Pyle, Ernie 1900-1945

PYLE, ERNIE 1900-1945

War correspondent

The Regular American

Ernie Pyle was the most famous war correspondent the United States ever produced. A Midwesterner who quit college after three years, Pyle was the eyes and voice of the regular American, able to describe the experience of individuals at war in the language of the readers at home.

First Newspaper Job

Pyle missed World War I when his parents ordered him to graduate from high school and refused to allow him to enlist. As a senior at Indiana University in January 1923, Pyle quit to accept a job as a reporter on the La Porte (Ind.) Heraid. In just a few months he was offered a job as a reporter on the Washington Daily News.

Traveling the Country

In July 1925 he married Géraldine "Jerry" Seibolds, an intelligent but troubled civil-service worker. Calling themselves bohemians, the couple did not allow their friends to know of their marriage for many years. In summer 1926 the Pyles quit their jobs and traveled around the United States. After nine thousand miles in ten weeks, the Pyles ended up in New York, where Ernie took a job on the copy desk at the Evening World. In December 1927 Pyle returned to Washington, D.C., and the Washington Daily News, where he began the first aviation column in the United States.

Roving Columnist

In 1932 he was promoted to managing editor, a position he did not enjoy but which he kept for three years. In 1934 a long automobile trip taken to convalesce from a nasty case of influenza suggested his ultimate talent. After his return to Washington he wrote a series of well-received columns about his vacation trip. He convinced Scripps-Howard, the owner of the Washington Daily News, to employ him as a roving columnist. He began writing six columns per week to be printed in the twenty-six Scripps-Howard papers. For five years Pyle traveled throughout the United States, writing his six columns per week, the whole week's worth often completed in one day.

The Battle of Britain

In November 1940 Pyle sailed for Great Britian to report on the Battle of Britain. One of his first stories shows his talent for writing and for reporting:

Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.

And standing there I want to tell somebody who has never seen it how London looked on a certain night in the holiday season of the year 1940.

For on that night this old, old city—even though I must bite my tongue in shame for saying it—was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.

The Costs of War

Over the next four years Pyle traveled through the war zones, both Atlantic and Pacific—Great Britain, Ireland, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and the islands of the Pacific theater. As he watched the youth of the United States march across Europe and the Pacific Islands, he became fascinated at what war was doing to these young men. They were becoming killers, he realized; he told, indeed warned, the people back home that if and when their brothers, sons, and husbands returned home they would be extremely different from the way they had been when they left.

Okinawa

Pyle left for his last trip at the end of 1944. From Hawaii he traveled with units of the First Marine Division to Okinawa for the invasion that began on 1 April 1945. He went ashore five hours after the first landing and spent two days on the island. He then returned to the ship in order to write. He made several more trips to the island to accompany the Marines. On 17 April 1945 the Marines landed on Ie Shima, a tensquare-mile island west of Okinawa. Pyle did not go ashore on the landing day, as was his normal procedure, but instead waited until the following day. On 18 April 1945 he was killed by a Japanese sniper. There was a great outpouring of grief for the man who had made the life of a soldier and the experience of war available to so many. Gen. Omar Bradley commented that "I have known no finer man, no finer soldier than he."

Source:

Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyles World War II Dispatches, edited, with a biographical essay, by David Nichols (New York: Random House, 1986).