The Simple Life

A description of the way some 75 war correspondents in North Africa live came last week from Ernie Pyle, Scripps-Howard reporter now in Tunisia. Wrote he:

"Each of the three big press associations has a five-man staff--usually three men back at headquarters and two at the front. They rotate every few weeks. The correspondents in the city . . . live in hotels or apartments, eat at restaurants or officers' messes, work regular hours. . . .

"The outstanding thing about life at the front is its magnificent simplicity. It is a life consisting only of the essentials--food, sleep, transportation, and what little warmth and safety you manage to wangle. . . . [At the front] the usual responsibilities and obligations are gone. You don't have appointments to keep. Nobody cares how you look. . . . You have no desk, no designated hours. You don't wash your hands before you eat, or afterwards either. . . . Your whole system gets toughened. You eat twice as much as usual. . . .

"It is a life that gives you a new sense of accomplishment. . . . You have a feeling of vitality. You are in the heart of everything. . . . There is an exhilaration in [war]; an inner excitement that builds up into a buoyant tenseness which is seldom achieved in peacetime. . . ."

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