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Ernest Taylor Pyle (August 3, 1900 – April 18, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist. As a roving correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, he earned wide acclaim for his accounts of ordinary people in rural America, and later, of ordinary American soldiers during World War II. His syndicated column ran in more than 300 newspapers nationwide.
From 1935 through 1941 he traveled throughout the United States, writing about rural towns and their inhabitants. After the U.S. entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style to his wartime reports, first from the home front, and later from the European and Pacific theatres. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima during the Battle of Okinawa, the very last pitched battle of World War Two.
At the time of his death he was among the best-known American war correspondents. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his spare, poignant accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told", wrote Harry Truman. "He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."[1]
From 1935 through 1941 he traveled throughout the United States, writing about rural towns and their inhabitants. After the U.S. entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style to his wartime reports, first from the home front, and later from the European and Pacific theatres. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima during the Battle of Okinawa, the very last pitched battle of World War Two.
At the time of his death he was among the best-known American war correspondents. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his spare, poignant accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told", wrote Harry Truman. "He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."[1]
Ernie Pyle - Wikipedia
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Thank you my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that August 3 is the anniversary of the birth of what would be called an embedded war correspondent nowadays
Ernest Taylor Pyle who covered the day to day struggles, hopes and dreams of soldiers, marines and sailors in WWII while living with them and enduring what they did. Akin to a medic he was unarmed.
Reading his "Brave Men" got interested in WWII history. It also helped fuel my desire to become a soldier. Later I read Here is Your War and was saddened when I read his posthumously published Last Chapter.
He lobbied for combat pay for soldiers, marines and sailors. Congressed pass ed the bill min 1944 authorizing combat pay.
Ernest "Ernie" Taylor Pyle was killed on April 18, 1945, Iejima, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. He was working on what would be his last book that was posthumously titled Last Chapter which was focused on the lives of soldiers and marines in the Pacific battles and on board the ships in preparation for those battles.
Images: Brave Men by Ernie Pyle; Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle; Death of Ernie Pyle April 18, 1945; Last Chapter by Ernie Pyle
Background from anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/ [login to see] [login to see] /anb [login to see] 697-e-1601336
"Ernie Pyle. (03 August 1900–18 April 1945), newspaper reporter, was born Ernest Taylor Pyle near Dana, Indiana, the son of Will Pyle and Maria Taylor, farmers. Pyle graduated from high school and then studied journalism at Indiana University. He quit just short of obtaining his degree to become a reporter for the La Porte Herald in La Porte, Indiana, in 1923. After a few months, he was hired as a copy editor for the Washington Daily News, owned by the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.
In 1925 Pyle married Geraldine “Jerry” Siebolds, a civil service worker with a bohemian lifestyle to match his own; they had no children. They quit their jobs the next year and took a 9,000-mile summer drive around the country, ending in New York City, where Pyle worked at the copy desk for the Evening World and then the Evening Post. He returned to his Washington paper as telegraph editor, started the first daily aviation column in the United States, and became aviation editor for the Scripps-Howard chain. He was named managing editor of the Daily News in 1932. Three years later he happily gave up his desk job to become a roving reporter for Scripps-Howard. He crisscrossed the United States, went to Alaska and Hawaii, toured Central and South America, and filed six syndicated columns a week.
The public enthusiastically received his generally lighthearted columns, which included human interest pieces, descriptions of scenery, escapist humor, and self-deprecating anecdotes as well as a few poignant accounts of the downtrodden. His work ultimately appeared in nearly 200 newspapers. His wife, Jerry, who sometimes stayed behind, unfortunately began to treat severe depression with alcohol, sedatives, and amphetamines.
Then came World War II. Leaving Jerry in Albuquerque, Pyle, though in poor health from the effects of influenza, too many cigarettes, chronic head colds, and perhaps incipient anemia, went to England in December 1940 to report on what the German bombardment of London and elsewhere was doing to ordinary citizens. His columns soon began to run in Stars and Stripes, the daily U.S. newspaper for service personnel. He returned home in March 1941 and helped his wife recover from an attempt at suicide. He sought treatment for impotence, obtained a divorce in April 1942, had Jerry placed in a Colorado sanatorium briefly, and returned to England. He filed brilliant dispatches on the bulldog courage of the British, on the boredom and dreams of ordinary American GIs training in England and Ireland for the invasion, and on their humorous bouts of culture shock. He shipped to North Africa that fall and reported from the vast front there until the summer of 1943. For the first time he covered sickening carnage and discussed the amorality of wartime killing. He admired combat pilots but positively revered long-suffering infantrymen; they were cold, dirty, apprehensive, lonely, understanding, funny—and routinely brave.
The year 1943 was memorable for Pyle. By proxy on 10 March he remarried Jerry, who was by then clerking for the Air Force in Albuquerque; he also published Here Is Your War: The Story of G.I. Joe, written from what he called his “worm’s-eye view.” After advancing with the troops into Sicily, he returned home to make publicity appearances. He was reunited with his wife but soon had to hospitalize her again. At the end of the year, he compulsively plunged back into war—on the Italian front. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1943 reporting. Here is a representative example of Pyle’s low-key but gripping prose:
The commanding officer told us to find good places among the rocks … and dig in… . He didn’t have to do any urging. Machine guns were crashing a few hundred yards off… . Now and then a bullet would ricochet down among us. We talked only in low voices. The white rocks were like ghosts and gave the illusion of moving… . At dawn the artillery … increased to a frenzy that seemed to consume the sky (Ernie’s War, p. 118).
Pyle went to England in the spring of 1944 and landed in Normandy one day after D-Day. He accompanied French troops into Paris and soon returned home to public adulation. His wife again attempted suicide. She was hospitalized and given shock treatments. Pyle headed for the Pacific theater of operations at the beginning of 1945, eventually getting to Okinawa with U.S. marines. While covering the Okinawa and Iwo Jima invasions, Pyle was on Ie Shima, a nearby island, when a bullet from a Japanese sniper pierced his left temple, killing him instantly.
In addition to Pyle’s war reports comprising Here Is Your War, other dispatches had been collected and published as Ernie Pyle in England (1941) and Brave Men (1944). His G.I. Joe, a 1944 overseas-edition compilation, was remarkably popular with troops. The Scripps-Howard Indianapolis Times auctioned Pyle’s last manuscript and paid into the war-bond drive the incredible winning bid of $10,525,000 (25 June 1945). The movie The Story of G.I. Joe premiered in Washington, D.C., on 4 July 1945, starring Burgess Meredith as Pyle and Robert Mitchum as Captain Bill Walker, an infantry officer based on Captain Henry T. Waskow, whose death in combat in Italy Pyle had reported. Seven months after Pyle’s death, Jerry suffered kidney failure and died of uremic poisoning.
Ordinary soldiers, in addition to a reading public estimated to number 13 million at the peak of his success, revered Pyle because of his humor, sensitivity, warmth, sense of camaraderie, and eagerness to share their mud-and-blood dangers. His unique style combines detail and terseness, objective evaluation, humor, and poignancy. Many World War II correspondents concentrated on politics, the “big picture,” and strategies and tactics. Others analyzed postwar implications of wartime decisions. Still others clung to high and mighty persons and sketched their personalities. Among Pyle’s near-peers, Ernest Hemingway, Edward R. Murrow, and William L. Shirer may be named. Pyle almost exclusively sought to interpret the ordinary enlisted man’s thoughts and behavior.
Bibliography
The Weil Journalism Library and the Lilly Library, both of Indiana University, Bloomington, contain much material by and relating to Pyle. Last Chapter, a final collection of Pyle’s war dispatches, appeared posthumously (1946). Later publications capitalizing on his status as a national hero include a book of pictures, An Ernie Pyle Album: Indiana to Ie Shima, with text by Lee G. Miller (1946); Home Country (1947), a compilation from Here Is Your War and Brave Men; Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches, ed. David Nichols (1986); and Ernie’s America: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s 1930s Travel Dispatches, ed. Nichols (1989). Lee G. Miller, who was Pyle’s friend, longtime editor, and informal business agent, wrote the standard biography, The Story of Ernie Pyle (1950). Paul Lancaster, “Ernie Pyle: Chronicler of ‘The Men Who Do the Dying,’ ” American Heritage 32 (Feb.–Mar. 1981): 30–41, is a splendid essay. Frederick S. Voss, Reporting the War: The Journalistic Coverage of World War II (1994), places Pyle among his fellow journalists and incidentally pairs him with Bill Mauldin because of their common worm’s-eye view. Useful comments about the movie The Story of G.I. Joe are contained in Jerry Roberts, Robert Mitchum: A Bio-Biography (1992), and Burgess Meredith, So Far, So Good: A Memoir (1993). An extensive front-page obituary, “Ernie Pyle Is Killed on Ie Island; Foe Fired When All Seemed Safe,” is in the New York Times, 19 Apr. 1945."
Ernie Pyle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdWpgc5A68
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SSG John Ross SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins Cpl Gabriel F. CW5 Jack Cardwell
Ernest Taylor Pyle who covered the day to day struggles, hopes and dreams of soldiers, marines and sailors in WWII while living with them and enduring what they did. Akin to a medic he was unarmed.
Reading his "Brave Men" got interested in WWII history. It also helped fuel my desire to become a soldier. Later I read Here is Your War and was saddened when I read his posthumously published Last Chapter.
He lobbied for combat pay for soldiers, marines and sailors. Congressed pass ed the bill min 1944 authorizing combat pay.
Ernest "Ernie" Taylor Pyle was killed on April 18, 1945, Iejima, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. He was working on what would be his last book that was posthumously titled Last Chapter which was focused on the lives of soldiers and marines in the Pacific battles and on board the ships in preparation for those battles.
Images: Brave Men by Ernie Pyle; Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle; Death of Ernie Pyle April 18, 1945; Last Chapter by Ernie Pyle
Background from anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/ [login to see] [login to see] /anb [login to see] 697-e-1601336
"Ernie Pyle. (03 August 1900–18 April 1945), newspaper reporter, was born Ernest Taylor Pyle near Dana, Indiana, the son of Will Pyle and Maria Taylor, farmers. Pyle graduated from high school and then studied journalism at Indiana University. He quit just short of obtaining his degree to become a reporter for the La Porte Herald in La Porte, Indiana, in 1923. After a few months, he was hired as a copy editor for the Washington Daily News, owned by the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.
In 1925 Pyle married Geraldine “Jerry” Siebolds, a civil service worker with a bohemian lifestyle to match his own; they had no children. They quit their jobs the next year and took a 9,000-mile summer drive around the country, ending in New York City, where Pyle worked at the copy desk for the Evening World and then the Evening Post. He returned to his Washington paper as telegraph editor, started the first daily aviation column in the United States, and became aviation editor for the Scripps-Howard chain. He was named managing editor of the Daily News in 1932. Three years later he happily gave up his desk job to become a roving reporter for Scripps-Howard. He crisscrossed the United States, went to Alaska and Hawaii, toured Central and South America, and filed six syndicated columns a week.
The public enthusiastically received his generally lighthearted columns, which included human interest pieces, descriptions of scenery, escapist humor, and self-deprecating anecdotes as well as a few poignant accounts of the downtrodden. His work ultimately appeared in nearly 200 newspapers. His wife, Jerry, who sometimes stayed behind, unfortunately began to treat severe depression with alcohol, sedatives, and amphetamines.
Then came World War II. Leaving Jerry in Albuquerque, Pyle, though in poor health from the effects of influenza, too many cigarettes, chronic head colds, and perhaps incipient anemia, went to England in December 1940 to report on what the German bombardment of London and elsewhere was doing to ordinary citizens. His columns soon began to run in Stars and Stripes, the daily U.S. newspaper for service personnel. He returned home in March 1941 and helped his wife recover from an attempt at suicide. He sought treatment for impotence, obtained a divorce in April 1942, had Jerry placed in a Colorado sanatorium briefly, and returned to England. He filed brilliant dispatches on the bulldog courage of the British, on the boredom and dreams of ordinary American GIs training in England and Ireland for the invasion, and on their humorous bouts of culture shock. He shipped to North Africa that fall and reported from the vast front there until the summer of 1943. For the first time he covered sickening carnage and discussed the amorality of wartime killing. He admired combat pilots but positively revered long-suffering infantrymen; they were cold, dirty, apprehensive, lonely, understanding, funny—and routinely brave.
The year 1943 was memorable for Pyle. By proxy on 10 March he remarried Jerry, who was by then clerking for the Air Force in Albuquerque; he also published Here Is Your War: The Story of G.I. Joe, written from what he called his “worm’s-eye view.” After advancing with the troops into Sicily, he returned home to make publicity appearances. He was reunited with his wife but soon had to hospitalize her again. At the end of the year, he compulsively plunged back into war—on the Italian front. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1943 reporting. Here is a representative example of Pyle’s low-key but gripping prose:
The commanding officer told us to find good places among the rocks … and dig in… . He didn’t have to do any urging. Machine guns were crashing a few hundred yards off… . Now and then a bullet would ricochet down among us. We talked only in low voices. The white rocks were like ghosts and gave the illusion of moving… . At dawn the artillery … increased to a frenzy that seemed to consume the sky (Ernie’s War, p. 118).
Pyle went to England in the spring of 1944 and landed in Normandy one day after D-Day. He accompanied French troops into Paris and soon returned home to public adulation. His wife again attempted suicide. She was hospitalized and given shock treatments. Pyle headed for the Pacific theater of operations at the beginning of 1945, eventually getting to Okinawa with U.S. marines. While covering the Okinawa and Iwo Jima invasions, Pyle was on Ie Shima, a nearby island, when a bullet from a Japanese sniper pierced his left temple, killing him instantly.
In addition to Pyle’s war reports comprising Here Is Your War, other dispatches had been collected and published as Ernie Pyle in England (1941) and Brave Men (1944). His G.I. Joe, a 1944 overseas-edition compilation, was remarkably popular with troops. The Scripps-Howard Indianapolis Times auctioned Pyle’s last manuscript and paid into the war-bond drive the incredible winning bid of $10,525,000 (25 June 1945). The movie The Story of G.I. Joe premiered in Washington, D.C., on 4 July 1945, starring Burgess Meredith as Pyle and Robert Mitchum as Captain Bill Walker, an infantry officer based on Captain Henry T. Waskow, whose death in combat in Italy Pyle had reported. Seven months after Pyle’s death, Jerry suffered kidney failure and died of uremic poisoning.
Ordinary soldiers, in addition to a reading public estimated to number 13 million at the peak of his success, revered Pyle because of his humor, sensitivity, warmth, sense of camaraderie, and eagerness to share their mud-and-blood dangers. His unique style combines detail and terseness, objective evaluation, humor, and poignancy. Many World War II correspondents concentrated on politics, the “big picture,” and strategies and tactics. Others analyzed postwar implications of wartime decisions. Still others clung to high and mighty persons and sketched their personalities. Among Pyle’s near-peers, Ernest Hemingway, Edward R. Murrow, and William L. Shirer may be named. Pyle almost exclusively sought to interpret the ordinary enlisted man’s thoughts and behavior.
Bibliography
The Weil Journalism Library and the Lilly Library, both of Indiana University, Bloomington, contain much material by and relating to Pyle. Last Chapter, a final collection of Pyle’s war dispatches, appeared posthumously (1946). Later publications capitalizing on his status as a national hero include a book of pictures, An Ernie Pyle Album: Indiana to Ie Shima, with text by Lee G. Miller (1946); Home Country (1947), a compilation from Here Is Your War and Brave Men; Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches, ed. David Nichols (1986); and Ernie’s America: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s 1930s Travel Dispatches, ed. Nichols (1989). Lee G. Miller, who was Pyle’s friend, longtime editor, and informal business agent, wrote the standard biography, The Story of Ernie Pyle (1950). Paul Lancaster, “Ernie Pyle: Chronicler of ‘The Men Who Do the Dying,’ ” American Heritage 32 (Feb.–Mar. 1981): 30–41, is a splendid essay. Frederick S. Voss, Reporting the War: The Journalistic Coverage of World War II (1994), places Pyle among his fellow journalists and incidentally pairs him with Bill Mauldin because of their common worm’s-eye view. Useful comments about the movie The Story of G.I. Joe are contained in Jerry Roberts, Robert Mitchum: A Bio-Biography (1992), and Burgess Meredith, So Far, So Good: A Memoir (1993). An extensive front-page obituary, “Ernie Pyle Is Killed on Ie Island; Foe Fired When All Seemed Safe,” is in the New York Times, 19 Apr. 1945."
Ernie Pyle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdWpgc5A68
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SSG John Ross SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins Cpl Gabriel F. CW5 Jack Cardwell
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Maj Marty Hogan, the Ernie Pyle Memorial is on the island of Ie Shima (Iejima) northwest of Okinawa Island, at the spot where Pyle was killed. The inscription on the memorial reads simply: "AT THIS SPOT THE 77th INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY ERNIE PYLE 18 APRIL 1945." My father, LTJG Jack Curlee (shown at right), visited the memorial between 7AUG45 and 16AUG45, not long after it was placed.
SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth LTC Stephen F. COL Mikel J. Burroughs PO3 Phyllis Maynard
SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth LTC Stephen F. COL Mikel J. Burroughs PO3 Phyllis Maynard
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LTC Stephen C.
Excellent, Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen! Because of the remote location of the memorial, it's rarely visited except by military personnel.
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Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen
It was a tour set up by MWR at Kadena AFB. My dad worshiped Ernie Pyle so I couldn't pass up the chance to visit and get a picture.
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PO3 Phyllis Maynard
LTC Stephen C. this is such a wonderful history that you have had passed to you. Being a part of the history that your father was a part of thru being his son is what keeps comrade Ernie Pyle a visible hero.
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