World War II Chronicle: January 20, 1943
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The Germans raided London in the largest aerial attack since 1941, and dozens of elementary school children are among the dead… One of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest’s lasts officers has passed away at age 95. Richard E. Bullington tried to join the 18th Mississippi Cavalry Regiment earlier in the war when he was 15, but Forrest reportedly told him that he should stay at home…
Eddie Rickenbacker’s copilot continues his story on page four… Account of Maj. Gen. Mark Clark’s submarine mission to North Africa on page five… Sports page begins on page 17
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
A FORWARD AIRDROME IN FRENCH NORTH AFRICA — (By Wireless) — This airdrome is away from the dark and rainy coastal belt of the Mediterranean.
The only way I can picture it for you is to suggest that you try to visualize some flat endless space in the desert of our own southwest, with purple mountains in the distance and sand everywhere. Put an oasis of date palms down upon it, so big it would take an hour to walk from one end to the other.
Here the sun shines down warmly out of an incredibly blue sky. At night there are stars by the million, but a dry and piercing chill comes down with the darkness.
Here is Africa as we have pictured it back home. The green fields and European-type cities of the coast have been left behind. Here the villages are suncaked adobe. Arabs in their rags dominate the population.
It is a long way between villages. Now and then you see a camel on the road. The wind blows some days, suffocating you with flying sand. It is hard on men and engines both. Little rippled drifts of yellow sand form around shrubs in the desert, and our soldiers wear tinted dust goggles.
It does rain here, but very seldom. Soldiers who have lived knee-deep in the perpetual winter mud of the coastal belt call this the best place in Africa to be.
We are not far from the enemy, as the crow flies. All day our air patrols cover the desert for hundreds of miles, keeping track of enemy movements in our direction. Even camel trains are on patrol, under the French army. All troops are constantly in readiness for a descent by enemy parachutists.
Infantry and anti-tank units arrive and bivouac around the countryside for our protection. Truck trains come across the mountains bringing new loads of gasoline and bombs. American cargo planes, flying in formation with fighter escort, arrive daily with airplane parts and other urgent supplies — and sometimes with mail.
Our ground troops — and it takes an unbelievable number to run a great airdrome like this — live in their little pup tents, scattered all over the vast field. Nobody lives in buildings here. Everybody is in tents — the men in little tents, the officers in bigger ones that hold four.
All the tents have dirt piled along their outside edges to keep sand from drifting in and light from leaking out.
In England, and even in Africa, in coastal cities, there is considerable carelessness about blackouts. But believe me not here! Nobody has to post any official order. Every soldier is his own warden, and a strict one.
The men are tense, and the danger is real. Every dusk brings its possibility of death, and any spot of light in this camp is likely to get a bullet through it.
The soldiers as usual have made their tiny tents touchingly homelike. Many of them have dug big rectangular holes five feet into the ground, with steps leading down, and set their tents over the top. It makes a fine wardroom down there.
One friend of mine, Sergt. Cheedle Caviness, who happens to be a nephew of Senator Hatch of New Mexico, rustled himself a folding cot and then dug holes in the ground for its legs to fit into in order to make it low enough to put inside his tent.
“I got tired of sweating out those hard lumps in my back,” he says.
The troops are so scattered that there are a dozen separate messes. The food is cooked in tents on portable ranges. The mess lines are outdoors. The men have built high benches where they set their mess kits while they eat standing up.
The toilets are nothing more than trenches. Your last vestige of modesty disappears when everybody within five miles can see you go “to the bathroom.”Nobody ever takes a bath, except maybe a quickie from a pan. Once in a while you can go to the nearest town and indulge in the local Turkish baths, which are a little weird bug give you the illusion of being clean.
Personally I haven’t taken a bath in so long I’m afraid to now for fear of catching another cold.
Life at this airdrome is far from what would be considered normal at home. Yet morale is high. For one thing, it is so much better than the cold and mud of the coast. For another, there is serious work for everybody to do — vital work, for you are working to preserve your life.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 20 January 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-01-20/ed-1/