The legacy of Ernie Pyle

I was born in 1945 and I grew up hearing about Ernie Pyle from my parents...they even had a book or two he had wriiten. Like so many others of their generation, they held him in their hearts and in their highest esteem.

With the entry of the U.S. into World War II, Pyle became a war correspondent, applying his intimate style to the war. Instead of the movements of armies or the activities of generals, Ernie Pyle generally wrote from the perspective of the common soldier, an approach that won him not only further popularity but also the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. His wartime writings are preserved in three books, Brave Men, Here is Your War, and Ernie Pyle in England.

In that year, he wrote a column urging that soldiers in combat get "fight pay" just as airmen were paid "flight pay". Congress passed a law giving soldiers 50 percent extra pay for combat service. The legislation was called "the Ernie Pyle bill."

He reported from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. On April 18, 1945 Pyle died on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, as the result of machine gun fire from an enemy sniper position.

WE are blessed, in this time of our life and death struggle with the Islamic agenda--to suppress opposing views, institute punitive sharia (Islamic law), and prey on other communities for converts, all for the purpose of global domination--to have a war correspondent of our own who, despite his modesty, does rise to the level set by Mr. Pyle in WWII.

Ernie Pyle. His was a name I hardly knew just two years ago, except in some vague way I knew he had been a writer, at war. That changed when people compared my work to his, and sent a couple of Ernie’s books to me.

Michael Yon