Editorial: Ernie
Newspaper people, we think, may be forgiven sometimes if they take advantage of their solitary medium of expression to speak out of their hearts about one of their own.
Our troubles, our losses, are not your troubles and your losses. They are our own. You, ordinarily, have no reason to be interested in them.
But, this once, we think you are interested.
You are interested because Ernie Pyle was as much of you as he was of us.
Ernie is dead. You don’t believe it. Neither do we. Neither do the G.I. Joes, nor the Navy Joes, nor the Marine Joes. Nobody believes it. But it is true.
Killed in action!
That was Ernie, all over.
He didn’t want to go. He had seen enough of war. Of its bloody form. Of its ultimate and inevitable terminus – death. Of its amazing horror. Of its gruesome catastrophe. Of its inhuman methods.
Ernie was scared. And he admitted it. He admitted his fright as no coward ever would do.
But he went.
He went because he had to go. Something drove him to go. Even as it has drawn every G.I. Joe. Every Joe who was a friend of Ernie. Every Joe to whom Ernie was an everlasting friend.
Ernie made himself go back to the war – after he had seen so much of it. After he had had so many close calls. Not for glory. He had enough of that. Not for money. He had that, too. He went – well, he had to go. Ernie was that kind of a little guy.
What we say about Ernie Pyle just makes so many words. What the G.I.’s say about him makes a memorial more fitting than any the greatest lyricist could pen.
He was one of them. Willfully, thoughtfully and, still, unconsciously, he was one of them. He couldn’t help it. He died one of them.
When Ernie went off to the Pacific, he wrote in his first column: “Well, here we go again.”
That was Ernie. Not wanting to go. Hating all that going meant. Yet feeling compelled to go.
“Here we go again.”
And soon after he got there – that is, in the Marianas – Ernie wrote about the B-29s. How they went off on their missions, knowing full well some never would come back.
“It is just up to fate,” he said. “But you cannot know ahead of time who it will be.”
The law of averages caught up to Ernie. He knew it would catch up, someday. But he went anyway.
“You cannot tell ahead of time who it will be.”
This time, God bless him, it is Ernie.
We can’t believe it. You can’t believe it. But – his number came up. That’s the way it is in war. It has been that way with thousands of Americans – level-headed, scared Americans, brave men. Men whom Ernie knew so well and typified so well. But it’s true.
Last February, when Ernie resumed writing, after a terribly earned rest, we said: “Something has been missing in the coverage of the war since Ernie had to come home for a rest.”
Now, something will be missing – forever.