Episode 119: Ernie Pyle's War, Part VII

In June 1944, Ernie Pyle hit the beach in Normandy, France just one day after the D-Day invasion. He followed ally forces through six weeks of hard fighting over difficult terrain before breaking out of hedgerows and driving the Germans east. He was on hand for the liberation of Paris in late-August and then decided that he had seen enough of war. But that didn't last; by late-December he was in the Pacific covering that theater of the war

When he got back from this trip to Europe, his newspaper bosses commissioned a bust by renowned sculptor Jo Davidson which Pyle sat for while on a layover in New York City.

Today, the bust is at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

I was planning on finishing Pyle's story this week until I heard of the passing of golden-age-of-space-exploration astronaut Air Force Lieutenant General Tom Stafford and deviated from my plans a little to eulogize him as well. Final funeral arrangements are still pending so it is unknown if Stafford will be interred alongside other astronauts at Arlington National Cemetery at this time.

Episode 118: Ernie Pyle's War, Part VI

 

After retuning to Italy from his R&R, Pyle gets a tip from a pre-war friend - who also happens to be the senior US Army air forces commander in the Mediterranean - that he should return to London because the long awaited invasion of western Europe is going to happen sooner rather than later. It's nice to have friends in high places!

Pyle returns to England, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize, graces the cover of Time magazine (which more or less does a smear article/hatchet piece) about him, and then he sails with the Allied armada across the English channel toward France and the D-Day invasion. He is one of only 55 war correspondents to accompany the initial invasion.  

Episode 117: Ernie Pyle's War, Part V

After spending a year and a half in war zones, Ernie Pyle finally makes it back to Albuquerque, New Mexico for some much needed rest and relaxation with his wife, Jerry. Unfortunately, he finds little of either and has to return to the war far sooner than he would have liked to. 

When he does make it back to the front lines in Sicily, he pens what his usually considered his best article, "The Death of Captain Waskow" which I read in its entirety to close out this week's podcast.

 

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.

 

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 114: Ernie Pyle's War, Part II

 

There aren't many readily available online photos of Ernie Pyle pre-World War II. Even his Wikipedia page is devoid of such pictures, so I figured I would throw up a few pictures likely taken during the war, during some of the few moments he returned home to reoperate. 

This photo of Jerry and Ernie was taken in front of their home in New Mexico, which they bought during their seven years together roaming the country as a roving reporter and spouse. But again, this photo was taken during a moment of leave Ernie allowed himself during the war.

Episode 113: Ernie Pyle's War, Part I

 

Born to tenant farmers in rural Dana, Indiana, Ernie Pyle looked for any way to get out of the Midwest farm country he feared he might toil away his life in. 

When World War II ended a month after he joined the naval reserve, he did the next best thing - enroll at Indiana University. While in school, he studied communications and journalism, and not only managed to travel to Kentucky and Michigan, but to Japan, China, and the Philippines, too. Shortly after leaving school, he was working for a daily tabloid in Washington, DC, but his wanderlust wouldn't let him stay in one place for long.

His birthplace home still stands in Dana, Indiana, but he left home as soon as he could.