There were more than seventy-five American and British correspondents and photographers in North Africa.  Since Allied Headquarters was in a big city to the rear, that was where most of the correspondents stayed.  The number actually in Tunisia at any one time fluctuated between half a dozen and two dozen.  Each of the three big press associations had a five-man staff— usually three men back at headquarters and two at the front.  They rotated every few weeks.

The correspondents in the city lived a life that was pretty close to normal.  They lived in hotels or apartments, ate at restaurants or officers’ messes, worked regular hours, got laundry done, dressed in regulation uniforms, kept themselves clean, and got their news from communiqués and by talking to staff officers at headquarters.

But some of us spent as much as two months in Tunisia without ever returning to the city.  When we did it was a great thrill to come back to civilization—for the first day.

But then a reaction set in, and almost invariably we got the heebie-jeebies and found ourselves nervous and impatient with all the confusion and regimentation of city life, and wished ourselves back at the front again.

The outstanding thing about life at the front was its magnificent simplicity.  It was a life consisting only of the essentials— food, sleep, transportation, and what little warmth and safety a man could manage to wangle out of it by personal ingenuity.  Ordinarily, when life is stripped to the bare necessities it is an empty life and a boring one.  But not at the front.  Time for me had never passed so rapidly.  I was never aware of the day of the week, and a whole month would be gone before I knew it.

At the front the usual responsibilities and obligations were gone.  There were no appointments to keep, nobody cared how anybody looked, red tape was at a minimum.  There were no deskes, no designated hours, no washing of hands before eating, or afterwards either.  It would have been heaven for small boys with dirty ears.

And it was a healthy life.  During the winter months I was constantly miserable from the cold, yet paradoxically I never felt better in my life.  The cold wind burned my face to a deep tan, and my whole system became toughened.  I ate twice as much as usual.  I hadn’t been hungry for nigh onto forty years, but in Tunisia I ate like a horse and was so constantly hungry it got to be a joke.

It was a life that gave a new sense of accomplishment.  In normal life, all the little things were done for us.  I made money by writing, and then used that money to hire people to wash my clothes, shine my shoes, make my bed, clean the bathtub, fill my gas tank, serve my meals, carry my bags, build my fires.

But not in Africa.  We did everything ourselves.  We were suddenly conscious again that we could do things.  The fac that another guy could write a better story than I could was counterbalanced by the fact that I could roll a better bedroll than he could.

Last, and probably most important of all, was the feeling of vitality, of being in the heart of everything, of being a part of it— no mere onlooker, but a member of the team.  I got into the race, and I resented dropping out even long enough to do what I was there to do—which was to write.  I would rather have just kept going all day, every day.

[. . .]

[. .] There was no hedging at the front.  I’ve never known an instance where correspondents were not told, with complete frankness, what was going on.

In the beginning no restrictions were put on us; we could go anywhere we pleased at any time.  But things gradually changed, as the established machinery of war caught up with us.  Then there was a rule that correspondents couldn’t go into the front lines unless accompanied by an officer.  Maybe that was a good rule.  I don’t know.  But there were about two dozen of us who felt ourselves in an odd position, as if we were being conducted through our own house.  The rule died in a few weeks and we were again free to wander alone at random.