Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Ernie Pyle

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Ernie Pyle
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

(born Aug. 3, 1900, near Dana, Ind., U.S. — died April 18, 1945, le Shima, Ryukyu Islands) U.S. journalist. Pyle left Indiana University to become a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Later he acquired a roving assignment for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain; his experiences provided material for a column that appeared in as many as 200 newspapers before World War II. His reporting of the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944. He was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire during the Okinawa campaign. Compilations of his columns include Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1946).

For more information on Ernie Pyle, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

US Military History Companion: Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Military History Companion

(1900–1945), American journalist of World War II

A native of Dana, Indiana, Pyle worked on a local paper before joining the Washington [D.C.] Daily News in 1923, initially covering aviation and later serving as managing editor. In 1935, Pyle began a syndicated column for the Scripps‐Howard organization, describing his experiences motoring around the United States. Over the next four years, his stories focused on the lives of average citizens.

In 1940, Pyle received his first wartime assignment from Scripps‐Howard, covering the Blitz in England. Two years later, he started reporting on the North Africa Campaign and followed U.S. combat troops to Sicily, Italy, and France. Widely respected by both the public and the average G.I., Pyle succeeded in conveying a sense of the hardship, fear, and endurance of the individual soldier, with a special focus on the combat infantryman. At the height of his fame, his columns were carried by over 400 daily newspapers. In 1944, he won the Pulitzer Prize, and Time magazine featured him on its cover.

In 1945, Pyle, at the behest of the navy, shifted to covering the Pacific theater. He was killed by enemy fire on the island of Ie Shima near Okinawa on 18 April 1945.

[See also News Media, War, and the Military.]

Bibliography

  • Frederick S. Voss, Reporting the War: The Journalistic Coverage of World War II, 1994.
  • James Tobin, Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, 1997
US Military Dictionary: Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Military Dictionary

Pyle, Ernie (1900-45) journalist, born Ernest Taylor Pyle in Indiana. Pyle studied journalism at Indiana University. His first job was as a reporter for the La Porte Herald, in La Porte, Indiana; he then moved on to the Scripps-Howard paper the Washington Daily News. He worked for several other papers, including two in New York City, before returning to the Daily News, of which he became managing editor in 1932. In 1935 he became a roving reporter for Scripps-Howard, writing amusing columns based on his experiences traveling around the United States. During World War II, he reported from London on the effects of the German bombardment on the average citizen, describing vividly the courage of the British amid the amorality of war. In 1942 and 1943, he reported from North Africa, covering the bloody battles there. He followed the troops during the invasion of Italy in 1943 and won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for journalism for his affecting, colorful, compassionate reporting of that campaign. He landed in Normandy the day after D-Day (June 6, 1944) and accompanied French troops into Paris. He was covering the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa when he was killed by Japanese fire.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Biography: Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Biographies

Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) was America's most beloved and famous war correspondent during World War II. His sympathetic accounts of the ordinary GI made him the champion of American fighting men.

Born in a little white farmhouse near Dana, Indiana, on August 3, 1900, to William C. and Maria Pyle, Earnest (Ernie) Taylor Pyle later wrote in one of his columns: "I wasn't born in a log cabin, but I did start driving a team in the fields when I was nine years old, if that helps any." He attended Indiana University for three and a half years, majoring in journalism because his classmates considered it "a breeze."

A few months before graduation in 1923 he quit college to take a job as a cub reporter on the La Porte (Indiana) Herald-Argus. Soon after, he was hired as a copy editor by the Washington Daily News. There he met Geraldine Siebolds of Stillwater, Minnesota. In 1926 they were married. Pyle quit his job, drew out his savings to purchase a Model-T Ford roadster, and the young couple began the first of their many driving trips together around the United States. Ending their vacation in New York City, Pyle went to work as a copyreader on the Evening World and on the Evening Post. In 1928 he returned to the Daily News as telegraph editor, then aviation columnist, and from 1932 to 1935 as managing editor.

Wearied of desk work, Pyle started writing pieces as a roving reporter for the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers in 1935. In the next six years he and his wife, known to millions of readers as "that girl who rides with me, " travelled over 200, 000 miles "by practically all forms of locomotion, including piggyback, " Pyle wrote in one of his columns in 1940. Visiting every country in the Western Hemisphere but two and crossing the United States some 30 times, "we have stayed in more than eight hundred hotels… flown in sixty-six different airplanes, ridden on twenty-nine different boats, walked two hundred miles, gone through five sets of tires and put out approximately $2, 500 in tips." Each day's experience became material for a column: a Nebraska town on relief, old men with wooden legs, a leper colony, Devil's Island, zipper-pants difficulties. Written simply and sensitively, like a letter to a friend back home, they revealed the world to millions of farm-bound and pavement bound Americans who could never make such journeys.

In the fall of 1940 Pyle flew to London to report the Battle of Britain. His vivid, grim accounts of England under Nazi German bombings tore at his readers' hearts, and the "little fellow" - I weigh 108 pounds, eat left-handed, am 28 inches around the waist, and still have a little hair left" - previously content to write about little things soon eclipsed the seasoned war correspondents in his cables back home. When American troops arrived in Europe, Pyle lived with them in Ireland; when they went into combat in Africa, his columns communicated all the hurt, horror, and homesickness the soldiers felt. Then Pyle marched with American troops in Sicily and Italy and landed with them in Normandy, France.

His warm, human stories about the Gls became a daily link between the fighting men and millions of American newspaper readers. His writings were read in some 300 newspapers in the United States like personal letters from the front. Throughout the war Pyle championed the common soldier; he spoke the ordinary Gl's language and made it a permanent part of American folklore. His published collections of columns, Here Is Your War and Brave Men, quickly became best-sellers and were purchased by Hollywood as the basis for a motion picture on Pyle's wartime career entitled "Gl Joe." Although his dispatches never glorified war, Pyle, more than any other correspondent, helped Americans to understand the true heroism and sacrifices of the Gls in battle.

In January 1945 Pyle went to report on the war in the Pacific. He did not relish going. He had already achieved fame and wealth. He had frequent premonitions of death - "I feel that I've used up all my chances, and I hate it. I don't want to be killed." But he journeyed across the Pacific to begin writing from foxholes again "because there's a war on and I'm part of it.… I've got to go, and I hate it." He landed in Okinawa with the Marines and trudged along the trails with the foot soldiers. On April 18, 1945, while riding a jeep toward a forward command post on the island of le Shima to cover the front-line combat, Ernie Pyle was hit by a Japanese machine-gun bullet in his left temple. He died instantly. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal announced Pyle's death the next day, saddening the many Americans who eagerly read his column each day and all those servicemen who thought of him as their friend and spokesman. President Harry Truman best summed up Pyle's meaning to the World War II generation of Americans: "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. … He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."

Further Reading

Ernie Pyle's character and personality are clearly communicated in his writings: Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), and Brave Men (1944). His wartime reporting is analyzed in John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory, Politics and American Culture During World War II (1976) and in Richard R. Lingeman, Don't You Know There's a War On? The American Home Front 1941-1945 (1970). In a title that highlights Pyle's work, David Nichols edited Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches (1986). Biographical data appears in his obituary in the New York Times (April 19, 1945).

Additional Sources

Faircloth, Rudy, "Buddy, " Ernie Pyle, World War II's most beloved typewriter soldier, Tabor City, N.C.: Atlantic Pub. Co., 1982.

Melzer, Richard, Ernie Pyle in the American Southwest, Santa Fe, N.M.: Sunstone Press, 1996.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopedia - People
Pyle, Ernie (Ernest Taylor Pyle), 1900-1945, American journalist, b. Dana, Ind. After working (1923-32) as a reporter, an editor, and an aviation writer, he became managing editor of the Washington Daily News. In 1935 he began writing a column syndicated by the Scripps-Howard chain to about 200 newspapers. Pyle captured America's affection by writing about the lives and hopes of typical citizens. During World War II he served as a war correspondent in Europe, N Africa, and the Pacific. He became the most popular of all correspondents, writing about the experiences of enlisted men rather than about battles or the exploits of officers. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished correspondence in 1944, and the next year he was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on Ie Shima. His columns were reprinted in Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), Brave Men (1944), Last Chapter (published posthumously, 1946), and Home Country (prewar writing published posthumously, 1947).

Bibliography

See biographies by L. G. Miller (1950) and J. E. Tobin (1997); D. Nichols, ed., Ernie's War (1987).

Works: Works by Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Works by Authors
(1900-1945)

1941Ernie Pyle in England. A collection of the war correspondent's dispatches from December 1940 to March 1941.
1943Here Is Your War. Pyle's celebrated "worm's-eye view" of the North African campaign. One reviewer reflects the consensus view that "Few others reporting the war have his eye for the detail that counts.... None of the others have his balance between detached observation and personal narrative."
1944Brave Men. Solidifying his reputation as America's favorite war correspondent, Pyle gathers his dispatches from the European front from the landing in Sicily in June 1943 to the liberation of Paris in August 1944.
1946Last Chapter. Killed by a machine-gun bullet on Ie Shima in 1945, Pyle is mourned as a national hero. Collected here are his final dispatches from the Pacific, regarded by most as testimony to his status as America's favorite war correspondent. In the words of one reviewer, Pyle "understood the nameless men who fought and swore and scratched and died and won a war."

Wikipedia: Ernie Pyle
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Ernie Pyle on board the USS Cabot

Ernest Taylor Pyle (August 3, 1900 – April 18, 1945) was an American journalist who wrote as a roving correspondent for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain from 1935 until his death in combat during World War II. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. His articles, about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there, were a folksy style much like a personal letter to a friend. He enjoyed a following in some 300 newspapers.

Contents

Early life and World War I

Pyle was born on a tenant farm near Dana, Indiana. When he was almost 18 years old, he briefly joined the United States Navy Reserve. World War I ended soon after, so Pyle only served for three months.

After the war, Pyle attended Indiana University, traveled to the Orient with fraternity brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and edited the student newspaper—but he did not graduate.[1] Instead, with a semester left to graduate, Pyle accepted a job at a paper in LaPorte, Indiana. He worked there three months before moving to Washington, D.C. A tabloid newspaper, The Washington Daily News, founded in 1921, had hired Pyle as a reporter.[2] All of the editors were young, including Editor-in-Chief John M. Gleissner (one of Warren G. Harding's drinking buddies), Lee G. Miller (author of An Ernie Pyle Album - Indiana to Ie Shima), Charles M. Egan, Willis "June" Thornton, and Paul McCrea.[3] Pyle was named managing editor of the Washington Daily News, and served in that post for three years, all the while fretting that he was unable to do any writing.

While in Washington, he met Geraldine "Jerry" Siebolds, his "fearful and troubled wife", with whom he carried on a tempestuous relationship. They were married in 1925. Jerry suffered from intermittent bouts of mental illness and alcoholism. Pyle described her as "desperate within herself since the day she was born".

In 1926, Pyle tired of work at a desk in the news room, quit his job and headed out on the road to see America with his new wife in a Ford roadster. The Pyles traveled more than 9,000 miles before Ernie returned to his job with the Daily News.[2] In 1928, he became the country's first aviation columnist, a role in which he continued for four years. Famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart summed it up: Any aviator who didn't know Pyle was a nobody.[4] Pyle became managing editor of the Daily News in 1932.

The opportunity to return to writing came in 1934 after he spent time on a leisurely trip to California to recuperate from a severe bout of flu. Upon his return, it was suggested that he write some columns about his trip to fill in for the vacationing syndicated columnist Heywood Broun. The series of eleven columns was a hit. G.B. ("Deac") Parker, editor in chief of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, said he had found in Pyle's vacation articles "a Mark Twain quality that knocked my eye out". In 1935, Pyle was relieved of his duties as managing editor and began writing a national column for the Scripps-Howard Alliance group. He wandered around the country and the Americas in his car, writing columns about the unusual places and people he met in his ramblings. Select columns were later compiled and published in Home Country. Nevertheless, Pyle suffered from fits of deep depression, never satisfied with the quality of his writing.[5] The daily column continued until 1942, after America's entry into the war.

World War II

Ernie Pyle Memorial, Ie-shima Island, Okinawa, Japan

Following the entry of the U.S.the following into World War II, Pyle became a war correspondent, applying his intimate style to the war. Instead of the movements of armies or the activities of generals, Pyle generally wrote from the perspective of the common soldier, an approach that won him not only further popularity but also the Pulitzer Prize. Among his most widely read and reprinted columns is "The Death of Captain Waskow." His wartime writings are preserved in four books: Ernie Pyle In England, Here Is Your War, Brave Men, and Last Chapter.

After his return for a vacation, he wrote to his college roommate, Paige Cavanaugh: "Geraldine was drunk the afternoon I got home. From there she went on down. Went completely screwball. One night she tried the gas. Had to have a doctor." The two were divorced on April 14, 1942, and remarried by proxy while Pyle was in Africa on March 10, 1943.[5] In 1944, he wrote a column urging that soldiers in combat get "fight pay" just as airmen were paid "flight pay." Congress passed a law authorizing $10 a month extra pay for combat infantrymen. The legislation was called "The Ernie Pyle bill."

He reported from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. His reporting was interrupted several times by leaves to return home to care for Jerry while they were still married and to recuperate from the stresses of combat, including nearly being killed in the accidental bombing by the Army Air Forces at the onset of Operation Cobra near Saint-Lo in Normandy in July 1944.[6] Pyle publicly apologized to his readers in a column on September 5, 1944, that he had "lost track of the point of the war," and that another two weeks of coverage would have seen him hospitalized with a war neurosis. He hoped that a rest in his home in New Mexico would restore his vigor to go "warhorsing around the Pacific".[7]

When Pyle decided to cover events in the Pacific, he butted heads with the U.S. Navy over its policy forbidding the use of the actual names of sailors in his reports and won an unsatisfying partial victory in that the ban was lifted only for him.[8] His first cruise was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Cabot, in which he saw an "easy life" in comparison to the infantry in Europe,[9] resulting in several unflattering portraits of the Navy.[10] Pyle was soon criticized by fellow correspondents, newspaper editorials, and G.I.s for giving apparent short shrift to the difficulties of the war in the Pacific.[11] During the tiff he admitted that his heart was with the infantrymen in Europe,[8] but he would persevere to report on their efforts during the invasion of Okinawa. He was noted for having premonitions of his own death and predicted before landing that he would not be alive a year hence.[12]

On April 18, 1945, Pyle died on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, after being hit by Japanese machine-gun fire.[13] He was riding in a jeep with Lieutenant Colonel Joseph B. Coolidge (commanding officer of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division) and three other men. The road, which paralleled the beach two or three hundred yards inland, had been cleared of mines, and hundreds of vehicles had driven over it. As the vehicle reached a road junction, an enemy machine gun located on a coral ridge about a third of a mile away began firing at them. The men stopped their vehicle and jumped into a ditch. Pyle and Coolidge raised their heads to look around for the others; when they spotted them, Pyle smiled and asked Coolidge "Are you all right?" Those were his last words. The machine gun began shooting again, and Pyle was struck in the left temple (however, the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site in Dana, Indiana, contains a telegram from the Government to Pyle's father stating Pyle was killed by a sniper).The colonel called for a medic, but none were present. It made no difference—Pyle had been killed instantly.

He was buried with his helmet on, laid to rest in a long row of graves among other soldiers, with an infantry private on one side and a combat engineer on the other. At the ten-minute service, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army were all represented.[5] Pyle was later reburied at the Army cemetery on Okinawa, then moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific located in Honolulu. When Okinawa was returned to Japanese control after the war, the Ernie Pyle monument was one of only three American memorials allowed to remain in place. Pyle was among the few American civilians killed during the war to be awarded the Purple Heart.

The Ernie Pyle Library in Albuquerque

Honors, archives, and burial

Pyle's legacy is preserved at Indiana University, where he began his journalism training. The School of Journalism is housed in "Ernie Pyle Hall," and scholarships, established soon after his death, are still given to students who have ability in journalism, the promise of future success in the profession, and a military service record. A major initial contribution to the scholarships came from the proceeds of the world premiere of the film, The Story of G.I. Joe, which starred Burgess Meredith as Pyle.

Gravesite of Ernie Pyle in Hawaii

In 1947, his last home in Albuquerque, New Mexico was made into the first branch library of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System, named in honor of its famous occupant. Today, the Ernie Pyle Library houses a small collection of adult and children's books, as well as Pyle memorabilia and archives.[14] The bulk of his archives, however, are at the Lilly Library at Indiana University; the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site at Dana, Indiana; and the Wisconsin State Historical Society. The Ernie Pyle State Historic Site in Dana, Indiana includes Pyle's boyhood home, fully restored. The site also features a World War II-era Quonset hut containing many of Pyle's army artifacts (including his Purple Heart), plus items donated by the people of the community where Pyle grew up.

Ernie Pyle shortly after his death

Pyle is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

A stone monument was erected on Ie Shima at the site where Pyle was killed. The monument has the form of a truncated pyramid echoing the truncated-triangle shape of the "Statue of Liberty" Division's insignia on the upper facade, with engraved text below: "At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945."[15]

Postmortem photo

In June 2008, 63 years after his death, a photo resurfaced,[16] showing Pyle, shortly after his death.[17] The photo, taken by Army photographer Alexander Roberts, was believed by AP archivists and a Pyle biographer to be heretofore unpublished, however, it was published at least twice: in the December 14, 1979 edition of the Burlington, North Carolina Daily Times-News and in the 1983 memoir, Buddy Ernie Pyle: World War II's Most Beloved Typewriter Soldier, by retired Army and AP photographer Rudy Faircloth.[18]

Quotations

Their life consisted wholly and solely of war, for they were and always had been front-line infantrymen. They survived because the fates were kind to them, certainly — but also because they had become hard and immensely wise in animal-like ways of self-preservation.

The best way I can describe this vast armada and the frantic urgency of the traffic is to suggest that you visualize New York city on its busiest day of the year and then just enlarge that scene until it takes in all the ocean the human eye can reach clear around the horizon and over the horizon. There are dozens of times that many.[19]-On preparations to invade at Normandy

Notes

  1. ^ Miller 1946 p.13-15
  2. ^ a b Miller 1946
  3. ^ Miller 1946 pp.16-17
  4. ^ Johnson, Owen V. (April 15, 2005). "Ernie Pyle: 60 years after his death". Indiana University School of Journalism. http://journalism.indiana.edu/archive/news/041505pyle/. Retrieved June 21, 2009. 
  5. ^ a b c Miller, Lee G., The Story of Ernie Pyle: Viking Press 1950
  6. ^ Tobin, p. 196.
  7. ^ Tobin, p. 201.
  8. ^ a b Tobin, p. 234.
  9. ^ Tobin, p. 228.
  10. ^ Tobin, p. 231.
  11. ^ Tobin, p. 236.
  12. ^ Tobin, p. 238.
  13. ^ Nichols, David (1986). Ernie's war: the best of Ernie Pyle's World War II dispatches. New York, New York: Random House. pp. 32. ISBN 978-0394549231. 
  14. ^ U.S. Department of the Interior. "Ernie Pyle's Home a National Historic Landmark". http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061013.html. Retrieved October 31 2006. 
  15. ^ Second to None! The story of the 305th Infantry in World War II, Washington: Infantry Journal Press (1949), p.162. Photo caption: "We pay our final respects to Ernie Pyle, the Doughboy's best friend."
  16. ^ http://www.wrightmuseum.org/ernie_pyle.pdf
  17. ^ Pyle, Richard (2008-02-03). "After 63 years, death photo of famed WWII reporter Ernie Pyle surfaces". The Seattle Times (Associated Press). http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004161868_weberniepyle03.html. 
  18. ^ Pyle, Richard (2008-02-13). "Pyle picture printed in N.C. paper 2 decades ago". News and Observer (Associated Press). http://www.newsobserver.com/nation_world/story/942945.html. Retrieved 2008-02-13. 
  19. ^ The War | Pbs

References

  • Miller, Lee G., An Ernie Pyle Album - Indiana to Ie Shima: Wm. Sloane Associates 1946,p.13-15
  • Tobin, James (1997). Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II. Free Press, ISBN 068486469X; Simon & Schuster (2000), ISBN 978068486693), p. 196.

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ernie Pyle

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US Military History Companion. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ernie Pyle".  Read more