Sunday, February 18, 2024

Episode 116: Ernie Pyle's War, Part IV

With the Allied invasion of Africa on, Ernie Pyle's fame back in the US as "the only reporter to bring the war home to us" begins to grow. In just six month's time his column is pick up by more than one hundred additional newspapers and his daily readership increases by nearly six and a half million people. He continues to write human interest pieces about the soldiers "over there," but he also includes his own first hand accounts of loss and of the feelings that soldiers experience. He isn't writing about bravado and heroics - though there are heroes in his columns to be sure, they are just also the everyday people who have had war thrust upon them and are trying to survive.



 

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Episode 115: Ernie Pyle's War, Part III


Ernie Pyle always felt like he had missed out when he was too young by a year to get involved in World War I so when war broke out in Europe, he jumped at the chance to go to London and cover the Battle of Britain. When the US got involved, he went over to England again, this time to cover the US troops training for war. Not long after Operation Torch - the first US offensive on the Atlantic side of the war - saw US troops land in North Africa, he hopped on a ship to see if he could make it to the front. 

 

Episode 123: Go For Broke, Part I

  While Mr. Miyagi is a fictional character, the distinguished unit he was written to have served with in World War II was not. After the US...