Ken Beaton: A great storyteller

Today is Wednesday, April 17. What famous person died on April 18, 1945? Are there any University of Nevada Reynolds School of Journalism students or graduates reading this commentary? Look at all the readers pulling out their smart phone. So, the name, Ernest Taylor Pyle, is on your screen with a blank look on your face. Does the name Ernie Pyle, the 1944 Pulitzer Prize winner for Journalism, ring a bell?

Pyle was born Aug. 3, 1900, in Dana, Indiana, with a population of 661, close to the Indiana/Illinois border. During his childhood he was a shy but intelligent student who dreamed of adventure. As a journalism major and editor of the student newspaper at the University of Indiana, he quit school in his final semester to become a reporter at the Herald-Argus in LaPorte, Indiana.

Pyle’s gift was he made friends easily and won the respect of his editors. After four months he was hired as a reporter for the Washington Daily News, a Scripps-Howard tabloid. His editor praised his direct and engaging writing style. Soon he was promoted to copy editor.

Pyle was fascinated with aviation and pilots. He talked his editor into allowing him to begin an aviation column, “D.C. AIRPORTS DAY.” He chatted with pilots in the evening while smoking cigarettes. Unlike most aggressive reporters, Pyle had a quiet manner with the pilots who gave him inside news tips before the other reporters.

One of the mail pilots Pyle wrote about in his column was Bill McConnell. Here’s a sample of Pyle’s writing style. “Bill has never been to the North Pole, or the South Pole, or flown across the ocean at midnight with a pig in his lap or stayed in the air a week without changing his socks… No, all he ever did was fly the night air mail between Cleveland and Cincinnati every night for 34 consecutive nights last winter. Two hundred and thirty-eight hours in the air in a month.”

Pyle’s gift was telling brief and compelling stories, human interest instead of the usual “hard hitting stories of the day.” His talent was recognized by the publisher of Scripps-Howard. He became the aviation editor for all of Scripps-Howard outlets. He interviewed Army aviation officers, congressmen and famous aviators like Amelia Earhart.

During the Great Depression Pyle traveled throughout the American West capturing the poverty of the Dust Bowl. He described driving through a dust storm as, “the sand-laden wind cut across the highway like a horizontal waterfall. Sand was not drifting, or floating, or hanging in the air – it was shooting south, in thick veins, like air full of thrown baseballs.”

Pyle was near exhaustion writing six columns a week from Central America. His editor ordered him to rest for a few weeks. He decided to visit friends in Florida in May 1940 when Nazi Germany invaded France. Pyle was fascinated by the conflict. He wanted to be where the action was happening, the front lines.

After initially objecting, Pyle finally convinced his editor to allow him to travel to London arriving in December 1940. After several days on a darkened balcony, he witnessed incendiary bombs raining on London from Nazi bombers. He wrote, “the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires-scores of them, perhaps hundreds.”

Americans reading Pyle’s columns felt the same way the people who listened to Edward R. Morrow on CBS radio describe the devastation of the “London Blitz.” The secret to Pyle’s writing was he gave his readers his own impressions and feelings. Pyle believed the Londoners would survive whereas many Americans had doubts.

His London columns were acclaimed by his readers. He discovered that he was a household name when he returned. His publisher talked him into publishing his columns in a book, Ernie Pyle in England, dedicated to “That girl who Waited,” released in 1941.

For three months in their Albuquerque home, he took care of his wife, Jerry. She was battling depression and suicidal thoughts. Pyle’s long absences from her didn’t help her depression and suicidal thoughts. Finally in April 1942 they divorced. When he tried to join the Navy at age 42, he was rejected for being too small.

He returned to England in August 1942 and began writing about the American GIs who were beginning to pour into England building up for the D-Day invasion in less than two years. He petitioned to remain a war correspondent which allowed him to follow American and British troops’ invasion of North Africa on Nov. 8, 1942.

During the North African campaign Pyle didn’t look like the average GI. He was 42 years young with graying hair, a thin build and always smoking a cigarette. In fact, when Pyle turned sideways, he almost disappeared. His greatest qualities were he made friends easily, officers appreciated his way of drumming up support for their campaigns, and soldiers loved him asking their names and writing their names in his columns so their folks in the states would know they’re OK.

His columns weren’t only about GIs in foxholes. He wrote about military police, quartermasters, airmen, and mechanics in the motor pool who kept everything running from jeeps to battle-damaged tanks returned to the battlefield.

Newspaper readers in the states enjoyed reading the way he described the battlefields in North Africa and reading what our boys experienced. Lt. Charles F. Marshall with the U.S. Sixth Corps wrote about Pyle’s writing in his journal, “Quite good. He catches the spirit. Nothing phony in it anywhere.”

Pyle had a gift of balance. In one article, he mentioned that despite the medics’ heroics on the battlefield, there was a shortage of stretcher bearers. Some of our wounded had to wait for medical attention while bleeding and in pain. Pyle never wrote of the unpleasant damage to men’s minds and bodies. He didn’t hide the fact that war meant that soldiers suffered from the elements and from being wounded.

On Sept. 9, 1943, Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth Army landed south of Salerno, Italy. While covering the Italian campaign, usually he was a few miles from the front lines. In one of his columns, he had a conversation with a member of a tank crew before his tank went into battle. Less than two hours from a hilltop, Pyle watched as that same tank was hit killing the entire crew.

Fast forward to March 1945, Pyle sailed with the largest invasion fleet in World War II to Okinawa. The invasion began on April 1, 1945, which was not only April Fool’s Day, but it was Easter Sunday, the most important day for Christians around the world, including Rome.

On April 17, Pyle went ashore on le Shima, an island that was part of Okinawa, with the U.S. Army’s 77th Division. On the left shoulder of every member of the 77th was a blue patch with a gold statue of liberty. le Shima was 10 square miles with an airfield. On April 18, Pyle was in a jeep with an officer when a Japanese machine gun began firing. The officer and Pyle dove into a ditch. A short time later when Pyle raised his head, a Japanese sniper’s bullet hit him just below his helmet, killing him instantly at 44.

Six days earlier, April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt had passed. It is an understatement to say “all the wind was taken out of the sails of the 77th Division when the GIs received the word about Pyle.” The 77th posted a sign which stated how everyone felt, “AT THIS SPOT THE 77TH INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY, ERNIE PYKE 18 APRIL 1945.”

Pyle was so respected by the 77th that they buried him with members of their division. In 1949, Pyle was reinterred at the Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Punchbowl Crater, Honolulu, Oahu. His grave marker reads:

Ernest Taylor Pyle

Indiana

SEA3 US NAVY

World War I

August 1900 April 18, 1945

PURPLE HEART