The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-04-22
By ERNIE PYLE

WITH FIFTH ARMY BEACH
HEAD FORCES IN ITALY, Cby
wizeless)-The greatest apprehen-
sion I've found in the Anzio-Net-
tuno area is not among the men on
shore who have been under it con-
sanity for weeks but among the
crews of ships that sit out in the
Mediterranean, unloading.
1t takes several days to unload
a big freighter, and during all that
time they are subject to Smelling
from land and air raids from the
sky. Their situation, I'll admit, is
not an enviable one.
It's true that few of them get
hit, considering the amount of
shooting the Germans do out there.
Yet there is always the possibility
And what gives them the creeps
is when they're sitting on a ship
full of ammunition or high explo-
sive.
The crews Of these big freight
ers are members of the Merchant
Marine. They merely operate the
ship. They don't do the stevedoring
work of unloading. That's done by
soldiers.
They have good system for
this. At Naples whole company
of port-battalion soldiers is put on
each ship just before it sails. They
make the trip up and back with
the vessel, do the unloading at An
zio, and when they return to
Naples they go back to their reg
ular dock jobs there. A different
company goes aboard for the next
trip.
The result is that each one-time
unloading crew is so anxious to
get unloading and get out of Anzio
that everybody works with a vim
and the material flies.
Up until a few weeks ago all
unloading was done by port-batta-
lion groups based at Anzio. AS soon
as the crew finished one ship, it
would have to 60 to work on an
other. There wasn't any end to it.
The boys just felt they couldn't
win. Since the new system went
into effect, efficiency has shot up
like a rocket.
The bigger ships are unloaded
just as they would be at a dock,
with winches hosting out big net
fuls of cargo from the deep holds
and swinging them over the sides
and letting them down-not onto a
dock, however, but into flat-bot-
toned Let's which carry the stuff
to the beaches.
Each hold has a dozen or more
men working down below, plus the
winch crews and signal men. They
are all soldiers. They work in r.
hour shifts, but they get intervals
of rest.
1 was aboard one Liberty Ship
about 10 am. All five matches were
bringing up stuff. You could lean
over and watch the men down be-
low piling up ration boxes. And on
the deck Immediately below us you
could see scores of other, soldiers
trying to sleep, the deafening noise
of the winches making no differ
ence to them. They were the night
shift They slept on folding cots
between blankets, with their
clothes on.
One crew boss was Sergt. Sam
Lynch, Of (2411 West ST. Whining
ton, Del. He is veteran soldier,
having served four months in the
Arctic and IA months on this side.
Before the war he was a fireman
on the Pennsylvania Railroad and
later railway mail clerk. He is
married and has one child.
l asked him how he liked coming
up to Anzio on a ship and he said
he didn't like it any too well. 1.-THE
trouble is" he said, that YOU feel
so darned defenseless. If you could
just man a gun and shoot back it
wouldn't be so bad"
But the Navy operates the gun
crews aboard all these freight