Ernie Pyle

He was born on the Sam Elder farm outside Dana, Indiana, on August 3, 1900, into tenant farming he wanted no part of. He got out through the Naval Reserve at the tail of the First World War, then Indiana University in 1919, where he studied economics, took journalism, and quit in January 1923 without the degree. The La Porte Daily Herald paid him 25 dollars a week. The Washington Daily News took him that same year. At a Halloween party in Washington he met Geraldine Siebolds, a Minnesotan everybody called Jerry, and married her in July 1925. He wrote an aviation column from 1928 to 1932, riding roughly 100,000 miles as a passenger, and then made the mistake of accepting a desk: managing editor, three years of it.

In 1935 he gave up the desk to drive. For six years he and Jerry crossed North America for Scripps-Howard, and readers knew her only as "That Girl who rides with me." He covered the Battle of Britain in 1940, then North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and the Pacific from January 1945. What he wrote was not troop movements but what he called the worm's-eye view: the men, by name, in the mud. "The Death of Captain Waskow," filed from Italy in December 1943 and published January 10, 1944, was later voted by American columnists the best ever written. He took the Pulitzer in 1944. A column of his proposed extra pay for combat troops. Congress passed it that May, 50 percent, and called it the Ernie Pyle bill. At his death 400 daily and 300 weekly papers carried him.

It cost him his health twice over. He broke off reporting in September 1943 and again in September 1944 to go home and recover from combat stress, and in a column on September 5, 1944 he told several million readers that his spirit was wobbly and his mind confused, and that one more shot or one more dead man would send him off his nut. He drank hard and went through long stretches of depression. Jerry's alcoholism and mental illness ran in parallel, through several suicide attempts. They divorced on April 14, 1942 and remarried by proxy in March 1943 while he was in North Africa. Before he sailed for the Pacific he wrote to two friends predicting he would not come back from the war. He sailed anyway.

On April 18, 1945, a day after landing on Ie Shima with the 305th Infantry, a Japanese machine gun opened on his jeep. He and Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Coolidge got into a ditch. Pyle raised his head and a bullet entered his left temple below the helmet. The 77th Infantry Division buried him in that helmet between an infantry private and a combat engineer and put up a marker: "At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945." Jerry died in Albuquerque that November. His remains moved to Okinawa, then in 1949 to the Punchbowl among its first burials. In 1983 an Army Reserve command gave him a Purple Heart, rare for a civilian.

Ernie Pyle's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ernie Pyle in England book
  Columns from the Battle of Britain 1941
• Here Is Your War book
  The North African campaign 1943
• The Death of Captain Waskow article
  Filed from Italy in December 1943, published January 10, 1944 1944
• The Ernie Pyle bill law
  Fifty percent extra pay for combat service, proposed in a column 1944
• Brave Men book
  Sicily, Italy and Normandy 1944
• Home Country book
  Posthumous collection of the prewar roving columns 1947

• January 1923 aged 22 Leaves Indiana University without a degree for a newspaper job The La Porte Daily Herald paid 25 dollars a week. The Washington Daily News hired him the same year.
• July 1925 aged 24 Marries Geraldine Siebolds in Washington
• 1935 aged ~35 Quits the editor's desk for a roving column for Scripps-Howard He and Jerry spent six years driving North America.
• 1940 aged ~40 Covers the Battle of Britain from London
• January 10, 1944 aged 43 The Death of Captain Waskow runs while the Allies are fighting at Anzio
• May 1944 aged 43 Congress passes the combat-pay bill he proposed in a column
• September 5, 1944 aged 44 Tells his readers his spirit is wobbly and his mind confused It was his second withdrawal from the front for combat stress in a year.
• April 18, 1945 aged 44 Killed by machine-gun fire on Ie Shima The bullet entered his left temple just below the helmet.
• 1949 aged ~49 Reinterred at the Punchbowl in Honolulu among its first burials

• Edward R. Murrow 1908–1965
  Broadcast journalist whose reporting from London during WWII and confrontation with McCarthy set journalistic standards. reported the same war by radio
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. inherited the correspondent's authority
• Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890–1969
  34th President and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II. commanded the men he wrote about
• Omar Bradley 1893–1981
  Senior World War II commander and first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. the infantry general of his subject
• Eleanor Roosevelt 1884–1962
  First Lady and human rights advocate who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration. quoted his dispatches and eulogized him