Pyle wounded by Anzio bombs
Wednesday, April 18, 1945
Ernie Pyle almost lost his life on the Anzio Beachhead in March 1944, when German planes bombed a waterfront home he and other correspondents had taken over as their press headquarters.
Glider bombs wrecked the “Villa Virtue,” as the correspondents had named it, and Ernie was cut on the cheek by flying glass.
He was in bed when the planes came in to attack but he jumped up and began to cross the room to watch. He was blown back across the room by the first bomb, which struck about 10 yards from the building.
Three seconds later, as Ernie was picking himself from the floor, a second bomb crashed right beside the villa. The walls were blasted in, the ceiling crashed on Pyle’s bed and what remained of the villa was filled with thick dust and the acrid smell of explosives.
That wasn’t the only time Ernie Pyle ever was close to death, but thereafter he always referred to the incident as “my escape.”
Firing of Paris made Ernie sick of war
Wednesday, April 18, 1945
It was the bombing and burning of Paris by the retreating Germans last year which finally so sickened Ernie Pyle of war that he had to come home.
Interviewed in New York, he told why he had left the front.
He said:
It’s sort of hard to explain. I’ve been through plenty of bombings but when the Germans came over and pasted hell out of Paris soon after we got there, I suddenly knew that I had to get home and away from war. Seeing Paris burn really got me.
He returned on a ship bringing wounded soldiers.
He said:
They all wanted to tell me they understood why I was going back. I felt kind of funny. There I was physically unhurt, standing over those kids with arms and legs and eyes gone – all battered to hell – and they telling me they knew what the score was and that it was all right by them that I was getting out.