Back Again

Pyle views shipping out to the Pacific with apprehension.

SAN FRANCISCO – Well, here we go over again.

It has been four months since I wrote my final column, from France. In four months of not-production a writer gets out of the habit. He forgets the rhythm of words; falls into the like shooting fish in a barrel habit of not making himself call back or experience in self-expression.

This start column is a man-killer. Your heed automatically resents the job of focusing itself again. Your thoughts are scattered and you can't get them together to put onto paper. Words come hard. You have to remember once more. Yous expletive the day you lot e'er took upwardly writing to make a living.

And so until I'm once more immersed in the routine of daily writing, and transported once again into the i-track world of state of war, I'thou afraid you'll accept to be tolerant with me.

*

In that location's aught overnice well-nigh the prospect of going dorsum to war again. Anybody who has been in war and wants to go back is a plainly damn fool in my volume.

I'm certainly not going because I've got itchy feet again, or because I can't stand up America, or considering there'due south whatsoever mystic fascination about war that is cartoon me dorsum.

I'm going merely because there'due south a war on and I'one thousand role of it and I've known all the fourth dimension I was going dorsum. I'm going only because I've got to – and I detest it.

This fourth dimension it will exist the Pacific. When I left France terminal autumn, we idea the war in Europe was well-nigh over. I say "we" because I mean almost everybody over there thought so. I felt information technology was and so nigh the finish I could come home and before the time came to get again, that side of the war would be finished, and only the Pacific would be left.

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But it didn't turn out that way. Now nobody knows how long the European state of war will last. Naturally, all my friends and associations and sentiments are on that side. I suppose downward in my heart I would rather go back to that side. For over in Europe I know the tempo of the battle; I experience at home with it, in a way.

And still I think it's best to stick with the original programme and keep to the Pacific. There are a lot of guys in that war, too. They are the same guys who are fighting on the other side, simply with different names, that's all. It is not belittling my friends in Europe to desert them and become to the Pacific for a while.

I'm going with the navy this time, since the navy is so dominant in the Pacific, and since I've washed very little in the past on that part of the service. I won't stay with the navy for the elapsing – probably two or three months, and then back ashore again with my noble souls, the doughfoots.

Security forbids telling you just what the plans are. Merely can say that I'll wing across the Pacific, and join send on the other side. Aboard ship, I'll be out of touch with the earth on long cruises. Information technology may be there volition be lapses in the daily cavalcade, simply because information technology's incommunicable to transmit these pieces. Only we'll do our best to go on them going steadily.

*

I haven't figured out yet what I'k going to do well-nigh seasickness. I'thousand ane of those unfortunates with a terrific stomach on state, only one that turns to whey and jelly when I get aboard ship. I know of nix that submerges the muse in a man every bit much every bit the constant compulsion to throw upwardly. Peradventure I should take along my own oil to spread on the troubled waters.

Friends warn me about all kinds of horrible diseases in the Pacific. Virtually dysentery, and malaria, and fungus that gets in your ears and your intestines, and that horrible swelling illness known as elephantiasis.

Well, all I tin can say is that I'1000 God'south gift to germs. Those fungi will shout and jump for joy when I show up. Maybe I can play the Pied Piper function – maybe the germs will all follow me when I get there, and leave the residuum of the boys free to fight.

*

So what with affliction, Japs, seasickness and shot and beat – y'all encounter I'grand non likewise overwhelmed with relief at starting out once more.

But there's i affair in my favor where I'm going; ane thing that will make life bearable when all else is darkness and gloom. And that one matter is that, out in the Pacific, I'll be damned good and stinking hot. Oh, boy!

Source: Rocky Mount News, February half-dozen, 1945: from a scrapbook given to Indiana University by Mrs. Henry Schoon. Pictures courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana Academy, Bloomington, Indiana

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Source: https://sites.mediaschool.indiana.edu/erniepyle/1945/02/06/back-again/

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