Posted on 02/04/2008 2:30:20 PM PST by gate2wire
The figure in the photograph is clad in Army fatigues, boots and helmet, lying on his back in peaceful repose, folded hands holding a military cap. Except for a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he could be asleep.
But he is not asleep; he is dead. And this is not just another fallen GI; it is Ernie Pyle, the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II.
As far as can be determined, the photograph has never been published. Sixty-three years after Pyle was killed by the Japanese, it has surfaced — surprising historians, reminding a forgetful world of a humble correspondent who artfully and ardently told the story of a war from the foxholes.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Wow. Ernie Pyle was the real deal. I have to believe he would have approved of having this picture published.
What about Ernie Hemmorroid..."The Poor Man's Pyle?"
My dad spent a good part of the Battle of Kasserine Pass, in Tunisia, in a fox hole with Ernie Pyle. Dad said you would never know he was there, but every 8th round, when the clip made it’s distinctive ‘ping’ Ernie immediately handed him another clip.
I agree and the article suggested such.
Now one has to log-in to read the article. Sorry about that.
His book, “Brave Men” is the best war journal I have ever read; simple, honest, and true. He lived the life and faced the same real danger the the grunts faced. He puts the current crop of lobby bar ‘reporters’ from CNN to shame. A brave man who died a soldiers death.
Dang. Guess I didn’t search properly. :-)
Great story. I could listen to Ernie Pyle stories all day.
If you want on or off the NM Ping list, please FReepmail me.
Access to the ping list is available to anyone by going to my FR home page.
I have read about this photograph now
im a couple of different news stories.
I have not seen any indication as to an explanation
of where the photo has been kept for 60 plus years
or why it has never been seen before.
It seems rather curious and makes me wonder what
other photos the source may have been hoarding?
At any rate, God Bless Ya’, Ernie.
I’ve never read any of Ernie’s writings but do enjoy “Up Front with Willie and Joe” by writer/cartoonist Bill Mauldin. He also was “one of the guys”. One of my favorite cartoons is: Willie and Joe are sitting behind a machine gun that is still smoking at the barrel and Willie tells Joe, “I could have sworn there was a Kraut behind that cow, Joe, go wake up the cooks”.
I think EP was more celebrated than EH. He was more folksy and reached a much broader audience. He was very influential, a single article by him resulted in changed legislation...
I don’t know if he would want his family to see it. But as a journalist, his job was to capture the truth of the moment, and that photo captures that moment worth far more than the proverbial thousand words.
I can no longer ask Dad to refresh the story, but during a German assault, Ernie dived into the foxhole. Dad asked Ernie if he had a weapon and Ernie told him he wasn’t allowed to, but he was loaded with M-1 clips. (not only smart from a survival standpoint, but a good way to make quick friends with a GI.) I guess I can attribute my very being to God, Dad, Ernie Pyle and the fact that in early 1943 the German Infantry was unfamiliar with the M-1 Garand.
Good read, thanks.
My grandfather was a firefighter on a carrier in the Pacific. He told me stories that still haunt me. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that a shot up plane in flames was not allowed to stay on deck, pilot or no pilot. Different breed of men from a different environment. I couldn't shine his shoes.
You’re welcome.
Did you notice he was 81 when he passed, yet had a 16 yr. old son?
Gotta love that he was still “getting it done” at an advanced age. LOL.
The Ernie Pyle Library in SE Albuquerque is a real treat...It was his old home .
I knew since I was a kid how Ernie Pyle was killed in action alongside the Marines. But that photograph brought forth tears. I wasn’t even born yet and that is a powerful heartrending image, almost wish I hadn’t seen it.
It was said that the enemies we faced with the M-1 Garand listened for that `ping’ meaning the rifle was momentarily empty and would charge hand-to-hand.
There’s even a story that Marines found a way to simulate the `ping’. When the enemy charged, they got mowed down by fully-loaded M-1 fire.
God bless Ernie Pyle!
The periodicals reading room. How great is that? :-)
Also, I read that he was killed by a Japanese machine gun round striking his left temple. You can’t see the left temple in the photo but he looks pretty clean. (Reuters has taught me to be skeptical.)
I didn't. Went right to it.
your tribute to Mauldin was beautiful..... While Ernie Pyle was NOT buried at Arlington, he was interred at the Cemetery of The Pacific (The Punchbowl) near Honolulu, very near my old commanding officer. Visiting those graves touches me deeply, as it should.
That’s a cool story. He sure seemed to be that kind of guy - from his writing.
We still have “imbedded” journalists that escort the troops but they’re more interested in criticizing, reflecting GI gripes or catching someone doiing something wrong to advance their own careers than consider themselves to be a US reporter. They fancy themselves to be citizens of the world and impartial observers....a luxury bought by the very men they’re covering.
An important lesson, one that I fear is lost on today's generation. I still don't understand why our government has so sanitized coverage of today's war. It seems like most everyone has forgotten that our men and women are dying every day in Iraq. Why are the reporters kept out and photos not allowed?
This article explains it explicitly.
I am reminded of a story I heard firsthand. My college roommate was in the invasion in ‘03. One night he was leading a group out on patrol when a reporter showed up from the WSJ. My buddy was ordered to take this young Hemingway with him.
My friend, after trying in vain to get his CO to change his mind, went up to the reporter and said if he made the least amount of noise, he would slit his throat before the iraqis could begin to find them.
After the patrol, the reporter wanted to be his buddy. He was going to make my friend a hero in his story. My friend told him to make one of the enlisted men a hero—he had more important things to worry about. He told him that if his name appeared in print, he would track him down some night. I guess the reporter just about crapped his pants.
Reporters were not held in very high esteem.
Almost looks as if it is posed, perhaps to be used in the event that he did get killed? Wouldn't put it past him. :)
I'm sure his teenage son is real proud of that viagra'ed up, wrinkled, selfish old prune.
The elderly should not be making babies.
Because, unlike Ernie, they aren't respectful of the troops, and do not have their, or the county's, best interests at heart.. when they have a heart that is.
There are two threads on this so I’ll post this in both. Some of Pyle’s writings:
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 ... our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents ... and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.”
++++++++++
Ernie Pyle left Europe in late 1944 to cover the war in the Pacific. He landed with Marines on Okinawa on April 1, 1945, and was killed 17 days later. His pocket contained notes for a last column about where he had been, and the imminent victory over Germany:
“And so it is over. The catastrophe on one side of the world has run it course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last. ...
“In the joyousness of high spirits it is easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be millstones of gloom around our necks. But there are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered across the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world. Dead men by mass production — in one country after another — month after month and year after year...
“To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France ... we saw him, by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference ...”
My grandfather was a firefighter on a carrier in the Pacific. He told me stories that still haunt me.
We all should be proud of our fathers, uncles and the sons and brothers that served during WWII. My father was an infantryman in New Guinea and Phillipine campaigns, where he was wounded and evacuated. Until just before he died, he never spoke a single word of any combat experienced.
I guess that when he knew his time was running short he unloaded on my brother and me some of the most unnerving and harrowing stories that you never saw in any war movie until the beach scenes in "Saving Private Ryan".
A vivid narrative of desparate moments, the sound of a skull cracking from a swung rifle, the panic of being unable to extract his bayonetted rifle from the last victim to meet the next from an unending banzai charge in the night.
Brave men all, the world is a better place because of their courage under fire and the weights they had to heft during, and after, their travails.
And had a "former wife" rather than a widow.
But 65 is not all that an advanced age.
Fred Thompson is 66, and was also 64 or 65 when his youngest son (Samuel) was born.
Then there was Strom Thurman. He was born in December 1902, his oldest child (born out of wedlock) was born in 1925, when he was 22, to his family's 16 y/o Negro maid. (He was a staunch segregationist for most of his career). His youngest child was born in 1976, when Thurman was 73 or 74. His first wife, with whom he had no children was 24 years his junior, his second wife, with whom he had four children (for a total of five) was 43 years his junior. She was 23, and a former Miss South Carolina, he was 66. So all of his kids, save the first one, were conceived when he was 68 or older. He was separated, but never divorced from his second wife, after they had been married for 23 years.
Viagra was not available 22 years ago. (he died 5 years ago, and the son would have been conceived about 17 years before that.)
Thank you for that post.
I had to smile at the ‘Breakfast in bed’ one, too. Mauldin was the real deal, too.
“While Ernie Pyle was NOT buried at Arlington, he was interred at the Cemetery of The Pacific (The Punchbowl) near Honolulu, very near my old commanding officer.”
Thank you for your service.
That’s pretty cool. What a great story.
“Brave men all, the world is a better place because of their courage under fire and the weights they had to heft during, and after, their travails.”
Exactly. My grandmother had 4 blue star flags in her window.
No one talked about what they did. Just this summer, did one of my Uncles(Marine, 5th Amphib) start with some stories. Unbelievable.
God Bless them.
That's what I thought. Nobody falls down with their hands folded, and who would pose a dead body for a photo?
I think I remember that story. He was being taken down off the side of a mountain in Italy, I believe. He went up with a supply column of mules. I think Pyle was under fire during that, too. Seem to remember something about a German emplacement that had them under observation across a valley and on a ridge but it was unassailable by artillery. He was an ideal reporter - and American in every respect. Too bad that ‘profession’ is so larded with Marxists, globalists and down right morons today.
Alexander Gardner.
In Ernie Pyle's case, his buddies probably put him in a "rest in peace" position after he was killed and somebody with the camera then later took the photo.
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