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.

Episode 112: The Arlington of the Pacific, Part II

 

Seaman First Class James Richard Ward refused to leave his post after the USS Oklahoma began to capsize after being struck during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He did not survive the day but his actions saved the lives of several of his fellow sailors.

Ward's remains and those of most of the 428 others who died when the Oklahoma capsized were not recovered until May 1944 when the battleship was righted. 

Most of those remains were comingled and, at the time, unidentifiable, and as such were interred in joint graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific when that site was opened.

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific includes the Honolulu Memorial, which includes Columbia standing on the bow of a naval ship.

On either side of the stairs leading up to the memorial are the Courts of the Missing

The names of all those missing in action, including James Ward, are inscribed on the walls of the Courts of the Missing.

In 2021, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA - formerly the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command [JPAC]) announced that its Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii had positively identified Ward's remains.

On December 21, 2023, Ward was interred at Arlington after his next of kin, a nephew, who never met his uncle, but who grew up hearing about him from his grand parents and his mother, decided that the "hallowed grounds" of Arlington was the perfect place to inter his hero uncle. Also was in attendance was the highest ranking officer in the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, and her senior enlisted advisor, the ranking chief petty officer in the Navy. 

His headstone has yet to be erected, but Seaman First Class James Richard Ward is interred in Section 81, Grade 1560.

Episode 111: The Arlington of the Pacific, Part 1

 

There are two famous extinct volcanic craters boxing in Honolulu, Hawaii. Diamond Head, the one in the distance, is probably the more famous. But Punchbowl, in the foreground, is where ancient temples once stood and where those who broke the most serious tabus were executed. For more than one hundred years, artillery pieces were placed on its rim to protect the city, and since 1949, it has been the site of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Rising more than 450 feet above Hawaii's capital city, there were no tall office buildings of resort hotels to hide its grandeur in this photo from around 1885.

Long after the temples disappeared, it was still seen as a place of religious significance, even after the local population largely converted to Christianity in the early 1800s. This photograph from 1910 - with Diamond Head in the background - shows the crowds for a sunrise Easter service.

Once roads were built to the summit, tourists and locals alike began flocking to the site, first with carriages and then in automobiles, like in this pre-World War II photograph.

A hike to the crater rim has offered spectacular views of Oahu for centuries.

Though a cemetery at the site had been discussed for decades, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific opened in 1949 in the wake of World War II.

And has continued to grow with each successive military conflict... but that is a story for part two.

Today, Punchbowl crater, the Arlington of the Pacific, is a site to behold.

Episode 110: Space Age Sunsets

 

Navy Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Thomas Kenneth (Ken) Mattingly II, who helped the crew of Apollo 13 recover from the in-capsule explosion, fix their oxygen scrubber, and maintain the ship's power during reentry, passed away in Arlington, Virginia on October 31, 2023. He was 87 years old. His exploits were brought to the attention of a new generation when he was portrayed by Gary Sinise in the 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13.  Funeral arrangements are still underway, but I believe he will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. 

A few days after Mattingly's passing, Air Force Colonel Frank Frederick Borman II, who was one of the first three people to see the far side of the moon when he commanded the Apollo 8 mission, passed away in Billings, Montana on November 7, 2023. He was 95 years old. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living former NASA astronaut.

When the band Led Zeppelin released its sophomore album, Led Zeppelin II, in 1969, Borman's face was cropped into the cover. He standing in the back row, second from the right, with the hat and no beard. The album was released just a few months after Apollo 11 landed on the moon and the artist thought that he was using an image of Neil Armstrong... oops!

Borman was known to sign Led Zeppelin II album covers. The example above says: "Not Neil Armstrong! Frank Borman Apollo 8 CDR [commander]."

When Led Zeppelin released its sixth studio album Physical Graffiti in 1975, another effort was made to put Neil Armstrong on the cover, and this one also failed. In the top left window there is photo of an astronaut on the moon, but the photo isn't of Neil Armstrong, it was taken by Neil Armstrong. The photo is of astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

Keeping with the space theme, Led Zeppelin's 1999 album Early Days: The Best of Led Zeppelin, Volume One was a riff on the official photograph of the Apollo 14 crew.

Apollo 14 was made up of Alan Shepard, Stu Roosa, and Ed Mitchell