ENGLAND, OCTOBER, 1942: It is a strange night, here in the American camp.

There are rows on rows of khaki tents, some of them round, some of them square. They are built on ridges, with depressions in between for drainage.

We are in a far country from home. Work is urgent and grave in this camp. The air is chill and damp, and ghostlike sentries walk their posts in the blackout. If there were only bonfires about we might be a picture from Civil War days.

I wander among the tents, picking up new friends here and there. Even in the dark the presence of a stranger draws soldiers as molasses draws flies, for an outsider in camp is a curiosity and anything that breaks the monotony is welcome.

THE BOYS IN THIS CAMP work seven days a week, unloading the vast and constant flow of war supplies from America out of trucks and freight cars. It is dark now when they get up of a morning. It will soon be dark before they get back from work in the evening.

Their tents have neither heat nor light. There isn't much to do but sit on your mattress in the dark tent till bedtime. There are no chairs and no cots. The straw-filled mattresses lie on the ground. The boys stack their blankets in daytime to keep them dry.

At night some of them write short letters while holding a flashlight. Some go to the water faucets and wash clothes in the dark. Some gather in tents and play guitars and sing old songs. I even heard a violin accompaniment to singing in one tent.

WE STOOD IN THE DARK, talking. New boys would join our huddle out of curiosity, and after hearing me say something they'd speak up with, "Say, you're an American, aren't you?"

And I'd say yes and they'd shake hands and say, "Well, I'll be damned, I never expected to see an American over here," or, "Boy, it's sure good to see an American."

That's a funny psychology the soldiers have. They're surrounded by Americans, of course. But they're all in uniforms, and they cease to be Americans to each other and become just soldiers. When they see an American in civilian clothes they look upon him as the first real American they've seen since coming over here.

It's a kind of flash-back to home and normal life before everything went-olive drab.

DEEP DARKNESS came and we were only forms in a circle. We stood there in the night and talked for nearly three hours. We stood because there wasn't any place to sit down. Inside the crowded tents other boys had gone to bed. Now and then we'd stick our heads inside a tent flap to light a cigaret and then light one from another all the way around.

In this camp there are both Negro and white troops. They are given liberty on alternate nights. Only a certain percentage of any camp is ever allowed out at any one time. Thus it works out that each man gets only one evening a week in town.

The nearest town is two miles away, and most of them have to walk. By the time they get support and are ready to start it is 8 o'clock. They have to be back by 11.

They have only chiily water to wash and shave in, standing at an outdoor trough. They use an outdoor latrine. There is no possible way for them to take a bath.

TRUE, THE ARMY is building concrete-floored barracks huts for them, out of composition material, as fast as it can. But labor is scarce, and work goes slowly.

"If they'd take a few of us off unloading, We could throw up those barracks ourselves," one of the boys said. "There's a lot of fair carpenters among us."

But the unloading of supplies musn't stop. There are hardly enough men even now to keep up with the flow. The Army hopes to have everybody housed before real winter comes.

Some of the boys I talked with had come recently from another camp, where their living conditions were even better than they'd had back home. That's the way camps go. Some good, some bad. The soldiers seem to feel it's just a matter of your good luck or your bad luck, and you can't have it good all the time.

I've almost got so I hate the word "morale" because its used so much by the professionals. But there is such a word, so I will use it and say that the morale of our troops in England is not only fine, but is downright admirable.

--Ernie Pyle