 for better living through chemistry, presents James Gleason as Ernie Pyle, America's best-loved war correspondent in Here Is Your War, a required 100% in the war effort. However, some products are still available for use on the home front. One of these DuPont better things is Speed Easy, the wall paint that covers wallpaper and most wall surfaces with one coat. It thins with water and goes on so easily you can apply it yourself. Speed Easy dries in an hour, saves time, money, and crucial material, thanks to chemical research. Tonight we bring you a letter from the far-flung fighting fronts. It is a letter from your son, your husband, your brother, your sweetheart. The letter these men would like to write if they weren't so busy at the moment battling their way to victory. Yes, this is the letter the one you love would write if he had the experience. The broad sympathy and understanding of a veteran newspaper man like Ernie Pyle. Thousands have said that reading war correspondent Ernie Pyle's daily column is just like getting a letter from their men at the front, telling where they sleep, what they eat, what they are doing and thinking and hoping for. All this and more, Ernie Pyle, Scripps Howard, United Feature Syndicate writer, tells in his new bestseller, Here Is Your War, published by Henry Holt. It is not a book about the war, it is the war. Truly a letter from the one at the front who lives constantly in your thoughts. DuPont is proud to present James Gleason in a radio story by Stanley Young based on Ernie Pyle's new book, Here Is Your War, on the Cavalcade of America. Folks, I wish you could have seen just one of the most unforgettable sights I ever saw as a war correspondent. I was sitting among clumps of sword grass on a steep and rocky hillside that we had just taken. 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 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 violent with attack, fright and butchery. Their days sleepless and miserable were the crash of artillery. The men were walking. They were 50 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 of their inhuman exhaustion. On their shoulders and backs they carried heavy steel tripods, machine gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. All afternoon men kept coming around the hill and vanishing eventually over the horizon. There was one long tired line of ant-like 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 in Tunisia. But I'm getting ahead of my story. At noon one late October day I got the word we would leave London and head for an unnamed coast town. Just after daylight our train pulled up alongside a huge ship. Hello Mr. Pile. I never know where I'm going until I get there and then someone has to tell me. I thought war corresponders knew everything. That's right. We just can't tell everything in account of there's a paper shortage. Palomine says we're going to Russia. I'd say Norway or Iceland. Maybe we're going home Ernie. Lots of guys think so. Don't count on it. Quiet Ziggy quiet. What you got inside your shirt soldier. Well that all that's just something me and my buddy got to keep his company. Puppy. Oh it's my friend Ziggy got one named Marie in here too. Hey quiet Ziggy quiet. Let me get near the gangplank. Better stick by me and keep your shirt. Okay. I'm not scratch the death first. I got the purple heart and two stretcher bears if anybody sees my chest. Mapers please. Muscle your hands soldier. Here's where we check on. Take it easy pops. Remember you don't speak to an officer unless you're spoken to. Mapers please. Oh hello Mr. Oh guys anybody can write this boat. Well we're letting correspondence on. Check. Ernie Pyle correspondent five feet eight one hundred and ten pounds right here. You sure that's you. Am I still listed on the books as having here. You sure are. Well who am I to question the United States government. So long boys. So long Mr. Pyle and good luck. Your beauty rest bunk and water wings are inside. I'll take the bunk but I hope I don't need the water wings. Hey there. Did I hear a dog bark dog. No I was just clearing my throat. I've got one of the ten best calls of nineteen forty two. Oh yeah. Okay. Sound like a dog to me. Move along. Next step up. Gee that was close. Anyway we made it. You've got company for sure now boys. If Marie and Ziggy get married let me know I want to pop. It's a terrific task to organize a ship full of troops. The trip had no sooner started than rehearsals for an enlisted men's variety show began. Well if you could take any thousand soldiers in our army and out of them create a good orchestra. The first show went over terrifically. Joe Kamita a hairy pauper from Brooklyn did a striptease burlesque of Gypsy Rose Lee. His movements were pure genius. Down to his long heavy GI underwear. He swung to the front of the stage lifted his veil and kissed a front row colonel on the top of his bald head. The whole show was marvelously good but there was something more to it than just that. There was the knowledge deep in everybody's mind that this was our night of danger. The radio had just brought word that Germany's entire youth bull pack was concentrated in the approaches of Gibraltar. Everybody knew we were on our way to Africa now yet with that knowledge of danger the boys went buoyantly through their performances. A major turn to me is the show ended. Ernie it's wonderful those boys doing that when they're being taken to war. When you think of people at home squawking their heads off because they can have only 20 gallons of gasoline it makes my blood boil. It was wonderful. With the kind of spirit I went I was to see a thousand times and a thousand different circumstances after we landed. Once Nero ran in an interval between dropping bombs two soldiers were hopping in and out of their foxhole. Hey, you know this is the first place I've ever picked an army chopper tree here in Africa. Well, where do we get the Italy? We'll get some wonderful things to eat. Well, do you think we'll ever get the Italy to Italy until lots of other places, pal? We're going to be the beach busters of every land. You were saying... Oh, baby, am I glad I got those oranges when I did. Why? Look out there, the tree's gone. We're still here, ain't we? Hey, maybe we'll get to see China and Japan before this is over. Maybe we'll get discharged there. I was to hear it again and again. I thought about it the day in Africa I met the remaining members of a gallant bombing crew I had known in England. It was the crew known as the House of Jackson. The one where everybody called everybody else Jackson. They were all living out under the wings of their flying fortress when I bumped into them. Fortress was called Devils from Hell. It had been a long time since I'd seen them but they greeted me as if it had been yesterday. Time doesn't mean much at the front. Hey, Ernie. You fellas prefer sea rations to headquarters, chow? We like it better out here on the field. Nobody bothers us except bomb now and then. Yeah, what do you do about washing? We don't. Hey, by the way, what do you do? What do you mean? I put this shirt on clean two weeks ago. You're just about ripe enough for the House of Jackson. What's the news? You're asking us. I thought that was your business. I've been riding a jeep for two weeks in the field. I lost my notes, my lunch and five pounds. Bombing safer. What's the news for you, Ernie? Except we're alive. Head ten missions over to Nisha. Yeah, I see three swastikas painted on the old crate. The three will confirm we actually got seven. Nice going. I'll stick it in the column. Don't put down anything about us being heroes. We just went out and came back. Got to go again tonight. Anybody want to come over to headquarters? I've got a room waiting over there. You can all take a bath. Thanks. The House of Jackson likes it this way. You get too clean out here in Africa. You get conspicuous. When we were in Arab, we sold him our fortress. What do you mean you sold it? He wanted it. We said we'd rather go for 20,000 eggs. Won't he be surprised when he brings those eggs and finds us gone? Not half as surprised as you'll be if he brings the 20,000 eggs. Oh, brother, what an omelette that would make. We talked on like this for a while, easily, kidding our way. Trying to pretend the war wasn't so bad. It was the Arabs who the most puzzled by American manners. Our army didn't have the strict and snappy discipline of the Germans. Our boys sang in the streets, unbuttoned their shirt collars, laughed and shouted and forgot to salute. A lot of Algerians misinterpreted this as inefficiency. They thought such carefree army couldn't possibly worth the grim Germans. Our soldiers weren't two days in a new place until every Arab and town was able to say in English. Okay, chewing gum, chocolate, cigarette, papaya, okay. How old are you, kid? Okay, soldier. Here, stick a gum. What do you say? Okay, goodbye, soldier. Well, I guess that just about covers the situation in basic English. Okay, I'll come with you on gum. Okay, goodbye. Okay, goodbye. Hey, it says in our African booklet to talk Arabic if you can to the people. No matter how badly you do it, they like it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, for instance, if an Arab asks you what that is on your belt, you're supposed to reply, not, oh, not chewing gum or okay, but hunkakia sugasara. And how many ration points? What does it mean? Oh, it means pistol. Why don't you say so? Yeah. Well, after you've talked Arabic for an hour or two, along that line. An hour or two? Yeah, and you're ready to call it a day. You say to the Arab, Laila taq sayida a taim seek beher. Yeah, I get Muhammad's sword through my gullet, I suppose. Oh, not at all. Laila taq sayida a taim seek beher. It really means good night. Yeah. You see? And I suppose if I was to sneeze, cough, whistle, choke, and hiccup all at once, that would mean I love you, baby. Meet me in front of the corner drugstore right after supper and leave your valet home. One day I was out on the desert at a French garrison. There were several American mechanics and soldiers stationed around some wrecked American planes. We were all afraid of being strafed if the Germans ever came over and saw men working around the planes, and we wanted a nice ditch handy for diving into. The way to have a nice ditch is to dig one. We dug. Four of us dug a winding ditch 40 feet long and three feet deep in about an hour and a half. The day was hot and we took off our shirts. Oh, you know, any five years ago, you couldn't have got me to dig a ditch for $5 an hour. Now look at me. You can't stop me from digging ditches. I don't even want pay for it. I just dig full out. Well, I hope this digging today is always today, but I never wanted to do useless work so bad in all my life. Any time I get 50 feet from my home ditch, you'll find me digging a new one, Father, and I ain't kidding. I'm just like Joe here. I love to dig ditches. Well, I know. What I'm looking for is a collapsible foxhole. The first guy I'd invented is Mace, right? Hey, did I ever tell you guys about my first bombing? Oh, only about a hundred times. Here we go again. Well, I bet Ernie hasn't heard about it. Go ahead, shoot. Well, it was terrible. Yeah. You know, me, I was never so scared in my life. As soon as those bombs started dropping, I dived in a nearest trench and landed right on top of a chaplain. So pretty soon I had an idea. I said, chaplain, are you with me? He said, brother, I'm ahead of you. So he went, out of the ditch and took off for the mountains. Anybody who says a scared man can't make 50 miles an hour up here doesn't know what he's talking about. Me and a chaplain can prove it. In the moonlight, the jerry's picked us out and came down shooting. Well, I dived into an irrigation dish full of water and went right to the bottom. After a while, I said, chaplain, are you still with me? He says, with you, my boy, I'm under you. After this, from 6 p.m. on, my address will be the top of the farthest mountain peak. You sound a little like Sergeant Maple. Who's he? A sap? No, he's a guy who's about 120% with his own outfit. Sergeant told me once that he fully intended to be a hero every time he was in battle. But somehow there was always so much suction in his fox hole he couldn't get out of it. You are listening to James Gleason as he brings you a letter from your boy in the words of America's ace war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, on the Cavalcade of America. Sponsored by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Our play this evening re-enacts some of the eyewitness reporting recorded by Ernie Pyle in his best-selling book Here is Your War. As our play continues, James Gleason, in the role of Ernie Pyle, resumes his report from the fighting front. There was one thing concerning home life that soldiers were absolutely rabid on. Just mention a strike at home to either soldier or officer living on monotonous rations in the mud under frequent bombing. You had a raving maniac on your hands. They felt that way because of sacrifices they'd seen because of things like the one I'm going to tell you about. It was late afternoon at our desert airdrome. It was time for the planes to start coming back from their mission. One by one they did come. Big flying fortresses, fiery little lightnings. Nobody paid a great deal of attention for this returning was a daily routine thing. Finally, they were all in. All that is except one. The Thunderbird is missing. That right pilot? Yes, sir. I'm afraid so. Ten guys I know too. Ten good guys. What happened? Well, the Thunderbird lagged behind and lost altitude just after leaving the target. We stuck by her as long as we could and then we had to leave to have enough fuel to get home. That's mighty hard to do running off like that. Yeah, I know. I know. Yes, sir. Well, she was Bradley crippled and we last saw her. It looked like she could stay in the air for about five minutes. Well, she's an hour overdue. I guess she's gone. Ernie, walk up to the control tower with me. Maybe you'll get a close squint at some German bombers. If you don't, you'll see a good desert sunset. Maybe it'll make us feel better. The sunsets in the desert are truly things with souls. The violence of their color is incredible. Look at the sky and the clouds with a surging beauty. The mountains stand dark against the horizon and palm trees silhouette themselves dramatically against the fiery west. As we stood on the tower looking down over this scene. Ernie, it's beautiful. It's almost too beautiful. That doesn't make sense to think those ten kids are never going to see it again. All veterans, weren't they? Yeah. Decorated for missions in Europe before they ever got to Africa. Ernie, look off there. That's a red flare. It sure is. You did see it, didn't you? I'm not dreaming. It looked like a flare to me. Of course. It couldn't be anything else. It's got to be. It's a thunderbird. Ten dead men are coming home. Where's the flare gun? Give me a green flare. We've got the signal. Watch it below. Flare going off. Look, Ernie. Can you see a tiny black speck? It's them. It sure is. We could all see the speck then. It seemed almost on the ground. It was so low. And in the first glance, we could sense that it was barely moving, barely staying in the air. Crippled and alone, two hours behind all the rest, it was dragging itself home. I was a layman, a reporter, not of the fraternity that flies, but I could feel. And at that moment, I felt something close to human love for that faithful, battered machine. That far dark speck struggling taught us with such pathetic slowness. All of us stood tense, hardly remembering anyone else was there. With all our nerves, we seemed to pull the plane toward us. After a long time, the plane reached the far end of the air-drome, still holding its pathetic little altitude. It skimmed over the tops of the parked planes and kept on actually reaching out, it seemed to us, for the runway. A few hundred yards more now. Could it? Would it? Was it truly possible? They cleared the last plane. They were over the runway. They settled slow. The wheels touched softly and as the plane rolled on down the runway, the thousands of men around that vast field suddenly realized that they were weak and that they could hear their own hearts pounding. I bet you guys got our stuff divided up already. Two motors, huh? Yeah, both on the same side. How do you like that? You were riding low, babies. How'd you get over that 1,600-foot mountain pass? We didn't come over the mountains. We came through them. Besides, Cronk here was blowing on the windshield trying to push it along. Yeah, I just put my foot down and shoved her across that pass like a roller coaster. What happened, Skipper? Well, just about everything that could happen, sir. We got hit first just as we dropped our bomb load. One engine went out, and then a few minutes later, the other engine on the same side went out. You know what that means. Yeah, it means you shouldn't be here now. Right. Well, we were forced to drop down. Most of our guns were out of commission. We figured we were still more than 400 miles from home and then the radio went out. We were losing altitude 500 feet a minute. Well, at 2,000 feet, I called the crew for a consultation and I said, well, boys, you want to jump? And they said, let's ride this one out. That was how he decided, sir. And we flew on another 20 miles. And then a single German fighter appeared and dived at us. His guns didn't do us any good, but it couldn't knock us out of the air. Never for a second could we feel any real assurance of getting home. I think we just talked to Blue Streak all the time and he said, well, we're going to start with you. Congratulations, guys. You have me worried there for a minute. You know, Mr. Pal, I wish you'd mentioned my name and one of your reports so my family would know I'm all right. Sure. Sure. Well, what especially do you want me to say? Just say you met the old fool. That is our war. I haven't told anything about the big picture because I don't know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worms' eye view and the reporters' segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don't want to die, of long, darkened convoys in the middle of the night, of shocked, silent men wandering back down the hill from battle, of chow lines and adabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and sea rations, cactus patches and blown bridges, dead mules, hospital tents and shirt collars greasy black from months of wearing and laughter, laughter too and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of graves and graves and graves. That is our war. And we'll carry it with us as we go on from one battleground to another until it is all over, leaving some of us behind on every beach, in every field. We're just beginning with the ones who lie back of us there in Tunisia. I don't know whether it was their good fortune or their misfortune to get out of it so early in the game. I guess it doesn't make any difference once a man is gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them anymore. They died. And thereby the rest of us can go on and on and on. Thank you, James Glacier. DuPont is honored to dedicate to the mothers, the fathers, the wives of America to all those people with men fighting for victory, this letter from the front and the number one war correspondent, Ernie Pyle. Mr. Gleason will return a little later. In the meantime, here is Gain Whitman speaking for DuPont. I want to talk to you tonight about an agreement, current in the news and of wide public interest. This is the agreement which the DuPont company has had for years with a British chemical company, Imperial Chemical Industries Limited. It provides for a mutual opportunity to acquire patent licenses and technical and scientific information relating to important chemical developments. It has been a matter of public record and known to our government for 10 years. Literally hundreds of transfers of technical and scientific information have occurred for the advancement of chemical science and the benefit of the American people in peace and war. Agreements of a similar character but limited to specific chemical fields have been made from time to time with continental European companies and the use of scientific data obtained from abroad. Many valuable products have resulted for the use of the American public and necessary to our armed forces. In this war, DuPont chemists have materially improved and have further developed the scientific data flowing from these contractual arrangements. The scientific and technical information gained has contributed substantially to American progress and to the success of American arms. Many important products have resulted from these agreements to which reference may be made without disclosing military secrets. Developments were made incident to synthetic ammonia manufactured from nitrogen extracted from the air. Without this, we could not have smokeless powder and TNT in anything like the quantities needed. The development of methyl methacrylate plastic used for the transparent enclosures to be found on every combat airplane stems from these agreements. A new degreasing process vital to quantity production of aircraft engines urgently needed by the Army and Navy. Also high in this list are rayon, dyes, cellophane, Zeeland water repellent for military apparel, as well as many other chemical products. All have been improved and perfected here, but they came originally from abroad. These agreements have been of the greatest benefit in giving to the American public products and processes which in the past have materially raised the standard of living. Products and processes which are a part of the promise for the future of better things for better living through chemistry. And here is James Gleason, star of this evening's Cavalry Day. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, we have brought you a letter from your son, or maybe it was a brother, sweetheart or just a friend. It's a letter you will surely want to answer. No one needs to be told how very much letters mean to the men who are away in service, particularly those who are overseas. But we all need to be reminded occasionally. Won't you please just consider this a reminder from Ernie Pyle who wrote this letter to write tonight and often? Before we announce next week's play, the government has asked us to tell the young women of our audience, those from 17 to 35, of the United States Cadet Nurse Corps which will give any qualified woman a complete course in nursing leading to the degree of registered nurse at no expense and with pay while studying. America urgently needs thousands of nurses. Your nearest hospital has complete information. Next week, Cavalcade will star one of Hollywood's most popular leading men, George Murphy, as it tells the authentic story of one of the least known branches of the Army, the Corps of Military Police. Our play is called Terrence O'Toole MP and as one might gather from the name of its hero, combines a warm human story with action and drama as we follow the military police on a surprise raid in the Mediterranean Theater of War. DuPont invites you to be its guest again next Monday evening when Cavalcade presents George Murphy as Terrence O'Toole MP, a play as packed with action and drama as its young hero's name indicates. And if you think the Army's MPs are a bunch of brawn and beef bullies out to harass their fellow soldiers, you'll have a big surprise next Monday evening when you hear Terrence O'Toole MP on the Cavalcade of America. Cavalcade is pleased to remind its audience that James Gleason, 20th Century Fox star, may currently be seen in Once Upon a Time. The musical score this evening was composed and conducted by Robert Armbruster. This is James Bannon sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor to DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. National Broadcasting Company.