Martin JRM Mars aircraft XPB2M-1 passes over the Golden Gate
Medal of Honor recipient, Commander Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, has been lost during a two-hour aerial battle over the Pacific (see page four)… George Fielding Eliot explains how many troops are actually in an American combat division on page eight… Sports on page 19.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
ALLIED HEADQUARTERS ALGIERS, Dec. 10 — Ever since leaving America on the long trip back over, I’d had a vague feeling that something bad was going to happen. It wasn’t exactly a premonition, and I didn’t really worry about it. Yet a slight fear was there.
So when at last we came over Algiers, after 8000 miles of probably the most perfect long trip I ever had, I thought to myself: “Well, we crack up when we land here. I suppose it’s our last chance for anything to happen.”
I was pretty tense when we skimmed down the runway. It seemed the pilot would never get the wheels on the ground. But finally they did touch, lightly as a feather; we ran smoothly and straight. And nothing happened at all.
We sighed and were at the end of the trail. As we stepped out of the plane, the lieutenant who took the travel orders looked up and said, “How does it feel to be back?”
The airport was thronged with British, American and French travelers in uniform, hundreds of them. As we were waiting for a jeep to come for us, a British captain I’d known months ago came up and asked if he could ride into town with us.
Pretty soon Dick Hottelot from London came past and said a startled hello. Shortly after him came Fred Clayton of the Red Cross, just landed from Italy. Then a young naval lieutenant I’d known in Morocco and an officer I’d never seen before yelled across the crowd, “Welcome home!”
The I knew that the old fraternity of war had enmeshed me once more.
Algiers has changed some since I left it nearly three months ago. The blackout has been lifted in favor of a dimout. Everybody feels very far from the war. The barrage balloons still fly over the harbor, but they are fewer. The streets are so thick with soldiers of three nationalities you can hardly walk.
There are some American civilian women where before there were none. There are more WACS now, too. Soldiers are always saluting us correspondents, so there must be new troops in town. Great rows of boxed engines line the roads, supply dumps fill the fields, the road in from the airport is rougher from much convoying.
You have a feeling that North Africa from the Atlantic to Cairo has become a war depot of unprecedented proportions.
Everybody is friendly and terribly anxious to know how things are at home.
“Can you get enough to eat?” they ask. “Can you still have any fun? Have things changed much? Can you go up to a bar and buy a drink? Is there any traffic in the cities? Can you still get a glass of milk? Can you buy eggs? Are prices terribly high?”
A dozen soldiers have told me their families intimated we were probably better off over here for food than they were at home. Some even wonder whether they should go home if they get a chance.
To all of which I answer something like this in composite:
“Can you get enough to eat? You certainly can. There are a couple of meatless days a week in many places and steaks are very scarce. Yet I know places in Washington where you can get steak every night. They are not black-market, either. It’s almost impossible to buy liquor from the bottle, but you can still get plenty by the drink. Sure, you can get milk and eggs, too.
“Most of your circle of men friends have gone. Gas rationing makes it a little hard to get around, but you manage. The shortage of domestic help is dire. Prices are high, but nothing compares to what the French and Italians charge us over here.
“Train travel is something difficult, but certainly not impossible. You can’t get a new telephone installed now, and laundry takes a long time. People are starting to hoard cigarettes. You can still telephone long distance and talk as nonessentially as you like.
“The famed Pentagon isn’t so hard to get around in and actually is very handsome. Taxis won’t come to your house on call any more, but if you are downtown you can still pick them up. Everybody has money, and entertainment of all kinds goes full blast. Ninety per cent of the people you meet say, ‘think we’re too complacent here at home.’
“The people are talking a lot of Republican talk, but from what I could see of the tenor of the people the President will stay in next year.
“I found absolutely no criticism of the grand strategy or the conduct of the war, although there is plenty of it about the conduct of the home front.
And I Wind up telling my overseas questioners: “The country hasn’t changed as much as you dream it has. Go ahead and go home if you ever get the chance. You’ll have the time of your life. I certainly had.”
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 11 December 1943. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1943-12-11/ed-1/
