Almanac of Story Tellers: Ernie Pyle

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Aug. 3rd

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    It is the 215th day of the year, leaving 150 days remaining in 2022.

 

    On this date in 1900, the journalist Ernie Pyle was born.

    He wrote his stories about life and war and death in newspaper columns that were syndicated across the United States. He told the tales of life in these United States through the average men and women he met while traveling throughout the country. 

    He told tales of war during World War II through the voices of the average infantryman who fought the good fight and spoke not for the general or the career officer, but for the private and the enlistee.

    And he told the tales of death through the story of one Capt. Henry T. Waskow, dead on the field of battle, yet memorialized by the men he led in a a report that helped Pyle win the Pulitzer Prize in 1944.

    Pyle was born to be a reporter. After a stint in the Naval reserves, he attended Indiana University and served as an editor at the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. During his time there he began to develop the style that bode him well -- traveling and speaking to regular people to learn about life and culture from those who lived it.

    He soon moved to Washington, and joined the Washington Daily News. He became a roving columnist for the paper and its Scripps-Howard news service, driving around the country in a Model T automobile with his wife, Geraldine. 

     When war raged in Europe, he became a war correspondent, using the same style: living and working and traveling with the troops, telling the stories from their perspective. It  brought him fame and admiration -- his columns were beloved back in the United States, and newspapers often saw sales increased when his columns appeared.

    He often interrupted his duties to return home to recover from combat fatigue. In a September 1944 column, he told readers if he "heard one more shot or saw one more dead man, I would go off my nut."

    But return he did. And Pyle died as he lived. While covering some of the final battles of the war, recording the tales of the Navy and Marines in the Battle of Okinawa, Pyle was shot in the head and killed when a Jeep he was travelling in was ambushed by Japanese soldiers.

    It was April 17, 1945.