WHEN Ernie stepped from the airplane ar Biskra, in early
January of 1943, he was putting his foot on the thresh-
old of the great fame which was to envelop him. He
already had a considerable following. Some sixty newspapers were
printing the column, and thousands of soldiers were receiving
clippings of it from back home. His gift of friendliness made him
welcome any where. But he was not happy. His mind dwelt on
home. He was forty-two, a frail-looking ghost of a man, haggard
from recurrent illness and the tragedy of Jerry.

The soldier life he had seen heretofore had been that of the
garrisons and training areas. The perils he had experienced in Lon-
don had had an impersonal quality quite unlike the intimacy of
German aircraft roaring down upon an open field or road. Now he
was to see, and live, war in the raw.

He had been at the Garden of Allah scarcely three hours when
German planes bombed the airdrome and he learned how hospi-
table a slit trench could be. And it was not long before he saw
the dead pilot of a returning Fortress handed by his comrades,
head downward, from his plane. He found that officers did not
have to nag their men into digging trenches deep enough or pre-
serving a perfect blackout.

Still, Biskra was not really rugged, for a reporter. While the air-
men lived in tents, Ernie wrote Jerry that "I have a nice room in
a desert hotel with a little balcony where I sit in the sun." The
nights were cold, and there was no hot water, but the days were

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