Orville Prescott describes the depressed, alcoholic Ernie Pyle as “friendly as a puppy.” You have to wonder about journalists sometimes.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but in a way it was fitting that Pyle did not survive the war. Writing from the front was his one true gift, and he did it well. He hadn’t done anything of particular journalistic note before then, even though he’d been a journalist since the 1920s. I would guess he would not have done anything of note after the war, either. And his days would have been sad and empty. By not surviving the war, we were all spared that image. Instead, he goes down in history as one of the greatest combat journalists of all time.