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thedrifter
02-04-08, 06:17 AM
Feb 4, 2008

In columns, Ernie Pyle told stories of ordinary soldiers

‘Job of us writers to transfer all that drama back to you folks’

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK— Ernie Pyle’s writings during World War II dealt mainly with the lives of ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, hundreds of whom were named in his stories from North Africa, Italy, France and the Pacific.

He knew a lot of generals, and contrary to popular myth, he respected them. But they were not the ones he traveled, ate, shivered and conversed with on a daily basis.


Here are some excerpts from Pyle’s syndicated columns that appeared regularly in more than 200 daily newspapers and 400 weeklies between 1942 and his death in 1945.


North Africa, 1943
“Is war dramatic, or isn’t it? Certainly there are great tragedies, unbelievable heroics, even a constant undertone of comedy. It is the job of us writers to transfer all that drama back to you folks at home. Most of the other correspondents have the ability to do it. But when I sit down to write, here is what I see instead:

“Men at the front suffering and wishing they were somewhere else, men in routine jobs just behind the lines bellyaching because they can’t get to the front, all of them desperate for somebody to talk to besides themselves, no women to be heroes in front of, damn little wine to drink, precious little song, cold and fairly dirty, just toiling from day to day in a world full of insecurity, discomfort, homesickness and a dulled sense of danger ...”

November, 1942
A letter in Time magazine, urging Americans to buy war bonds instead of Christmas gifts, was well received by U.S. troops in North Africa — until they found out the writer was a soldier based in New Mexico. Ernie Pyle was with GIs digging a trench for protection from German planes:

“ ‘Them poor dogfaces back home,’ said one of the ditch-diggers, ‘they’ve really got it rugged. Nothing to eat but them old greasy pork chops and them three-inch steaks all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to eat eggs several times a week.’

“ ‘And they’re so lonely,’ said another. ‘No entertainment except to rassle them old dames around the dance floor. The USO closes at 10 o’clock and the night clubs at three. It’s mighty tough on them.’

“ ‘And they probably don’t get no sleep,’ said another, ‘sleeping on them old cots with springs, and scalding themselves in hot baths all the time. ...

“ ‘And when they put a nickel in the box nothing comes out but Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and such trash as that. My heart just bleeds for them poor guys.’ ”

Tunisia, April 1943
Pyle told how the Americans laid out their dead in cemeteries with hundreds of graves, marked with crosses and the Star of David, while the Germans buried theirs in smaller roadside plots ringed by white stones:

“In one German cemetery of about a hundred graves, we found 11 Americans... Their graves are identical with those of the Germans except that beneath the names on the wooden crosses is printed ‘Amerikaner,’ and below that the Army serial number. We presume their dog tags were buried with them. On one of the graves ... is also printed: ‘T-40.’ The Germans apparently thought that was part of his number. Actually it only showed that the man had his first anti-tetanus shot in 1940.”

Allied invasion of Sicily, 1943
“The American invading force was brought from Africa to Sicily in three immense fleets sailing separately. Each of the three was in turn broken down into smaller fleets. It was utterly impossible to sail them all as one fleet. That would have been like trying to herd all the sheep in the world with one dog.”

Italy, Jan. 10, 1944
Pyle’s most famous column concerned the death of infantry Capt. Henry Waskow, who was exceptionally popular with his men. His body was brought down a mountainside by mule, and laid next to four others:

“The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave ... one soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, ‘God damn it.’ That’s all he said and then he walked away. ...

“Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said: ‘I sure am sorry, sir.’

“Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand in his own, he sat there for a full five minutes ... looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

“And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of the uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.”

Normandy, June, 1944
Pyle didn’t get ashore at Omaha Beach until the day after D-Day. But then he took a walk down what he called “the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France,” and found both “wrecked machines of war” and human litter:

“It extends in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach ... here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out — one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.

“Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes ... torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.

“In every invasion you’ll find at least one solder hitting the beach at H-hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment making our beach — this beach of first despair, then victory — is a tennis racket. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.”

1945
Pyle explained why he focused on the GI’s war rather than grand strategy:

“I haven’t written about the Big Picture because I don’t know anything about it.”

Ellie