this way and they
break, and they are probably the ones we call shell-shocks cases. In the dullness all kinds of emphases change.
Even the instinct for self-preservation is dulled so that a man may do things
which are called heroic when actually his whole fabric of reactions is changed.
The whole world becomes unreal. You laugh at things which are not ordinarily
funny and you become enraged at trifles. During this time a kind man is capable
of great cruelties and a timid man of great bravery, and nearly all men have
resistance to stresses beyond their ordinary ability. Then sleep can come without warning and like a
drug. Gradually your whole body seems to be packed in cotton. All the main
nerve trunks are deadened, and out of the battered cortex curious dreamlike
thoughts emerge. It is at this time that many men see visions. The eyes fasten
on a cloud and the tired brain makes a face of it, or an angel or a demon. And
out of the hammered brain strange memories are jolted loose, scenes and words
and people forgotten, but stored in the back of the brain. These may not be
important things, but they come back with startling clarity into the awareness
that is turning away from reality. And these memories are almost visions. And then it is over. You can’t hear, but there
is a rushing sound in your ears. And you want sleep more than anything, but
when you do sleep you are dream-ridden, your mind is uneasy and crowded with
figures. The anesthesia your body has given you to protect you is beginning to
wear off, and, as with most anesthesia, it is a little painful. And when you wake up and think back to the
things that happened they are already becoming dreamlike. Then it is not
unusual that you are frightened and ill. You try to remember what it was like,
and you can’t quite manage it. The outlines in your memory are vague. The next
day the memory slips farther, until very little is left at all. A woman is said
to feel the same way when she tries to remember what childbirth was like. And
fever leaves this same kind of vagueness on the mind. Perhaps all experience which
is beyond bearing is that way. The system provides the shield and then removes
the memory, so that a woman can have another child and a man can go into combat
again. It slips away so fast. Unless you made notes on
the spot you could not remember how you felt or the way things looked. Men in
prolonged battle are not normal men. And when afterward they seem to be
reticent—perhaps they don’t remember very well. THE PLYWOOD NAVYNovember 15, 1943—The orders were
simple. The naval task force was to destroy or drive German shipping out of the
sea in the whole area north of Rome. German convoys were moving out of various
ports, possibly evacuating heavy equipment from Italy to the south of France.
The task force was ordered to break up this traffic. It is not permitted to say what units comprised
the force but a part of it at least was a group of torpedo boats, some British
MTBs and some American PTs. The British were not quite so fast as the Americans
but they were more heavily armed. The afternoon before the attack was spent in
putting the boats ready. The gunners had their guns apart, oiling and scrubbing
the salt spray from the working parts. The guns on the little boats must be
worked on all the time. Even the cartridge cases turn green from the constant
splashing with salt water. The American PTs are wet devils. Any speed of any
kind of sea bring green water over the bow. The men dress in rubber clothes and
rubber hoods and even then they do not stay dry. In the afternoon the torpedoes were inspected
and the fuel tanks filled to the limit. The sea was very blue and very calm.
During the whole first two weeks of the attack against Italy the sea was calm
as a lake, and that particular sea can be very bad. The British officers and men were bearded with
fine great brushes which projected forward from constant brushing outward with
the hands. This gives a pugnacious look to a man’s face. A few American faces
were bearded too, but the tradition is not set with our men. From the little island harbor, the coast of
Italy was visible in the afternoon—the steep hills terraced for vines and lemon
trees and the mountains rising to bare rocky ridges behind. Vesuvius was
smoking in the background, a high feather of smoke. On the quay, surrendered Italian carabinieri
stood looking at the “Plywood Navy,” which is what the crews call the torpedo
boats. As the sun went down the work was finished and
dinner was started in the tiny galleys of the Plywood Navy. The force was to
sail at dark. Long before dark the moon was up. It would set after two in the
morning and it was planned to be on the ground and ready for attack as soon as
the moon had set. This was a deadly swarm that prepared to go. In its combined
torpedo tubes it carried the force to sink a navy. The little ships can dodge
in close and, when the going is rough, they can scatter and run like quail. And
they can turn and twist so fast and travel at such speed that they are
impossible to catch and very hard to hit. Just at dusk the motors burst into roars one at
a time and then settled down to their throbbing beat. These motors can be
quieted so that they make very little noise, but in ordinary running they sound
like airplanes. The moonlit night came, and the little boats
moved out from their berths, and once clear of the breakwater they formed in
three lines and settled down to traveling speed. In the moonlight their white
wakes shone, and each boat ran over the wake of the boat ahead, and the beat of
their motors was deep. On the decks the men had already put on their rubber
pants and their rubber coats and the peaked rubber hoods. In the turrets the
men sat at their machine guns and waited. On 412 the master and his First stood on the
little bridge. The spray came over the bow in long, swishing spurts as the PT
put her nose down into the easy swells and the light wind picked up the splash.
Their faces were dripping. Now and then the First stepped the three steps down
to the tiny chart room where a hooded light glimmered on the chart. (One line
deleted by censor.) The First checked the course and put his head through and
climbed back to the bridge. A call came from aft—“Aircraft at nine o’clock!” The men at the turrets and at the after gun
swung their weapons sharp to the left and elevated the muzzles, and the gunners
peered uneasily into the milky moonlit sky. Unless they come out of the moon,
and they never do, they are very hard to see. But above the engines of the boat
could be heard the hum of aircraft engines. “Ours or theirs?” the First asked. “Ours have orders not to come close. It must be
theirs,” the master said. Then off to the port side in the milky sky there was
the dark shape of a plane and not flying very high. The gunners stirred and
followed the shape with the muzzles. It was too far off to fire. The master
picked up his megaphone and called, “He’ll come in from the side if he’s
coming. Watch for him.” The drone of the plane disappeared. “Maybe he didn’t see us,” the First said. “With our wake? Sure he saw us. Maybe he was
one of ours.” He must have cut his motors. Suddenly he is
overhead and his bomb lands and explodes just after he has passed over. The
roar of the explosion and the battering of the machine guns come at once. A
wall of spray comes over the side from the explosion, and the boat seems to
leap out of the sea. The lines of the tracers reach for the
disappearing plane and the lines seem to curve the way the stream from a hose
does when you move the hose. Then the guns are silent. The master calls, “Watch
out for him. He may be back. Watch for him from the same side.” The gunners
obediently swing their guns about. This time he didn’t cut his motors. Maybe he
needed altitude. You could hear him coming. The guns started on him before he
was overhead and the curving lines of tracers followed him over and each line
was a little bit behind him. And then one line jumped ahead. A little blue
light showed on him then. For a moment he seemed to hover and then he fell, end
over end, but slowly, and the blue light on him got larger and larger as he
came down. The rest of the guns were after him as he came down. He landed about
five hundred yards away and the moment he struck the water he broke into a
great yellow flame, and then a second later he exploded with a dull boom and
the fire was sucked down under the sea and he was gone. “He must have been crazy,” the captain said,
“to come in like that. Who got him?” No one answered. The captain called to the
port turret, “Did you get him, Ernest?” “Yes, sir,” said Ernest. “I think so.” “Good shooting,” said the captain. November 19, 1943—Torpedo boat 412
slipped southward. The moon seemed to hang in the sky and to have given up the
idea of ever setting. Actually it was time in the mind that was slowed down.
The muffles were still on the engines but the boat picked up a little speed,
not the great roaring rush of the wide-open PT but a steady drumming that threw
out a curving V of wake and boiled the water a little under the fantail. The
captain said, “Keep your eyes peeled for the others. We don’t want our own
people to smack us.” He went down into the little chart room again and studied
his charts. Then he poked his head up and spoke to his First. “A port isn’t far
off now,” he said. “Let’s get there. We might catch a convoy.” On top of his
words there came a distant drumming of engines. The First cut his motors still further to
listen, and the speed of the 412 dropped. “I guess those are ours,” he said. The captain cocked his head a little.
“Something wrong.” he said. “Doesn’t sound right.” And he cocked his head on
the other side, like a listening spaniel. “Ever heard an E-boat?” he asked. “No, I haven’t. You know damn well I haven’t.” “Neither have I,” said the captain, “but those
don’t sound like PTs or MTBs to me.” He peered over the rail. The signalman had
his blinker ready to make a recognition signal. The captain said quickly,
“Kill the motor.” Through the milky light the E-boats came. They seemed to grow
up out of the night, the misty shapes of them high-powered and unmistakable.
The 412 drifted easily in the water. The captain said hoarsely to the signalman.
“Don’t signal, for God’s sake!” He was silent for a moment and there seemed to
be E-boats all around. “Listen,” the captain said. ‘We’ve maybe got to make a
crash run. I don’t know when.” (Ten lines deleted by censor.) The E-boats moved slowly past. They must have
seen the 412 lying uneasily in the moonlight. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them
that a hostile craft would lie so still so near to their guns. The breathing of
the crew was almost audible. The E-boats were nearly past when one of them,
just on the chance, blinked. (One line deleted by censor.) The gunners brought
down their barrels. The engines of the 412 roared and the boat leaped in the
water. She stood up on her own crest and tore away. (One line deleted by
censor.) Her wake in the last of the moonlight was creamy behind her. She
whipped over the water like a gull. But the E-boats did not fire on her. They
continued placidly on their way. Five minutes of the run, and the First
throttled down and the 412 settled back into the water and leveled out and the
sound of her motors died away. “God Almighty,” the captain said. And he
whistled to himself. “That was close.” (Three lines deleted by censor.) “Let’s
lie here and get our breath. That was too close.” The moon lay close to the water at last. In a
few minutes it would be dark, deliciously dark, safe and dark. Then men stirred
about nervously on the silent boat. And then across the moon a dark shape moved and
then another. “Good God,” the captain said, “there’s a convoy. That’s what the
E-boats were for.” A large dark hull moved across the moon. “We’ve got to get
to them,” the captain said excitedly. “They’ll get us sure,” said the first. “No they won’t.” (Three lines deleted by
censor.) He called his orders softly. The torpedo men moved
to their places. The 412 turned silently and slipped toward the passing
convoy. There seemed to be ships of all sizes, and the 412 could see them
against the sinking moon and they could not see the 412. “That big one,” the
captain said. “She must be at least five thousand tons.” He issued his orders
and took the wheels himself. Then he swung the boat and called softly, “Fire!”
There was a sharp explosive whisk of sound and a splash, and the torpedo was
away. He swung again and fired another. And his mouth moved as though he were
counting. Then without warning the sea and the sky tore
to pieces in a vomit of light and a moment later the 412 nearly jumped out of
the water. “Run,” the captain shouted. “Run!” And the 412 leaped up on its
fantail again and pushed its bow into the air. The explosion was gone almost the moment it had
started. There wasn’t much of any fire. It just subsided and the water closed
over it. “Ammunition,” the captain shouted. “Ammunition
or high-test gasoline.” But the rest of the fleet was not silent. The
tracers reached out for the sea, and the rockets, even the flak rockets. The
crossfire reached to sea and combed the sea and searched the sea. (One line
deleted by censor.) Some time later the captain touched his First’s arm and the
First pulled down the boat again. In the distance, as the moon went down, the
E-boats were probably beating the ocean looking for the 412 or the submarine or
whatever had hit their ship. But the 412 had got away. (One line deleted by
censor.) The pitch blackness lay on the water after the moon had gone. Ocean
and land and boat were blotted out. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said the
captain. “Let’s get on back.” A DESTROYERNovember 24, 1943—A destroyer is a
lovely ship, probably the nicest fighting ship of all. Battleships are a little
like steel cities or great factories of destruction. Aircraft carriers are
floating flying fields. Even cruisers are big pieces of machinery, but a
destroyer is all boat. In the beautiful clean lines of her, in her speed and
roughness, in her curious gallantry, she is completely a ship, in the old
sense. For one thing, a destroyer is small enough so
that her captain knows his whole crew personally, knows all about each one as a
person, his first name and his children and the trouble he has been in and is
capable of getting into. There is an ease on a destroyer that is good and a
good relationship among the men. Then if she has a good captain you have
something really worth serving on. The battleships are held back for a killing
blow, and such a blow sometimes happens only once in a war. The cruisers go in
second, but the destroyers work all the time. They are probably the busiest
ships of a fleet. In a major engagement, they do the scouting and make the
first contact. They convoy, they run to every fight. Wherever there is a mess
the destroyers run first. They are not lordly like the battleships, nor
episcopal like the cruisers. Most of all they are ships and the men who work
them are seamen. In rough weather they are rough, honestly and violently rough. A destroyerman is never bored in wartime, for a
destroyer is a seaman’s ship. She can get under way at the drop of a hat. The
water under fantail boils like a Niagara. She will go rippling along at
thirty-five knots with the spray sheeting over her and she will turn and fight
and run, drop depth charges, bombard, and ram. She is expendable and dangerous.
And because she is all these things, a destroyer’s crew is passionately
possessive. Every man knows his ship, every inch of it, not just his own
station. The Destroyer X is just such a ship. She has done many
thousands of miles since the war started. She has been bombed and torpedoes
have gone under her bow. She has convoyed and fought. Her captain is a young,
dark-haired man and his executive officers looks like a blond undergraduate.
The ship is immaculate. The engines are polished and painted and shined. She is a fairly new ship, the X,
commissioned fifteen months ago. She bombarded at Casablanca and Gela and
Salerno and she has captured islands. Her officers naturally would like to go
to larger ships because there is more rank to be had on them, but no
destroyerman would rather sail on anything else. The destroyer X is a personal ship and a
personality. She is worked quietly. No one ever raises his voice. The captain
is soft-spoken and so is everyone else. Orders are given in the same low tone
as requests for salt in the wardroom. The discipline is exact and punctilious
but it seems to be almost mutually enforced, not from above. The captain will
say, “So many men have shore leave. The first man who comes back drunk removes
shore liberty for everyone.” It is very simple. The crew would discipline
anyone who jeopardized the liberty of the whole ship. So they come back in good
shape and on time. The X has very few brig cases. When the AT is in a combat area she never
relaxes. The men sleep in their clothes. The irritating blatting sound which
means “action stations” is designed to break through sleep. It sounds like the
braying of some metallic mule, and the reaction to it is instant. There is a
scurrying of feet in the passageways and the clatter of feet on the ladders and
in a few seconds the X is bristling with manned and waiting guns, AAs
that peer at the sky and the five-inch guns which can fire at the sky too. The crouched and helmeted men can get to their
stations in less than a minute. There is no hurry or fuss. They have done it
hundreds of times. And then a soft-spoken word from the bridge into a telephone
will turn the X into a fire-breathing dragon. She can throw tons of
steel in a very short time. One of the strangest things is to see her big
guns when they go on automatic control. They are aimed and fired from the
bridge. The turret and the guns have been heavy dead metal and suddenly they
become alive. The turret whips around but it is the guns themselves that seem
to live. They balance and quiver almost as though they were sniffing the air.
They tremble like the antennae of an insect, listening or smelling the target.
Suddenly they set and instantly there is a belch of sound and the shells float
away. The tracers seem to float interminably before they hit. And before the
shells have struck, the guns are trembling and reaching again. They are like
rattlesnakes poising to strike, and they really do seem to be alive. It is a
frightening thing to see. A RAGGED CREWDecember 1, 1943—When the plans were
being made to capture a German radar station on an Italian island in the
Tyrrhenian Sea. forty American paratroopers were assigned to do the job, forty
men and three officers. They came to the naval station from somewhere in
Africa. They didn’t say where. They came in the night sometime, and in the
morning they were bedded down in a Nissen hut, a hard and ragged crew. Their
uniforms were not the new and delightful affairs of the posters. The jackets,
with all the pockets, and the coarse canvas trousers had been washed so often
and dried in the hot sun that they had turned nearly white, and they were
ragged at the edges. The officers, two lieutenants and a captain,
were dressed in no way different from their men, and they had been months
without their insignia of rank. The captain had two strips of adhesive tape
stuck on his shoulders, to show that he was a captain at all, and one of his
lieutenants had sewed a piece of yellow cloth on his shoulders for his rank.
They had been ten months in the desert, and there was no place to buy the
pretty little bars to wear on their shoulders. They had not jumped from a plane
since they had finished their training in the United States, but the rigid,
hard training of their bodies had gone right on in the desert. There had been no luxuries for these men,
either. Sometimes the cigarettes ran out, and they just didn’t have any. They
had often lived on field rations for weeks at a time, and they had long
forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed, even a cot. They had all looked
somewhat alike, and perhaps this is the characteristic look of the paratrooper.
The eyes were very wide set, and mostly they were either gray or blue. The hair
was cropped, almost shaved, giving their heads a curious egg look. Their ears
seemed to stick straight out from their heads, perhaps because all their hair
was cut off. Their skins were burned almost black by the desert sun, which made
their eyes and their teeth seem very light, and their lips were ragged and
rough from months of the sun. The strangest thing about them was their
quietness and their almost shy good manners. Their voices were so soft that you
could barely hear them, and they were extremely courteous. The officers gave
their orders almost under their breaths, and there was none of the stiffness of
ordinary military discipline. It was almost as though they all thought alike so
that few orders were necessary at all. When something was to be done, the
moving or loading of their own supplies, for instance, they worked like parts
of a machine, and no one seemed to move quickly, but there was no waste
movement and the work was done with incredible speed. They did not waste time
saluting. A man saluted his officer only when he spoke to him or was spoken to. These paratroopers had as little equipment as
you can imagine. There were some rifles, some tommy guns, and the officers had
the new carbines. In addition, each man had a knife and four hand grenades,
painted yellow, but they had had their grenades so long that the yellow paint
was just about worn off. The rifles had been polished and cleaned so long and
so often that the black coating was worn off in places and the bright metal
shone through. The little American flags they wore on their shoulders were pale
from sunburn and from the washing of their clothes. There was no excess
equipment of any kind. They had what they wore, and they could carry. And for
some reason they gave the impression of great efficiency. In the morning their officers came into the
conference to be instructed in the nature of the action. They filed in shyly
and took their places at the long, rough table. The naval men distributed maps
and the action was described in detail, part of it on a large blackboard that
was set up against a wall. The island was Ventotene, and there was a radar
station on it which searched the whole ocean north and south of Naples. The
radar was German, but it was thought that there were very few Germans. There
were two or three hundred carabinieri there, however, and it was not known
whether they would fight or not. Also, there were a number of political
prisoners on the island who were to be released, and the island was to be held
by these same paratroopers until a body of troops could be put ashore. The three officers regarded the blackboard with
their wide-set eyes, and now and then they glanced quietly at one another. When
the discussion was finished the naval captain said, “Do you understand? Are
there any questions?” The captain of paratroopers studied the board
with the map of the island, and he asked softly, “Any artillery?” “Yes, there are some coastal guns, but if they
use them we’ll get them with naval guns.” “Oh! Yes, I see. Well, I hope the Italians
don’t do anything bad. I mean I hope they don’t shoot at us.” His voice was
very shy. A naval officer said jokingly, “Don’t your men
want to fight?” “It isn’t that,” the captain said. “We’ve been
a long time in the desert. My men are pretty trigger happy. They might be very
rough if anybody shoots at them.” The meeting broke up and the Navy invited the
paratroopers to lunch in the Navy mess. “If you’ll excuse us,” the captain said, “I
think we’ll get back to the men. They’ll want to know what we’re going to do.
I’ll just take this map along and explain it to them.” He paused apologetically
and added, “You see, they’ll want to know.” The three officers got up from the
table and went out. Their men were in the Nissen hut. The ragged captain and
his lieutenants walked across the street, blinding in the white sunlight, and
they went inside the Nissen hut and closed the door. They stayed a long time in
there, explaining the action to the forty men. VENTOTENEDecember 3, 1943—The units of the naval
task force made their rendezvous at sea and at dusk and made up their formation
and set off at a calculated speed to be at the island of Ventotene at moonset.
Their mission was to capture the island and to take the German radar which was
there. The moon was very large and it was not desirable that the people on the
island should know what force was coming against them, consequently the attack
was not to be attempted until the darkness came. The force spread out in its
traveling formation and moved slowly over the calm sea. On a destroyer of the force, the paratroopers
who were to make the assault sat on the deck and watched the moon. They seemed
a little uneasy. After being trained to drop in from the sky their first action
was to be a seagoing one. Perhaps their sense of fitness was outraged. All along the Italian coast the air force was
raiding. The naval force could see the flares parachuting down and the burst of
explosives and the lines of tracers off to the right. But the coast was kept
too busy for anyone to bother with the little naval force heading northward. The timing was exact. The moon turned very red
before it set, and just as it set the high hump of the island showed against
its face. And the moment it had set the darkness was thick so that you could
not see the man standing at your shoulder. There were no lights on the island
at all. This island has been blacked out for three years. When the naval force
had taken its positions a small boat equipped with a loudspeaker crept in
toward the beach. From five hundred yards off shore it beamed its loudspeaker
on the darkened town and a terrible voice called its proclamation. “Italians,” it said, “you must now surrender.
We have come in force. Your German ally has deserted you. You have fifteen
minutes to surrender. Display three white lights for surrender. At the end of
fifteen minutes we will open fire. This will be repeated once more.” The announcement
was made once more—“... three white rights for surrender.” And then the night
was silent. On the bridge of a destroyer the officers
peered at the darkness in the direction of the island. At the ship’s rails the
men looked off into the darkness. The executive officer kept looking at his
wrist watch and the night was so dark that the illuminated dial could be seen
six feet away. Gun control had the firing data ready. The guns of the whole
force were trained on the island. And the minutes went slowly. No one wanted to
fire on the town, to turn the concentrated destruction of high explosive on the
dark island. But the minutes dragged interminably on, ten—eleven—twelve. The
green, glowing hands moved on the face of the wrist watch. The captain spoke a
word into his phone, and there was a rustle and the door of the plotting room
opened for a moment and then closed. And then, as the minute hand crawled over
fourteen minutes, three white rockets went up from the island. They flowed
upward and curved lazily over and fell back. And then, not content, three more
went up. The captain sighed with relief and spoke again into his phone. And the
whole ship seemed to relax. In the wardroom the commodore of the task force
sat at the head of the table. He was dressed in khaki, his shirt open at the
throat and his sleeves rolled up. He wore a helmet, and a tommy gun lay on the
table in front of him. “I’ll go in and take the surrender,” he said, and he
called the names of five men to go with him. “The paratroopers are to come in
as soon as you can get them in the landing boat,” he said to the executive
officer. “Lower the whaleboat.” The deck was very dark. You had to feel your
way along. The boat davits were swung out as they always are in action, and now
a crew was lowering the whaleboat. They held it at deck level for the men to
get in—a coxswain and an engineer were already in the boat. Five officers,
armed with sub-machine guns, clambered over the rail and settled themselves.
Each man had a drum of bullets on his gun and each wore a pouch which carried
another drum. The boat lowered away, and just as it touched the water the
engineer started the engine. The boat cast off and turned toward the shore. It
was pretty much of a job of guess work because you could not see the shore. The
commodore said, “We’ve got to get in and disarm them before they change their
minds. Can’t tell what they’ll do if we give them time.” And he said to his
men, “Don’t take any chances. Open fire if anyone shows the slightest sign of
resisting.” The boat slipped toward the dark shore, her
motors muffled and quiet. December 6, 1943—There are times when
the element of luck is so sharply involved in an action that sense of dread
sets in afterward. And such was the invasion of the island of Ventotene by
five men in a whale-boat. They knew that there was a German radar crew on the
island, but they did not know that it numbered eighty-seven men, all heavily
armed, and moreover heavily armed with machine guns. They did not know that
this crew had ammunition and food stored to last six weeks. All the men in the
whaleboat did know was that the Italians had put up three white flares in the
night as a token of surrender. The main harbor of Ventotene is a narrow inlet
that ends against a cliff like an amphitheater, and on this semicircular cliff
the town stands high above the water. To the left of this inlet there is a pier
and a little breakwater, unconnected with the land and designed to keep the swells
from breaking on the pier, and finally to the left of the pier there is another
inlet very like the true harbor, which, however, is no harbor at all. The whaleboat with the five men in it
approached the dark island and when it was close to the shore the commander
shone a flashlight quickly and it showed a deep inlet. Naturally, he thought
this was a harbor, and the little boat coasted easily into it. Then the light
flashed on again and ranged about, only to discover that this was not the true
harbor at all but the false inlet. The whaleboat put about and headed out again
and soon it came to what looked like a sand bar stuck out of the water. And
again the light flashed out, and it was seen that it was a breakwater. Again
the boat proceeded, but approximately ten minutes had been consumed in being
slightly lost. The third try was successful and the little boat found the entrance
of the true harbor and nosed into it. And just as the whaleboat put its head
into the little harbor an explosion came from behind the breakwater, and there
was the sound of running feet, and then from the top of the cliff there came
another big explosion, and then progressively back on the hill more and more
blasts. There was nothing to do then but to go ahead.
The whaleboat plunged into the pier and the five men leaped out. Behind the
breakwater lay a German E-boat and beside her stood a German soldier. He had
just thrown a potato-masher grenade at the E-boat to destroy and sink her. One
of the American officers ran at him, and with one motion the German ripped out
his Luger pistol and tossed it in the water and then put both of his hands over
his head. The lancing light of a powerful flashlight circled him. The officer
who had taken him rushed him to the whaleboat and put him under guard of the
boat’s engineer. Now a crowd of Italians came swarming down from
the hill, crying, “Surrender, surrender!” And as they came they dropped their
rifles on the ground, in an unholy heap. The commodore pointed to a place on
the quay. “Stack them there,” he said. “Get everything you have and stack it
right there.” Now the landing was crisscrossed with lights. The
five Americans stood side by side with their guns ready, while the Italian
carabinieri brought their guns and put them in a pile. Everyone seemed to be
confused and glad and frightened. The people wanted to crowd close to see the
Americans and at the same time the ugly pig snouts of the tommy guns warned
them back. It is not reassuring to be one of five men who are ostensibly
holding a line against two hundred and fifty men, even if those men seem to
have surrendered. Every one of the Italians was talking. No one
was listening. And no one wanted to listen. And then breaking through their
ranks came a remarkable figure, a tall gray-haired old man dressed in pink
pajamas. He stalked through the chattering, shouting ranks of the carabinieri
and he said, “I speak English.” Immediately the shouting stopped and the ring
of faces showed intensely in the flashlight beams. “I have been a political
prisoner here for three years,” the old man said. For some reason he did not
seem funny in his pink pajamas. He had a great dignity, even enough to offset
his costume. The commodore asked, “What were those
explosions?” “The Germans,” the old man said. “There are
eighty-seven of them. They were set up with machine guns to fire on you when
you entered the harbor, but when you landed troops in the false harbor and when
you landed more troops on the breakwater they thought they might be surrounded,
so they retreated. They are dynamiting as they go.” “When we landed troops?” the commodore began,
and then he shut himself off. “Oh, yes. I see,” he said. “Yes, when we landed
troops.” One of the officers shivered and grinned at the commodore. “I wish those paratroopers would come in about
now,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind it either,” the commodore
replied. And he went on to the old man in the pajamas, “Where will the Germans
go?” “They’ll go to their radar station to destroy
it. Then they have some entrenchments on the hill. I think they will try to
hold them there.” And at that moment there came a very large explosion and a
fire started back on the hill, a fire large enough so that it illuminated the
little dock and the entrance to the bay. “That will be the radar station now,”
the old man said. “They are very thorough. Too bad the troops you landed didn’t
get there first.” “Yes,” said the commodore, “isn’t it?” More Italians came down the hill then and
deposited their arms. They seemed to be very glad to let them go. Apparently
they had never loved their guns very much. On the dock the five Americans stood uneasily
and the safety catches were off their guns, and their eyes moved restlessly
among the Italians. The firelight from the burning buildings high on the hill
made deep shadows in back of the dock houses. The commodore said softly, “I wish those
paratroopers would get here. If Jerry finds out there are only five of us, I
wouldn’t give any odds on us.” And then there was a sound of a boat’s motor
and the commodore smiled with relief. The forty-three paratroopers were coming
in to the shore. “Give them a light, coxswain,” the commodore called. “Show
them where to come.” December 8, 1943—The five men from the
destroyer moved restlessly about the quay on the island of Ventotene which
they had accidentally, and with five kinds of luck, captured. The paratroopers
did not arrive. There was no sign from the destroyer standing off shore and
minutes got to be hours. The dark town on the cliff became peopled with
imaginary snipers and back on the hill where the Germans had retreated an
occasional explosion roared as they blasted more installations. They didn’t
know how many Americans there were, and there were five, and the Americans did
not know how many Germans there were, and there were eighty-seven. This was
very largely in favor of the Americans, because if the Germans had known—It is
not a nice thing to dwell on. Your impulse when you are alone and not knowing
when you are going to be fired on out of the dark is to keep moving, to pace
restlessly about and to be very timid about getting a light of any kind behind
you. This pacing about is probably the worst thing you can do. According to Bob
Capa, who has been in more wars and closer to them than nearly anyone now
living (and why he is living no one knows), the thing to do is not to move at
all. If you sit perfectly still in the dark, he argues, no one knows you are
there. It is only by moving about that you give away your position. He also
holds that under fire the best thing is to sit still until you know where the
fire is coming from. This is a hard thing to do but it must be correct, because
Bob Capa is still alive. But every instinct is toward shuffling about and
leaving the place where you are. But getting a light behind you is the worst.
It seems to burn you in the back and in your mind’s eye you can see what a
beautiful target you are to someone out in the dark, you and that great black
shadow in front of you. There probably is nothing in the world so
elastic as subjective time. There is no way of knowing how long it took for
those forty-three paratroopers to get ashore. It may have been half an hour and
it may have been three hours. It felt to the five men ashore like three days.
Probably it was about forty-five minutes. The dark, hostile island and the
dark water gave no comfort. But after an interminable time there was a secret
little mutter of engines. Then out in the dark there was a little flutter of
light. The boat was asking for directions. One of the officers on the quay got
down on his stomach and leaned over the stone parapet and signaled back with
his flashlight so that it could not be seen from the island. And at intervals
he flashed his torch to guide the boat. It came out of the dark abruptly: out of the
pitch dark it slipped noiselessly and bumped gently against the quay. And it
was one of those boats even the name of which the Navy will cut out if I put it
in, but the important thing was that there were forty-three paratroopers on
board. They seemed to flow over the side; they were very quiet. Their captain
went to work instantly. He sent out pickets before he had been one minute
ashore, and they slipped away up the hill to guard the approaches to the
harbor. Some crept up into the town, armed with their rifles and grenades, and
they occupied the tops of buildings, and others went down to the beaches to
watch the seaward approaches. Meanwhile a little gangplank was ashore, and the
supplies were coming down onto the quay in the darkness. In the middle of this work there was a growl of
a plane overhead. The captain of paratroopers gave a curt order and the men
took cover. The plane droned over, and as it got offshore again the destroyer
burst into action. She flamed like a flowerpot at an old-fashioned Fourth of
July fireworks exhibit. Her tracers spread like a fountain. And then she was
dark again and the plane was gone. The unloading continued until there was a pile
of goods on the quay, rations in cases and boxes of ammunition and machine
guns and the light sleeping rolls of the paratroopers. They did not bring any
luxuries with them. They never do. Food and ammunition are their main interests.
They get along with very little else. But on Ventotene they brought water too,
in those handled containers which are used for both water and gasoline. For
Ventotene has no water. In other times water barges came out from the mainland.
The only local water is that caught in cisterns during the rainy months. When the supplies were landed the three
paratrooper officers and the naval officers gathered in a little stone building
on the waterfront. And an electric lantern was on the floor and the doors and
windows were shut so that no line of light could show out. The faces were
lighted from below and they were strained faces, with the jaw muscles pulled
tight. The maps were out again. “I’m not going to throw my men against a bigger
force in the dark,” the captain of paratroopers said. “Jerry will be trenched
by now. I’m not going to move until morning. We’ve only got half as many men
and no artillery.” An officer said, “Maybe—maybe we could talk
them out of it. Let’s have some of the Italians in and see what we can do. The
Jerry doesn’t know how many men we have or how many ships. Let’s think about
that a little. It’s just barely possible we could talk them out of it.” “How?” the captain asked. “Well, would you let me go up with a white flag
in the morning?” “They’d bump you.” “Would you let me try?” “Well—” “Might save a lot of trouble—sir—” “We can’t afford to lose officers.” “You won’t lose me. Just give me a nod.” The
captain looked at him for a long time and then he smiled thinly and his head
dipped, almost imperceptibly. December 10, 1943—The lieutenant walked
slowly up the hill toward the German positions. He carried his white flag over
his head, and his white flag was a bath towel. As he walked he thought what a
fool he was. He had really stuck his neck out. Last night when he had argued
for the privilege of going up and trying to kid the Jerry into surrender he
hadn’t known it would be like this. He hadn’t known how lonely and exposed he
would be. Forty paratroopers against eighty-seven Jerrys,
but Jerry didn’t know that. The lieutenant also hoped Jerry wouldn’t know his
guts were turned to water. His feet sounded loud on the path. It was early in
the morning and the sun was not up yet. He hoped they could see his white flag.
Maybe it would be invisible in this light. He kept in the open as much as
possible as he climbed the hill. He knew that the forty paratroopers were
crawling and squirming behind him, keeping cover, getting into position so that
if anything should go wrong they might attack and stand some chance of
surprising the Jerry. He knew the fieldglasses of the captain would be on the
German position, waiting for something to happen. “If they shoot at you, flop and lie still,” the
captain had said. “We’ll try to cover you and get you out.” The lieutenant knew that if he were hit and not
killed he would hear the shot after he was hit, but if he were hit in the head
he wouldn’t hear or feel anything. He hoped, if it happened, it would happen
that way. His feet seemed very heavy and clumsy. He looked down and saw the
little stones on the path, and he wished he could get down on his knees to see
what kind of stones they were. He had a positive hunger to get down out of
line. His chest tingled almost as if he were preparing to receive the bullet.
And his throat was as tight as it had been once when he tried to make a speech
in college. Step by step he drew nearer, and there was no
sign from Jerry. The lieutenant wanted to look back to see whether any of the
paratroopers were in sight, but he knew the Germans would have their
fieldglasses on him, and they were close enough so that they could even see his
expression. It happened finally, quickly and naturally. He
was passing a pile of rocks, when a deep voice shouted an order to him. There
were three Germans, young-looking men, and they had their rifles trained on his
stomach. He stopped and stared at them as they stared back. He wondered whether
his eyes were as wide as theirs. They paused, and then a hoarse voice called from
up ahead. The Jerries stood up and they glanced quickly down the hill before
they came out to him. And then the four marched on. It seemed a little silly to
the lieutenant, like little boys marching up an alley to attack Connor’s
woodshed. And his bath towel on a stick seemed silly, too. He thought, Well,
anyway, if they bump me our boys will get these three. In his mind’s eye he
could see helmeted Americans watching the little procession through their rifle
sights. Ahead was a small white stone building, but
Jerry was too smart to be in the building. A trench started behind the building
and led down to a hole almost like a shell hole. Three officers faced him in the hole. They were
dressed in dusty blue and they wore the beautiful high caps of the Luftwaffe,
with silver eagles and swastikas. They were electronics engineers, a ground
service for the German Air Force. They faced him without speaking, and his
throat was so tight that for a moment he could not begin. All he could think of
was a green table; Jerry had three deuces showing and the lieutenant a pair of
treys. He knew they had no more, but they didn’t know what his hole card was.
He only hoped they wouldn’t know, because all he had was that pair of treys. The Oberleutnant regarded him closely and said
nothing. “Do you speak English?” the lieutenant asked. “Yes.” The lieutenant took a deep breath and spoke the
piece he had memorized. “The colonel’s compliments, sir. I am ordered to demand
your surrender. At the end of twenty minutes the cruisers will move up and open
fire unless ordered otherwise following your surrender.” He noticed the
Oberleutnant’s eyes involuntarily move toward the sea. The lieutenant lapsed
out of his formality, as he had planned. “What’s the good?” he said. “We’ll
just kill you all. We’ve got six hundred men ashore and the cruisers are aching
to take a shot at you. What’s the good of it? You’d kill some of us and we’d
kill all of you. Why don’t you just stack your arms and come in?” The Oberleutnant stared into his eyes. That what’s-in-the-hole
look. The look balanced: call or toss in, call or toss in. The pause was
centuries long, and then at last, “What treatment will we receive?” the
Oberleutnant asked. “Prisoners of war under Convention of The
Hague.” The lieutenant was trying desperately to show nothing in his face.
There was another long pause. The German breathed in deeply and his breath
whistled in his nose. “It is no dishonor to surrender to superior
forces,” he said. December 13, 1943—When the lieutenant
went up to the Germans with his bath towel for a white flag, the captain of
paratroopers, peering through a crack between two buildings, watched him go.
The men hidden below saw the lieutenant challenged, and then they saw him
behind the white stone building. The watching men hardly breathed then. They
were waiting for the crack of a rifle shot that would mean the plan for kidding
the Germans into surrender had failed. The time went slowly. Actually, it was
only about fifteen minutes. Then the lieutenant appeared again, and this time
he was accompanied by three German officers. The watchers saw him walk down to a clear place
in the path and there pause and point to the ground. Then two of the officers
retired behind the white building again. But in a moment they reappeared, and
behind them came the German soldiers. They straggled down the path and, at the
place that had been indicated, they piled their arms, their rifles and machine
guns, and even their pistols. The captain, lying behind his stones, watched and
counted. He tallied the whole eighty-seven men who were supposed to be there.
He said to his lieutenant, “By God, he pulled it off!” And now a little pageant developed. As the
Germans marched down the path, American paratroopers materialized out of the
ground beside them, until they were closely surrounded by an honor guard of
about thirty men. The whole group swung down the path and into the little white
town that stood so high above the harbor of Ventotene. Since Ventotene had been for hundreds of years
an Italian prison island, there was no lack of place to put the prisoners. The
top floor of what we would call a city hall was a big roomy jail, with four or
five big cells. The column marched up the steps of the city hall and on up to
the third floor, and then the Germans were split into three groups and one
group was put into each of three cells, while the fourth cell was reserved for
the officers. Then guards with tommy guns were posted at the doors of the
cells, and the conquest was over. The lieutenant who had carried the white flag
sat down on the steps of the city hall a little shakily. The captain sat down
beside him. “Any trouble?” the captain asked. “No. It was too easy. I don’t believe it yet.”
He lighted a cigarette, and his shaking hand nearly put out the match. “Wonderful job,” the captain said. “But what
are we going to do with them?” “Won’t the ships be back tonight?” “I hope so, but suppose they don’t get back. We
can’t let anybody get any sleep until we get rid of these babies.” A trooper lounged near. “Those Jerry officers
are raising hell,” he said. “They want to see the commanding officer, sir.” The captain stood up. “Better come with me,” he
told the lieutenant. “How many men did you tell them we had?” “Six hundred,” the lieutenant said, “and I forgot
how many cruisers offshore.” The captain laughed. “One time I heard about an
officer who marched fifteen men around a house until they looked like an army.
Maybe we better do that with our forty.” At the door of the officers’ cell the captain
took out his pistol and handed it to one of the guards. “Leave the door open
and keep your eye on us all the time. If they make a suspicious move, shoot
them!” “Yes, sir,” said the guard, and he unlocked and
opened the heavy door. The German officers were at the barred window,
looking down on the deserted streets of the little town. They could see two
lonely sentries in front of the building. The German Oberleutnant turned as the
captain entered. “I demand to see the colonel,” he said. The captain swallowed. “Er—the colonel? Well,
he is engaged.” For a long moment the German stared into the
captain’s eyes. Finally he said, “You are the commanding officer, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am,” the captain said. “How many men have you?” “We do not answer questions,” the captain said
stiffly. The German’s face was hard and disappointed. He
said, “I don’t think you have six hundred men. I think you have only a few more
than thirty men.” The captain nodded solemnly. He said, “We’ve
mined the building. If there is any trouble—any trouble at all—we’ll blow the
whole mess of you to hell.” He turned to leave the cell. “You’ll be taken
aboard ship soon now,” he said over his shoulder. Going down the stairs, the lieutenant said,
“Have you really mined the building?” The captain grinned at him. “Have we really got
six hundred men?” he asked. And then he said, “Lord, I hope the destroyer gets
in tonight to take these babies out. None of us is going to get any sleep until
then.” THE END. |
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