The Pittsburgh Press (April 22, 1945)
Love: They killed our pal Ernie, but we can help ‘his boys’
By Gilbert Love
Sunday, April 22, 1945
They killed Ernie Pyle – little inoffensive Ernie, who never harmed anyone in all his life.
He was our friend. We may never have seen him, but through his columns we knew him well. We suffered with him, were afraid with him, laughed and cried with him.
He took us to war with him, and because of this we knew how all our fine young men were living and dying. That was Ernie’s mission. It was his stern duty – the thing that forced him to go back to war, when he already had done more than his share, to meet his death on tiny Ie Island in the far Pacific.
What can we do?
What are we going to do about Ernie? We can’t go over there and take personal revenge on the Jap who took his life, although some of us felt a wild urge to do that when we heard the news of his death last Wednesday morning. We can’t do anything for Ernie himself.
But we can carry on his work.
The kind of people Ernie loved knew what to do when they heard of his death. Soldiers and workers began going to the Red Cross Blood Bank in the Wabash Building to give blood “for Ernie.” He couldn’t use it, of course, but his G.I.’s could.
Taking their cue from these special friends of Ernie’s, the Red Cross people designated this coming week at Ernie Pyle Week at the Blood Bank.
Anyone who wants to pay a small tribute to Ernie can walk into the Blood Bank any time between 9:45 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For evening or Saturdays an appointment should be made by calling GRant 1680.
The Week is a perfect memorial to Ernie, the kind he would have liked. No sad music and orations for him. If folks wanted to do something nice for him, he’d like to have them do it for “his boys.”
And the boys need it. Despite mounting casualties, and increased need for blood plasma to save lives, smaller and smaller numbers of donors have been visiting the Blood Bank. The news is good, and it’s assumed that the war is over.
400 pints daily quota
It isn’t over for the soldiers who are being mowed down by the cornered Nazis, or for the soldiers and sailors and marines who are facing their greatest battles against Japan.
The Blood Bank in the Wabash Building has a quota of 400 pints of blood a day. Not since March 1, when the Allies were still battling on the approaches to Germany, has the quota been met. Since that time the average has been 300 a day, and last week not even that figure was reached.
Wherever Ernie Pyle is now, he would be very happy to know a Pittsburgh district residents thought enough of him to bring their donations of life-giving blood up to par, if only for one week.
Frequent appeals
While he was on the Italian front, Ernie sent an appeal to the home folks to give blood for plasma. And here are a few significant paragraphs that he wrote on November 21, 1944:
This fall I came home from France on a ship that carried 1,000 of our wounded American soldiers. About a fourth of them were terribly wounded stretcher cases. The rest were up and about. These others could walk, though among the walking were many legs and arms missing, many eyes that could not see.
Well, there was one hospitalized soldier who was near death on this trip. He was wounded internally, and the Army doctors were trying desperately, to keep him alive until we got to America. They operated several times, and they kept pouring plasma and whole blood into him constantly, until they ran out of whole blood.
Didn’t want stampede
I happened to be in the head doctor’s cabin at noon one day when he was talking about this boy. He said he had his other doctors at that moment going around the ship typing blood specimens from several of the ship’s officers, and from unwounded Army and Navy officers aboard. They were doing it almost surreptitiously, for they didn’t want it to get out that they needed blood.
And why didn’t they want it to get out? Because if it had, there would have been a stampede to the hospital ward by the other wounded men, offering their blood to this dying comrade. Think of that – a stampede of men themselves badly wounded, wanting to give their blood.