I DARE SAY —
Ernie Pyle
By Florence Fisher Parry
…As I wrote these words, the news of Ernie Pyle’s death came in… And I find that I must scrap what I have written… No, death does not mean “utter and final defeat.” Not to this man, who walked its way as one marked for the dread rendezvous.
Now that the world has come, we are not in the least surprised. We see now that this man would not, could not, survive the thing that drew him back to it. Some deep compulsion sent him forth again, against his will, against all the overtures which creature comforts must have made to his tired body and more tired soul.
He was so tired; the sickness of battle had seeped into the very marrow of him. He did not want that last assignment, an assignment which no human being but himself would have had the heart to give him.
But he had to go.
Feeling the bony finger on him, he still had to go.
You have to live with yourself; and, you have to die with yourself. These are compulsions which are known only to the great, the selfless. Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life on the altar of such compulsion.
Through a glass darkly
He would have called himself a little man, an unimportant man. He did not take on stature as he grew in fame; he merely took on more humanity and humility. He did not value his life more; he valued it less and less, as it became more important to others. He never saw himself in the history books. Few great men are as great as that.
I think what made him so dear to so many was that he was frail and acknowledged that he was afraid. It gave the boys in battle a kinship with him. He admitted to the very fear that was in them; and so they got to believing that to be afraid was a common and natural thing, and not contemptible at all, nothing to be ashamed of. It gave them comfort. If he had done nothing more than that, he still would be a great man, immortal to the boys he understood so well and who will mourn him in a way peculiar and different from all other kinds of mourning…
I find myself thinking of verses in the Bible, verses that seem to sing of Ernie Pyle and all his modest brotherhood the world over.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind… charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up… seeketh not her own… thinketh no evil… beareth all things… endureth all things…
For now we see through a glass, darkly…
No longer darkly, Ernie…
How blinding clear it must be now to you!