World War II Chronicle: April 26, 1943
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Lt. Gen Leslie McNair was wounded on Friday while observing the front lines in North Africa… Page four reports that the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was christened today at Newport News, Va… An Argentinian embassy official believes that several of the air crew from the Doolittle Raid have been executed (see page eight). Another column on the same page tells how James Doolittle hitched a ride back to the States in a severely overcrowded transport…
Page ten lists all U.S. commanders in the various theaters across the world… George Fielding Eliot column on page 12… Chapter 15 of “Torpedo 8” continues on page 31 and sports begins on page 32.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
NORTHERN TUNISIA — At least there’s one thing we can’t complain about as the Tunisian war draws towards its close, and that’s the weather.
In these past few weeks the heavens have seemed bent on bounteous amends for all the misery they scourged us with during the winter. This is one time when nobody wants to do anything about the weather. It’s perfect as is.
The rains are over. The cold is gone. Everything is green, and flowers sparkle over the countryside. The sun is up early and bright, and it is a blessing after all those dreary months of wet and wind. It’s now like June in Virginia.
I don’t know how it affects the fighting troops, but in my own case I’ve got spring fever so badly my conscience hurts. All I want to do is lie in the sun.
For a while we were camped in an apricot grove, on ankle-high bluegrass. The sun beamed down between the trees, and occasional bees buzzed around with the Midwestern summer drone that to me is synonymous with lazy days. That apricot grove was one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever known, and I’d find myself lying for hours outside my tent, flat on my back in the grass, reveling in the evil knowledge that I was shirking my work, the war and everything else.
Then we moved to a gum-tree grove and set up our tents again. One Sunday morning most of the other correspondents left to visit an airfield, leaving our little camp deserted and a perfect place to accomplish a lot of wringing. But instead of doing my job as I should have, I fell into one of my carpentering spells and worked from breakfast to midafternoon building a washstand onto a tree, cutting up a five-gallon gasoline can for a wash basin, cleaning my mess kit, and wiring up a broken chair I had found on a dump heap, so we could boast that we actually had a home with a chair in it. I didn’t write a line all day, but I sure had a wonderful time.
Chris Cunningham of the United Press and I are sharing a tent, and he says if I don’t quit being so housewifey he’s going insane. I guess Chris is doomed, for the spring puttering days are upon me and I can’t help it.
We’ve not yet been issued summer khaki, but there’s a rumor it will be done soon. Actually it isn’t too hot yet for our heavies. They say the cruelly hot weather doesn’t come till June.
Mosquitoes are beginning to show up. We watched for the first mosquito as we used to watch at home for the first robin, but not with the same spirit of welcome. I’m the mosquito barometer for our group, since a mosquito will travel days and days to find me. I got my first bad bites down in Central Tunisia and am now anxiously sweating out the malaria incubation period.
The Army hasn’t yet issued mosquito head or bed nets, bu there’s a rumor along that line. They’ve started giving us semi-weekly atabrin tablets. I’m being very bad and not taking anything, since atabrin throws me and quinine makes my head feel constantly as though I’m shouting in a barrel. So I suppose the next torture on your list will be having to read about me having malaria.
We correspondents were winding up the Tunisian war in comparative luxury. The old rough-and-tumble days of last winter are gone. The Army’s Public Relations Branch is now all set up like a traveling circus, and we are well looked after.
We are so close to the front lines we can base permanently in our own camp and still get to the firing line in half an hour. German raiders come over daily, but our air superiority is so great now that oftentimes we don’t even look up.
All night the artillery rumbles, and the ground quivers. When I first came to this spot I couldn’t sleep because of it, but I’ve got used to it.
We are living in two-man tents, and there are several bigger tents for the kitchen, mess and stockroom. We have stolen tables from a bombed-out saloon in a nearby village. We have electric lights in our tents. And instead of digging our own slit trenches, here the Arabs do it — their pay being a pack of cigarets for a day’s work.
We take off our clothes at night now. We sleep in folding cots, have our own mess and even wash our faces of a morning. It is all so different from our miserable winter.
I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand why these columns have been so bad lately. Warm weather and a taste of half-civilized living have undermined my character. I’ve just been too comfortable to think.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 26 April 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-04-26/ed-1/