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Ever hear of Ernie Pyle?
There were plenty of war journalists and photographers in WW2.
Of course, the Right Wing Syncophants in the media today can't hold a candle to men and women like Pyle.
The clowns who pretend to be journalists at Fox are a prime example.
And here's some biographical info on Pyle... just so we can have some idea of what respectable journalists used to be like.
"Ernie Pyle, the son of a farmer, was born in 1900. After studying journalism at Indiana
University he found work on a small newspaper in La Plante, Indiana. In 1923 he moved to
the Washington Daily News and eventually became the paper's managing editor.
In 1932 he was commissioned to write a travel column for the Scripps-Howard newspaper
chain. He did this until the outbreak of the Second World War when he became a war
correspondent. He moved to England in 1940 where he reported on the Blitz for the New
York World Telegram.
Pyle went with the US Army to North Africa in November 1942. This was followed by the
invasions of Sicily and Italy. He also accompanied Allied troops during the Normandy landings
and witnessed the liberation of France. By 1944 Pyle had established himself as one of the
world's outstanding reporters and Time hailed him as "America's most widely read war
correspondent."
In 1945 Pyle was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Later that year he went with US
troops to Okinawa. On 17th April, 1945, Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper while on
a routine patrol on 17th April, 1945.
(1) Ernie Pyle, Washington Daily News (10th May, 1943)
The main impression I got, seeing German prisoners, was that they were human like
anybody else, fundamentally friendly, a little vain. Certainly they are not supermen. Whenever
a group of them would form, some American soldier would pop up with a camera to get a
souvenir picture. And every time, all the prisoners in the vicinity would crowd into the picture
like kids.
One German boy had found a broken armchair leaning against a barn, and was sitting in it.
When I passed he grinned, pointed to his feet and then to the chair arms, and put back his
head in the international sign language for "Boy, does this chair feel good!"
This colossal German surrender has done more for American morale here than anything that
could possibly have happened. Winning in battle is like winning at poker or catching lots of
fish - it's damned pleasant and it sets a man up. As a result, the hundreds of thousands of
Americans in North Africa now are happy men, laughing and working with new spirits that
bubble.
(2) Ernie Pyle, Washington Daily News (10th January, 1944)
In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under
them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of
Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had been in this
company since long before he left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties,
but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.
"After my own father, he comes next," a sergeant told me.
"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He'd go to bat for us every time."
"I've never known him to do anything unkind," another one said.
I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow down. The moon was
nearly full, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley. Soldiers
made shadows as they walked.
We went out into the road. Four mules stood there in the moonlight, in the road where the
trail came down off
the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting.
"This one is Capt. Waskow," one of them said quickly.
Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the
stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally, there were five lying end to end in a
long row. You don't cover up dead men in the combat zones. They just lie there in the
shadows until somebody else comes after them.
The uncertain mules moved off to their olive groves. The men in the road seemed reluctant to
leave. They stood around, and gradually I could sense them moving, one by one, close to
Capt. Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him and
to themselves. I stood close by and I could
hear.
One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud:
"God damn it!"
Another one came, and he said. "God damn it to hell anyway!" He looked down for a few last
moments and then turned and left.
Another man came. I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the dim
light, for everybody was grimy and dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face
and then spoke directly to him, as though he were alive:
"I'm sorry, old man."
Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his
dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tender, and he said:
"I sure am sorry, sir."
Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the Captain's hand, and he
sat there a full five minutes
holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face. And he never uttered
a sound all the time he sat there.
Finally he put the hand down. He reached up and gently straightened the points of the
Captain's shirt collar, and then he
sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound, and then he got up
and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.
(3) John Steinbeck, quoted in Lee G. Miller's book, The Story of Ernie Pyle (1950)
There is, the war of maps and logistics, of campaigns, of ballistics, armies, divisions, and
regiments. Then there is the war of homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men, who
wash their socks in their helmets, complain about food, whistle at Arab girls, or any other
girls for that matter, and lug themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever
seen and do it with humanity and dignity and courage - and that is Ernie Pyle's war.
(4) Ernie Pyle, letter to his wife in 1945.
Of course I am very sick of the war and would like to leave it, and yet I know I can't. I've been
part of the misery and tragedy of it for so long that I feel if I left it, it would be like a soldier
deserting.
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