Ernie Pyle Reprise and Update

Catherine Seipp echoes my Veterans' Day sentiments on Ernie Pyle here. She says:

Even when old books do get reissued, there can be something ineffably satifsying about reading them in their original form. Legendary World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle's Brave Men and Here Is Your War finally became available in paperback again a few years ago, but I prefer my old hardback edition of Brave Men, still as moving and immediate as I imagine the original owner, one Winifred Ellsini (her name is inscribed in my copy) found it when she got it for Christmas, 1944.

A bonus is John Steinbeck's hauntingly prophetic description of Pyle — who was killed by a Japanese gunner near Okinawa — on the torn dustjacket: "His dispatches sound as artless as a letter, but other professionals are not deceived. They know that Ernie Pyle is a great reporter... In his unique way, he is almost sure to be a sort of national conscience. If Ernie Pyle should die tomorrow, as well he may, it would still be a long time before Americans forgot Ernie Pyle's war."

I think Pyle deserves more attention than he gets these days. I've never read any "embedded" report from Iraq that could compare to Pyle's — but then he really was up front for years, often digging his own foxholes.

You can find his books at Amazon.com, but it is more fun to pull out a dusty original at your local antique store. My copy of Here is Your War is inscriped Chestina Gates May '44. I paid five dollars for it, and it came with a welcome suprise. Ms. Gates had left original clippings in it, where they had stayed for fifty years. "Enemy Bullet Fells Writer on Ie Island" is pinned together with a publicity photo of him and one of him talking to the GIs. After the war, Ms. Gates added two stories "Pyle Home Preserved" and "Purple Heart, dedication of center in New York will honor Ernie Pyle". Unfortunately, the Pyle home was recently destroyed. I am currently preparing another snippet from his books for your enjoyment (actually, I am not sure that anyone enjoyed the Veterans' Day selection; and my student aide is working on the snippet--a snippet that I will be using for my American Lit. class).


Peace