Ernie Pyle

[Italian_Stallion]

Wow.

http://tinyurl.com/yqegvj

On a nice summer day, I took the wife on a country drive to the covered bridge land in Indiana. First, we stopped in Dana, Ind. to visit the Ernie Pyle museum. Although it's often hurting for funding, it's fairly impressive in what really is just a smattering of houses along a highway.

 

[slappy4428]

Saw that photo yesterday... is eerie...

 

[Blitz]

The AP story was so damn short. It was just spooky all around.
Who took the pic? Nobody was ID'd as having done so in the pic.
It mentioned (in so many words) that the Army photog who snapped it was ordered to keep it under wraps by higher-ups.
Whole story was maybe 6 grafs.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Try this:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iCwUTF7rAGKUvJMQaIvFlNasu95QD8UJ0THG0

 

[crusoes]

Saw that photo yesterday... is eerie...

No. Is Ernie.

 

[slappy4428]

Saw that photo yesterday... is eerie...

No. Is Ernie.

dah-dum-ting

 

[jgmacg]

What struck me about the image, and strikes me still, is the weird placidity of it. It seems - he seems - quite terribly, peaceful.

 

[Blitz]

Good story, but I don't understand this part:

Roberts went to the scene, and despite continuing enemy fire, crept forward — a "laborious, dirt-eating crawl," he later called it — to record the scene with his Speed Graphic camera. His risky act earned Roberts a Bronze Star medal for valor.

You mean to tell me they gave photog Roberts a Bronze Star for capturing the incident aftermath on film, but didn't release the pics for decades?
Crazy stuff.

Thanks for the link.

 

[Ace]

Good story, but I don't understand this part:

Roberts went to the scene, and despite continuing enemy fire, crept forward — a "laborious, dirt-eating crawl," he later called it — to record the scene with his Speed Graphic camera. His risky act earned Roberts a Bronze Star medal for valor.

You mean to tell me they gave photog Roberts a Bronze Star for capturing the incident aftermath on film, but didn't release the pics for decades?
Crazy stuff.

Thanks for the link.

Yes. The military can be that way. It's in all the papers.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

This piece also explains what the battle of Ie Shima was all about.
I'd only known it as the place Ernie Pyle died.
Dude could write, by the way.

 

[ink-stained wretch]

When Pyle was working his way thru the Italian mountains he wrote of the death of a beloved and respected captain. Looking at the image and recalling his words sent a chill up my spine.

"You don't cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them."

Sixty years later and he's still the kind of reporter many of us would like some day to be, but know we'll never get close.

 

[goalmouth]

I saw another story that said there was a photo of Pyle dead on a stretcher, but that it has disappeared.

After seeing what's happened to journos in Iraq, I'd just as soon make my bones as a reporter without having to give up my bones.

As a writer, I never understood Hemingway's romanticism of war.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

I saw another story that said there was a photo of Pyle dead on a stretcher, but that it has disappeared.

After seeing what's happened to journos in Iraq, I'd just as soon make my bones as a reporter without having to give up my bones.

As a writer, I never understood Hemingway's romanticism of war.

So well adjusted, he put a shotgun in his mouth, and left some other poor slobs to clean up the mess.

 

[rpmmutant]

Years ago, my friends found an Ernie Pyle G.I. Joe action figure. Not one of those 6-inch Star Wars action figure wannabe, a full-sized, old-school GI Joe doll. OK there I said it. They gave it to me for my birthday. One of the coolest things I have in my office.

 

[Boom_70]

And to think sportschick was complaining about having to cover American Legion game with Kim Mattingly screaming in her ear.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

When Pyle was working his way thru the Italian mountains he wrote of the death of a beloved and respected captain. Looking at the image and recalling his words sent a chill up my spine.

"You don't cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them."

Sixty years later and he's still the kind of reporter many of us would like some day to be, but know we'll never get close.

The rules have changed.
Vietnam was the last war where correspondents could just go out in the field and report. (That's why Herr and Halberstam and the rest of them wrote such great stuff.) The rules got tightened. In the days of "embedded" reporters, the only real Ernie Pyles work for the BBC.

 

[ink-stained wretch]

War reporting has changed. Good stories haven't. Pyle was a storyteller who understood the power of simple words to describe great deeds, often by simple men and women.

There are plenty of wars to cover that are not fought by armies.

 

[Furry Tractor]

I didn't know anything about Pyle beyond the familiarity of the name until a couple of years ago, when I read this biography:

http://www.amazon.com/Ernie-Pyles-War-Americas-Eyewitness/dp/0743284763/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202271720&sr=1-2

Highly recommended. War reporting was an entirely different ballgame back then, no doubt

 

[Boom_70]

Man Pyle was everywhere. I just read a story about him being on the US Biscayne -- one of ships that carried the 3rd inf from North Africa to Sicily. Pyle as favor to ships captain wrote the ships newsletter.

 

[Rosie]

Wow.

What a powerful picture.

The AP story (the longer one) brought tears to my eyes. And I'm not even sure why.