Only months into his encampment at Cairo, a constant reminder of ancient civilization, Ferrell began to use Army connections to launch trips to other Middle East destinations. Not surprisingly given the Ferrell family’s Christian piety, Palestine captured his attention.70 By late February 1943, Ferrell spied Jerusalem and environs as the next tourist visit, targeting “the old city, Mount of Olives, Jericho, Bethlehem, Sea of Galilee, Nazareth, etc.” Young Bob’s good fortune came with the help of his boss, as he relayed, “Being a good friend of the Chaplain’s, I’m sort of in on the ground floor of this trip business.”
The Army assigned Ferrell as a clerk in the chaplain’s office, where he proved himself exceedingly competent and hardworking. Running personal errands for his boss, however, likely accounts as much for the lowly private’s pleasing relationship with the chaplain.71 Bob simply had a winsome way with people, and he had fine-tuned skills as an organist, which he put to good use during Army base worship services. He produced religious activity bulletins, likely an aptitude learned in journalism tasks in high school and through preparing Boy Scout meetings and activities. In all, he fulfilled a variety of mundane but essential duties such as driver, Service Club manager, and supply and payroll clerk; his interactions with so many no doubt illuminated his personal warmth.72 Only two months at post, Ferrell boasted to his parents that Captain Bradford, the 9th AFSC chaplain, recommended his promotion to corporal, and in less than a year, he added two stripes, telling younger brother June, “You can call me ‘Sarge’ now.”73
After the first year of military service, Ferrell found himself well-positioned to explore cities bordering the Mediterranean—Alexandria, Bengasi, Tripoli—among other locales in North Africa, then on to those in the United Kingdom and western Europe (see Figure 1.2), with return trips to Palestine.74 As with Egypt, the letters young Bob sent home read like a vacationer’s travelogue. Bengasi had the look of its Italian conquerors, war-torn “modernistic buildings with a sort of Italian flavor.” He and a friend arriving there by boat dipped into the clean, salty water of its coast for a swim; a sunburn was the result. The trip between Cireniaca and Tripolitania he described as nothing but desert, “where for miles, there is nothing to see but dirty, gravel like sand, littered with tin cans, a few burned out wrecks . . . [and] some kind of desert small, green bushes.” Tripolitania, meaning “Land of the three cities,” the future historian penned to his mom and dad, included Leptus Magna, Sabratha, and Tripoli; each had its allure.75 Leptus Magna was “one of those old Roman [f]ormerly (Phoenician) cities.” Delighted to have “a couple days in which to tour [Tripoli],” Ferrell noted. It was “the old Arab town, in which lived the pirates of the early last century, [but it] looks much like the old city of Jerusalem, dirty, crowded, stinking, narrow streets.” The city’s dietary practices left Ferrell aghast:
Figure 1.2 Soldier Ferrell surveys the Mediterranean Sea in Nice, France, during the Second World War, c. 1944. Source: Courtesy of Carolyn Ferrell Burgess.
Took a walk around the old city, which is very similar to Jerusalem. One sees them cut up meat practically on the sidewalk and throw into the narrow already stinking streets the pigs[’] heads and anything else they have left over. In several places, they were baking bread—the flat pancake bread which the natives eat. The dough lay where the flies could help themselves first. An old black fellow had a long pole with a little round flat part at the end, on which he placed the dough and shoved it back into the oven. In town here, natives carry the stuff on flat box lids . . . all over town and sell it where they can. I saw one fellow whose bread had spilled all over the sidewalks. He was picking it up and putting it back on the tray. If you ever [saw] the sanitary state of the sidewalk . . . you would not want any bread.
Always ready with sardonic wit, Ferrell wrote of his travels in the former Italian stronghold: “From what I saw of Libya, which was most of it, except the desert part, which is most of it, the place is divided into two productive areas, Cirenaica and Tripolitiania. The rest of the country is good for nothing but the flies.” The differences between these two sites, in Ferrell’s mind, was irrigation or not, “rolling country,” Roman ruins, and comparisons to his teenage hometown Waterville, Ohio, and environs. The Army Sergeant described the subsistence agricultural practices of farmers in Tripolitanian small towns: the land divided in small plots, arduous uphill water haul to ditches, buckets of water drained to reservoirs and then to plots, perhaps a cow, the daily grind. The Ferrell family’s Depression era flight-to-farm living in the 1930s no doubt heightened the soldier’s sensitivity to these conditions. Forty miles West of Tripoli stood more ruins, this in Sabratha. After the North African tour, Ferrell secured his first ever airplane ride back to the military base, “which was a lot of fun.”
Tours of England and France awaited the peripatetic staff sergeant by mid-1944 through the V-E Day.76 Red Cross clubs eased the burden of securing lodging. Ferrell shared his travels in England, highlighting the “cathedral and colleges at Oxford,” the unique cathedral at the center of Salisbury, and Stonehenge in Amesbury. At Winchester, the remnants of a castle and its environs, the hospital at St. Cross, and “some nice-looking Elizabethan brick and timber work,” also made the list of interest. Sixteenth-century Gothic-designed parish churches were part of the fascination, but Stonehenge was a disappointment in comparison to Egyptian ancient structures, and Winchester’s abbey cluttered every available space with “hundreds of [plaques] telling of regimental battles, etc., etc.” At Oxford, Ferrell paid six pence to an English-Speaking Union, “a British organization which tries to promote Anglo-American relations,” to learn about the town. Aside from describing eighteenth-century wall paintings at the E. S. house, the tour leader engaged the group on the Christ Church cathedral, first begun as a monastery in typical fashion. Ferrell grew bored with the long-winded distractions and endless “dumb questions” posed by American soldiers and lack of tour progress and wandered off to explore on his own. Pressed to take the noon train back, he had to hurry through the sights. He enjoyed riding English trains. Although compartmentalized, the train seats by the windows permitted one to take in the countryside. He found “British landscape” preferable to the French, “in that everything is orderly and in its proper place.”
Not long after the Germans had been chased out of Paris, but with several months of war left in Europe, Ferrell was exploring well-known travel spots in and around the capital city.77 He also planned trips to London, Ireland, and Wales as part of the adventure.78 Taking in the notable Parisian sights—the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries gardens, Notre Dame, among others—no doubt heightened the lure of history and led to comparisons. Observing exhibitions at the Louvre, he commented, “the only thing on display now is the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities.” Sharing “a K ration bundle of three cigarettes” with a museum guard “who looked especially cold,” unexpectedly gained him admission to an out-of-the-way stairway entry, “where I went down and came into more exhibitions.” Of course, given Ferrell’s natural talents on keyboard, he could not pass up Durand, “the music store,” just near the Louvre. The brisk cold pierced nearly every corner of his journey; it was January, after all. The Red Cross Club became his base of sightseeing operations and tours.
Beyond the sites near the Louvre, the Second World War soldier-tourist made his way to other well-known spots, narrating the journey for his parents: “After freezing slowly in the Louvre . . . [I] walked along the Seine, crossed onto the island where Notre Dame is . . . visited a little chapel which is in the Palais de Justice” [sic]. His telling of the story of “Louis XI” [sic], the acquisition of the “true cross . . . bought from some fellow in Palestine” brought a not unusual realist’s remark: “The true cross business was a good racket in those days, and [I] think lots of people made their fortunes selling them.”79 From Notre Dame, it was on to “second hand bookstores,” a stroll along the Boulevard St. Germaine, a visit to “the church of St. Clotilde, where Cesar Franck was organist for many years,”