xx War Bond Special

I love the infantry, because they were the underdogs. They had no comforts, and they learned to live without the necessities. And in the end, they were the guys without whom the battle could not have been won.

Words were written by Ernie Pyle, Ernie Pyle, famous correspondent. While the folks back home, Ernie Pyle wrote a book about the GI soldier, a book called Here's Your War. One B.C. dramatized that book on a program called Words at War and repeats some of those stories now.

Stories told as Ernie Pyle told them. A narrow path wound like a ribbon over a hill miles away, and the longer length of that ribbon there was a thin line of men. Before days and nights that fought hard, eaten little wash-nung, and slept hardly at all.

The nights had been violent with a tank, fright, butchery. The days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery. The men were walking slowly, but they were dead weary. Every line of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion.

On their shoulders they carried heavy steel tri-pods, machine gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seemed to sink in the ground. There was an agony in your heart and you felt almost ashamed to look at them.

We're just guys from Broadway and Main Street. Their world can never be known for you. But if you could have seen them just once, you would know that no matter how hard people were working back home, they never kept pace with those infantrymen in Tunisia.

We'd talk sometimes during the laws, talk about home mostly. When do you figure the war will be over, Ernie? I don't know, it's hard to say, Snip. This young maybe? I hardly think so, Riley.