|
When you get to Anzio you waste no time
getting off the boat, for you have been feeling pretty much
like a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery. But after a few
hours in Anzio you wish you were back on the boat, for you
could hardly describe being ashore as any haven of
peacefulness. As we came into the harbor, shells skipped
the water within a hundred yards of us.
In
our first day ashore, a bomb exploded so close to the place
where I was sitting that it almost knocked us down with
fright. It smacked into the trees a short distance away. And
on the third day ashore, an 88 went off within twenty yards
of us. I wished I was in New York.
When I write about my own occasional association with shells
and bombs, there is one thing I want you folks at home to be
sure to get straight. And that is that the other
correspondents are in the same boat – many of them much more
so. You know about my own small experiences, because it’s my
job to write about how these things sound and feel. But you
don’t know what the other reporters go through, because it
usually isn’t their job to write about themselves.
There are correspondents here on the beachhead, and on the
Casino front also, who have had dozens of close shaves. I
know of one correspondent who was knocked down four times by
near misses on his first day here.
Two correspondents, Reynolds Packer of the United Press and
Homer Bigart of the New York Herald-Tribune, have been on
the beachhead since D-day without a moment’s respite.
They’ve become so veteran that they don’t even mention a
shell striking twenty yards away.
On
this beachhead every inch of our territory is under German
artillery fire. There is no rear area that is immune, as in
most battle zones. They can reach us with their 88’s, and
they use everything from that on up. It seems at times we
are not moving forward, that we are here just to be shot at
and bombed, but now and again one unit at least disappear
into the night to take their revenge on the enemy. For
several days I have been with a unit the Germans themselves
have come to call the Black Devils.
Last night I was invited to attend one of their briefings
for their next night raid. In the basement of a destroyed
house not far from the beach these men dressed in a variety
of uniform devoid of their heavy equipment, blacked their
faces and prepared their weapons, the enemy tonight were
going to sufferer at their hands. On this patrol I would
not be going, advised the results of their actions that
night would be unpleasant, I would have to sit and sweat it
out until what I hoped would be their safe return.
|
