Oh No. Ernie Pyle was a very different man from the one Joe Galloway is, though I believe Pyle would appreciate and recognize Galloway for keeping the standards of his profession raised high.
Though Pyle died before I was born, I had the distinct privilidge of attending Indiana University's School of Journalism- from which Pyle did not graduate- at Ernie Pyle Hall, in which several of his personal mementoes were displayed, including his battered portabble typewriter. My own interest was in photojournalism rather than crafting stories with words, since Mr. Pyle's was a hard act to follow, but not wanting to hold all my eggs in one basket, I established the credentials as a transportation writer, based in part on my graduate thesis on Ernie Pyle's prewar writings as an aviation correspondent for Scripps-Howard. Later in my career when a publisher armtwisted me into taking a position as a syndicated columnist, I did so on the condition that I could follow in Pyle's footsteps as a transportation columnist, and did so until the events of Desert Shield and my position as the only veteran on our flagship newspaper's staff gave me the additional hat of military affairs writer to wear as well. I sure didn't plan it that way.
And when, after Desert Shield and Desert Storm [though not the stillborn Operation Desert Sabre assault on and occupation of Baghdad] I found myself with a national award for the columns on the subject I'd written, including one for a Spec 4 truckdriver from our county who was one of the seven from our state who came home in a rubber bag inside an aluminum coffin. That took any joy or pride out of it for me, and I really didn't enjoy my work much until something interesting happened a couple of years later.
Fifty years after Ernie Pyle was killed by a Jap machinegunner on Ie Shima, they opened a museum to him in his little hometown of Dana, Indiana. It's not fancy, being a couple of connected G.I. Quonset huts with some interesting and some quaint displays, reached via access from his boyhood home, moved into town from its original location as *the Sam Elder place* a couple of miles out the main street's road past the railroad tracks through the town. It's not fancy, but I think if Ernie could see what they've done, and what of his life they've remembered, he'd be awed and humbled. And if he could have been there that day with us when it was dedicated, I expect he'd have cried, as many of us did.
But I'll never fill his shoes, nor will Joe Galloway, nor did Charlie Black, or Maggie Higgins, nor any of the others who happen to be in the same trade and cover the same subject. We're just in the same line and try to do it as well as we can, just like he did. And he remains the example, the prototype to remember, when we have a chance to do it halfheartedly, or partially, or sloppily.
Galloway is a bright light indeed. But if Ernie Pyle was still around, he'd be going to Galloway for the details of the equipment and circumstances, not of the character of those about those whose stories Pyle told so well. That was what Pyle best focused on, as tight as any photographer with a close-up lens, and if there's been anyone before or since who's done it as well, I haven't read their work.
-archy-/-
