Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 14, Number 48, DeMotte, Jasper County, 13 October 1944 — I WISH YOU COULD HAVE SEEN [ARTICLE]

I WISH YOU COULD HAVE SEEN

From Ernie Pyle’s “Here Is Your War” “I wish you could have seen just one of the unforgettable sights I saw. I was sitting among clumps of sword grass on a steep and rocky hillside that we had just taken, looking out over a vast rolling country to the rear. A narrow path wound like a ribbon over a hill miles away, down a long slope, across a creek, up a slope, and over another hill. All along the length of that ribbon there was a thin line of men. For four days and nights they had fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept hardly at all. Their nights had been miserable with the crash of artillery. The men were walking. They were fifty feet apart for dispersal. Their walk was slow, for they were dead weary, as a person could tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion . On their shoulders and backs they carried heavy steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes bf ammunition. Their feet semed to sink into the ground from the overload they were bearing. They didn’t slouch. It was the terrible deliberation of each step that spelled out their appalling tiredness. Their faces were black and unshaved. They were young men, but the grime and wdiiskers and exhaustion made them look middle-aged In their eyes as they passed was no hatred, no excitement, no despair, no tonic of their victory—there was just the simple expression of being there as if they had been there doing that forever, and nothing else. The line moved on, seemingly endless. All afternoon men kept coming round the hill and vanishing eventually over the horizon. It was one long tired line of antlike men. There was an agony in your heart and you felt almost ashamed to look at them. They were just guys from Broadway and Main Street, but you wouldn’t remember them. They were too far away now. They were too tired. Their world can never be known to you, but if you could have seen them just once, just for an instant, you would know that no matter how hard people were working back home they never kept pace with those infantrymen. These men are doing their part Are you? Have you contributed to the National War Fund ? Jasper County failed to meet its quota last year. Let’s not fail this time. Give generously when you are called on by a willing home front worker.