Editorial: Ernie Pyle week
This week will be Ernie Pyle week at the Red Cross blood bank.
If you read Ernie’s columns from the war fronts – and who didn’t? – take an hour off one day this week and donate a pint of blood.
That pint of blood will make a greater contribution to the war effort than any other single thing you could do.
It may save the life of one of our fighting men.
Apparently because favorable news from the war fronts has made many people forget there is still much fighting to be done, blood donations have fallen off sharply.
Months ago, Ernie wrote from Sicily:
I beg you folks back home to give and keep on giving your blood. We’ve got plenty on hand here now, but if we ever run into mass casualties such as they have on the Russian front, we will need untold amounts of it.
We’ve now run into those mass casualties on Iwo Jima, on Okinawa. There’ll be more when we assault the main islands, of Japan. We’re still getting heavy casualties in Germany. Those casualties will continue until all the pockets and lines of resistance in that mad country are wiped out.
A pint of blood is a cheap price for you to pay for the life of a man fighting for his country. But it will do the job.