Roving Reporter, Ernie Pyle

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The Pittsburgh Press (April 24, 1945)

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Before he was killed on Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle, as was his habit, had written a number of columns ahead. He did this so there would be no interruptions in the column while he was getting material for more. several more are expected.

OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – One morning after breakfast, about a dozen of us were sitting on the mat covered floor of a little Okinawan house talking things over while sipping our coffee.

Our First Division Marine company had just moved in the night before and several days’ accumulation of grime covered everybody. Suddenly Lt. Bones Carstens stood up and said: “I cleaned my fingernails this morning and it sure does feel good.”

And then my friend Bird Dog Clayton held his own begrimed hands out in front of him, looked at them a long time and said: “If I was to go to dinner in Dallas and lay them things up on a white tablecloth I wonder what would happen?”

A good many of the Okinawan civilians, while Wandering along the roadside, bow low to every American they meet. Whether this is from fear or native courtesy I do not know, but anyhow they do it. And the Americans being Americans usually bow right back.

One of the Marines I know got mixed up in one of these little bowing incidents the other day. He is Pfc. Roy Sellers, a machine gunner from Amelia, Ohio.

Bowing ‘contest’

Roy is married and has a little girl two years old. He used to be a machinist at the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company. He played semi-pro ball too.

When Roy has a beard, he looks just like a tramp in a stage play. He is only 27, but looks much older. In fact, he goes by the nickname of “Old Man.”

Well one day Old Man was trying to ride a Jap bicycle along the bank of a little river where he camped. The ground was rough and the bicycle had only one pedal and Roy was having a struggle to keep his bike upright. Just then an old Okinawan, bareheaded and dressed in a black kimono and carrying a dirty sack, walked through our little camp. He wasn’t supposed to be at large but it was none of our business and we didn’t molest him.

He was bowing to everybody, night and left, as he passed. Then he met Machine Gunner Sellers on his one-pedaled bicycle. Roy was already having his troubles.

As he came abreast of the Okinawan, Roy bowed deeply over the handle bars, hit a rut, lost his balance and over he went. The Okinawan, with Oriental inscrutability, returned the bow and never looked back.

We all laughed our heads off. “Who’s bowing to whom around here?” we asked. Roy denied he had bowed first. But we knew better. After that he decided to give his old bicycle away to somebody less polite than himself.

Reminded of Italy

As our company was moving forward one day and I looked down the line of closely packed Marines I thought for a moment I was back in Italy.

There for sure was Bill Mauldin’s cartoon character of G.I. Joe – the solemn, bearded, dirty, drooping weary old man of the infantry.

This character was Pfc. Urban Vachon of French-Canadian extraction, who comes from Laconia, New Hampshire. He has a brother, William, fighting in Germany.

Urban is such a perfect ringer for Mauldin’s soldier that I asked the regimental photographer to take a picture of him and it has been sent back to the States. Maybe you’ve seen it. If you have, you can prove to any dissenters that soldiers do look like Mauldin makes them look.

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Pyle memorial program on air

KDKA to carry national tribute

NEW YORK (SHS) – A program dedicated to the memory of Ernie Pyle will be broadcast by NBC tonight at 11:30 EWT.

KDKA will transcribe the program and rebroadcast it at 12:15 a.m. tonight and again at 11 a.m. tomorrow.

The program will include a dramatization of Mr. Pyle’s book, Brave Men, and a number of American ballads and marching songs.

A cast of nine players under Gerald Holland, producer, will be heard on stations as far west as the Rocky Mountains and north into Canada. The same program was originally broadcast last February 17 in a series of presentations for the Treasury Department and the sale of War Bonds.

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Mrs. Pyle to get $100 a week for life

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (UP) – Ernie Pyle’s widow will receive $100 per week for the rest of her life under terms of the war correspondent’s will which was filed for probate here yesterday.

Ernie, who was killed while covering the invasion of Ie Shima, named Roy F. Johnson of Stillwater, Minnesota, trustee of his estate.

In addition to Mrs. Pyle, who will receive the family home ion Albuquerque and a trust fund paying $100 per week, Ernie left $2,500 to Eugene Uebelhardt of Los Angeles. Upon agreement of Mrs. Pyle and Trustee Johnson, the will provides $5,000 each to be paid to Ernie’s father and his aunt, Mrs. Mary E. Bales, both of Dana, Indiana; Mrs. Pyle’s mother, Mrs. Myrta Siebolds of Afton, Minnesota, and Ernie’s secretary Rosamond Goodman of Washington, D.C.

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Ernie Pyle story featured twice on KDKA

Ernie’s book to be dramatized
By Si Steinhauser

So that everyone may hear NBC’s dramatization of Ernie Pyle’s last book, Brave Men, KDKA will carry the broadcast at 12:15 tonight and repeat it via recording at 11 o’clock Wednesday morning.

Dick McDonagh, head of the network script department, has adapted Ernie’s story for a Words at War broadcast, featuring the column Ernie wrote about the death of Capt. Waskow on an Italian mountainside and how his men brought their dead leader’s body from the precipice and bade him goodbye. It was one of Ernie’s greatest stories.

Tonight’s – and tomorrow’s – story is in fact a repeat. It was first heard on NBC’s These Are Our Men in February. The network felt and Manager Joe Baudino of KDKA agrees, that Ernie and his writings meant so much to America that everyone will want to hear the story again. And those who missed it will appreciate the broadcast all the more.

Veterans of Pacific duty emphasize need for plasma

Army engineer says Ernie Pyle Week ‘is a great tribute to a great man’
Tuesday, April 24, 1945

Capt. and Mrs. Robert Newsome know the value of blood plasma.

As an Army nurse for 21 months in New Guinea, Mrs. Isabel Newsome saw plasma used in the treatment of diseases and burns, as well as shock.

And her husband, an engineer who has just returned from 38 months’ service in the Pacific, says: “I saw it save the lives of three of my men when our ship was attacked by a Jap suicide pilot during the invasion of Luzon.”

Could have used more

“We had enough, but we could have used more I can’t urge too strongly the need for civilians to give their blood to the Red Cross,” he continued.

Capt. Newsome, who went to the Blood Bank yesterday while visiting his wife’s family at 343 Vistaview St., Kennywood, thinks Ernie Pyle Week at the Wash Building Blood Bank is a great tribute to “a great man.”

And if people think plasma isn’t needed because the war is over, I can tell them that most of us out in the Pacific think we’ve just started to fight the Japs.

Anyway, the mopping-up operations are the worst. That’s when Ernie Pyle got killed.

Veteran of 4 campaigns

The South Dakota captain fought in the East Indies, Papua, New Guinea and Philippines campaigns and met his future bride in the summer of 1942, shortly after she had landed on New Guinea with the 171st Station Hospital.

They had their first date at a “New Year’s Eve” party January 2, 1943, and he proposed during a bombing raid.

Both win citations

I’d just spent 10 minutes telling her why she should say no when the planes came over. The ack-ack was pretty heavy and I thought we’d better crawl under the car.

But Isabel didn’t want to – she had on a white blouse, and was afraid she’d get it dirty!

They were married September 8, 1943 and have a son, Robert Jr., seven months old. Both were awarded the Presidential Citation for their work in New Guinea.

Mrs. Newsome, who took her training at Homestead Hospital, also made a plea for more Army nurses.

We had 30 nurses for 700 men, and perhaps two or three would themselves be ill with malaria. We needed more help then, and the girls who have been overseas several years should be relieved.

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Words At War: ‘Brave Men’ (NBC), April 24, 11:30 p.m. EWT:

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The Pittsburgh Press (April 25, 1945)

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Before he was killed on Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle, as was his habit, had written a number of columns ahead. He did this so there would be no interruptions in the column while he was getting material for more. Several more are expected.

OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – One of these days Mrs. Leland Taylor of Jackson, Michigan, is going to be the envy of all her friends. For she is about to come into possession of four pairs of the most beautiful Japanese pajamas you ever saw.

These are daytime pajamas or drawing room pajamas – the kind that some American hostesses wear at cozy cocktail parties.

Mrs. Taylor’s husband, who is a Marine corporal and known as “Pop,” found these pajamas in a wicker basket hidden in a cave. They are thrilling to look at and soft to the touch.

Pop carries the basket around on his arm from place to place until he can get a chance to ship them home.

One morning I wandered down to our mortar platoon and ran onto a young fellow with whom I have a great deal in common. We are both from Albuquerque and we both have mosquito trouble.

This New Mexico lad was Pfc. Dick Trauth. Both his eyes were swollen almost shut from mosquito bites. At least one of mine is swollen shut every morning. We both look very funny.

Dick still is Just a boy. He’s seen 19 months in the Marines and a year overseas. He’s a veteran of combat and still he’s only 17 years old. He has one brother in the Marines and another in the Army in Germany.

Bing Crosby of the Marines

Dick writes letters to movie stars and not long ago he got back a picture of Shirley Temple, autographed to his company just as ne had asked her to do. Dick is very shy and quiet and I had a feeling he musty be terribly lonesome but the other boys say he isn’t and that he gets along fine.

One of the Marines who drives me around in a jeep whenever I have to go anywhere is Pfc. Buzz Vitere of the Bronx.

Buzz has other accomplishments besides jeep driving. He is known as the Bing Crosby of the Marines. If you shut your eyes and don’t listen very hard you can hardly tell the difference.

I first met Buzz on the transport coming up to Okinawa. He and a friend would give an impromptu and homegrown concert on deck every afternoon.

They would sit on a hatch in the warm tropical sun and pretty soon there would be scores of Marines and sailors packed around them, listening in appreciative silence. It made the trip to war almost like a Caribbean luxury cruise.

Buzz’s partner was Pfc. Johnny Marturello of Des Moines, Iowa. Johnny plays the accordion. He is an Italian, of course, and has all an Italian’s flair for the accordion. He sings too, but he says as a singer his name is “Frank Not-So-Hotra.”

Johnny plays one piece he composed himself. It is a lovely thing. He sent it to the G.I. Publishing Company, or branch or whatever it is in the States and I feel positive if it could be widely played it would become a hit.

Tropics hard on accordion

The piece is a sentimental song called “Why Do I Have to Be Here Alone?” Johnny wrote it for his girl back home, but he grins and admits they are “on the outs.”

Johnny came ashore on Love Day and his accordion followed two days after. Now in his off moments, he sits at the side of the road and plays for bunches of Okinawans that the Marines have rounded up. They seem to like it.

Johnny had a lot of trouble with his accordion down south in the tropical climates. Parts would warp and stick and mold and he continuously had to take the thing apart and dry and clean it.

But it was worth the trouble. It has kept Johnny from getting too homesick. He brought it along with him from America just for his own morale. He knew the accordion would probably be ruined by the climate, but he didn’t care.

“I can always get a new accordion,” Johnny said, “but I can’t get a new me.”

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Ernie’s friend wants Ernie, not bequest

LOS ANGELES, California (UP) – Eugene Uebelhardt, 45-year-old Filipino welder, said today that he would give up “every penny” of the $2,500 Ernie Pyle willed him if that would bring back the late war correspondent.

“What is money when it comes through the death of a man like that?” Mr. Uebelhardt asked when informed of the bequest from Ernie, killed last week by a Jap machine-gunner on Ie Shima.

“I’d gladly give up every penny of the money to have my friend back,” he said.

Uebelhardt, whose friendship with Pyle started on a boat just out of Manila in 1922, is working at Consolidated Steel shipyards under the name of Webelhardt.

Pyle, on a tour with the University of Indiana baseball team when he met Uebelhardt, took a special interest in the youth, helped him to enter the United States, took him to his Indiana home, and helped him through school.

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alwilliams

Maj. Williams: Ernie could say it

By Maj. Al Williams

The passing of Ernie Pyle recalls many memories of years ago.

When I first met Ernie, he was the aviation editor of The Washington News. Aviation news of those days largely was confined to the progress of feuding between the Army and Navy, with a dash of commercial aviation – such as it was.

Every service airman stationed in Washington knew Ernie. The unassuming little guy with the pleasant smile got around and everybody called him Ernie. He wrote his flying news so that lay folks could understand it. Some of us came to know Ernie mighty well. We were in the thick of a losing fight to awaken the country to what we thought we saw coming in the form of airpower. And to do this we had to attack deeply-entrenched traditional prejudices.

It was Ernie who often dropped a wise word of caution which saved a few lads I know from officially breaking their precious necks. It was Ernie who sat next to me and covered my congressional fight – and I still preserve a copy of what Ernie had to say about that battle for high-speed research so that we would know how to build high-speed fighters when we needed them.

Caught the significance

Ernie quickly caught the technical significance of an aviation story, but, as so highly developed in his later writings, he probed with the delicate touch of a sensitive instinct until he found the deep, underlying stream of warm human-interest factors. And then – Pyle fashion – he told his story as only he could tell it. Furthermore, Ernie never became greater than the men he wrote about, and in this critical angle differed from the usual run of air writers.

There’s been a deepening public nostalgia in this land for reality, for the warm homey fundamentals of old-fashioned Americanism. And nowhere was this nostalgia more evident than in the popular turning of everyday, ordinary people to Ernie’s daily column.

I remember the first time I took Ernie as a passenger in a Navy two-seater fighter, his cool smile as I lashed him up in his parachute and his remark as I passed along a few directions as to what to do with that chute ring – when, as, and if–

Admitted he was scared

This little, frail guy had a great soul deep down inside, and a heart to take whatever came his way. Ernie just sat there, keenly alert, seeing everything, registering everything. Scared – as he told me later. Sure, he came right out with the confession.

With these memories of the Ernie Pyle of other days I have never been surprised at his understanding of our boys’ real thoughts and his ability to tell the story so everyone could understand it.

We are all designed according to the same general plan – the same number of bones, the same aches and the same wants. The big, distinguishing difference is in the intensity of that little light way down deep inside which we call a soul. In some it burns dimly. In others it flares once in a while. In still others it burns very brightly at times. But in some, it is incandescent, burning its owner as well as those nearby with an unquenchable determination to live fully and completely. Such a light illuminated the life of Ernie Pyle, best exemplified to me by his words years ago as I buckled on his parachute:

“Maybe I can’t take it, Al, but fly this flight as if I weren’t with you.”

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663

The Pittsburgh Press (April 26, 1945)

Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Before he was killed on Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle, as was his habit, had written a number of columns ahead. He did this so there would be no interruptions in the column while he was getting material for more. Several more are expected.

OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – Back nearly two years ago when I was with Oklahoma’s 45th Division in Sicily and later in Italy, I learned they had a number of Navajo Indians in communications.

When secret orders had to be given over the phone these boys gave them to one another in Navajo. Practically nobody in the world understands Navajo except another Navajo.

Well, my regiment of First Division Marines has the same thing. There are about eight Indians who do this special work. They are good Marines and very proud of being so.

There are two brothers among them, both named Joe. Their last names are the ones that are different. I guess that’s a Navajo custom, though I never knew of it before.

One brother, Pfc. Joe Gatewood, went to the Indian school in Albuquerque. In fact, our house is on the very same street and Joe said it sure was good to see somebody from home.

Joe has been out here three years. He is 34 and has five children back home when he would like to see. He was wounded several months ago and got the Purple Heart.

Joe’s brother is Joe Kellwood who has also been out here three years. A couple of others are Pfc. Alex Williams of Winslow, Arizona, and Pvt. Oscar Carroll of Fort Defiance, Arizona, which is the capital of the Navajo reservation. Most of the boys are from around Fort Defiance and used to work for the Indian Bureau.

Knew invasion wouldn’t be tough

The Indian boys knew before we got to Okinawa that the invasion landing wasn’t going to be very tough. They were the only ones in the convoy who did know it. For one thing they saw signs and for another they used their own influence.

Before the convoy left, the far south tropical island where the Navajos had been training since the last campaign, the boys on a ceremonial dance.

The Red Cross furnished some colored cloth and paint to stain their faces. They made up the rest of their Indian costumes from chicken feathers, seashells, empty ration cans and rifle cartridges.

Then they did their own native ceremonial chants and dances out there under the tropical palm trees with several thousand Marines as a grave audience.

In their chant they asked the great gods in the sky to sap the Japanese of their strength for this blitz. They put the finger of weakness on the Japs. And then they ended their ceremonial chant by singing the Marine Corps song in Navajo.

I asked Joe Gatewood if they really felt their dance had something to do with the ease of our landing and he said the boys did believe so and were very serious about it, himself included.

“I knew nothing was going to happen to us,” Joe said, “for on the way up here there was a rainbow over the convoy and I knew then everything would be all right.”

They can’t hurt us

One day I was walking through the edge of a rubbled Okinawa village where Marine telephone linesmen were stringing wire to the tops of the native telephone poles.

As I passed, one of the two linesmen at the top called down rather nervously saying he was afraid the wobbly pole was going to break under their weight.

To which one of the men on the ground, apparently their sergeant, called back reassuringly:

“You’ve got nothing to worry about. That’s imperial Japanese stuff. It can’t break.”

There are very few cattle on Okinawa, but there are lots of goats and horses. The horses are small hike western ponies and mostly bay or sorrel. Most of them are skinny, but when you see well-fed ones, they are good-looking horses. They are all well broken and tame.

The Marines have acquired them by the hundreds. Our company alone has more than 20. The boys put their heavier packs on them but more than that they just seem to enjoy riding them up and down the country roads.

They have rigged up rope halters for them and one Marine made a bridle using a piece of bamboo for a bit. They dug up old pads, and even some goatskins to use as saddle blankets. But it’s surprising how many men in a company of Marines don’t really know how to ride a horse.

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The Pittsburgh Press (April 27, 1945)

Big ship named for Ernie Pyle

WASHINGTON (UP) – The Maritime Commission announced today that it will name one of its largest ships for Ernie Pyle, the famous Scripps-Howard war reporter who was killed on Ie Island April 18.

The Maritime Commission said:

Pyle many times honored the men of the Merchant Marine for the vital, and often heroic, part they have taken in the war effort. Millions of Pyle’s G.I.s have crossed the oceans to the fighting fronts on ships manned by his friends in the Merchant Marine.

The Ernie Pyle will be a C-4 military type cargo ship – 522 feet long, 14,600 deadweight tons, 9,000 horsepower, and 14,000-mile cruising radius.

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Medal of Honor urged for Pyle

LONDON, England (UP) – Pvt. Karl Detzer Jr. and “50 other Joes” proposed in a letter to the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, today that the Congressional Medal of Honor be awarded posthumously to Ernie Pyle, war correspondent recently killed on Ie Island.

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Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

Before he was killed on Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle, as was his habit, had written a number of columns ahead. He did this so there would be no interruptions in the column while he was getting material for more. His last column will appear tomorrow.

OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – There is one very small Marine who is as nice as he can be, always smiling and making some crack. But the boys say that in battle he doesn’t give a damn for anything.

The first afternoon I joined his company he didn’t know who I was and as we passed, he said very respectfully, “Good evening, Colonel.” I had to chuckle to myself. Later he mentioned it and we laughed about it and then he started calling me Ernie.

He was Cpl. Charles Bradshaw of Indianapolis. He is only 19, but on his third campaign in the Pacific. He’s had three pieces of shrapnel in him at various times and months later they would work out through the skin. Another one is just about to come out his finger now.

in the Marines, Cpl. Bradshaw is called “Brady” for short. Before joining the Marines, he worked on a section gang for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He usually wears one of those wide-brimmed green cloth hats instead of the regulation Marine cap.

He always carries a .45 and it has a slightly curved 25-cent piece imbedded in the handle. As he says, “To make it worth something.”

Brady found two huge photograph albums in a cave. The albums are full of snapshots of Japanese girls and Chinese girls and young Japs in uniform and of family poses. He treasured it as though it were full of people he knew. He studied it for hours and hopes to take it home with him. “Anything for a Souvenir” could be the motto of the Marines.

Prefers Okinawa to Panama

Another Indianapolis Marine I met on Okinawa was Pfc. Dallas Rhude who used to be a newspaperman himself.

In fact, he worked on our paper there, The Indianapolis Times. He started carrying The Times when he was eight, then got into the editorial room as a copy boy and kept that job till he joined the Marines.

He is a replacement; in other words, he is in the pool that fills up the gaps made by casualties. But since there have been very few casualties, he hasn’t replaced anybody yet.

Dallas spent 22 months in Panama, was home for a little while and now has been over here for four months. He says this Okinawa climate sure beats Panama.

Sentimental as anyone

Marines may be killers, but they’re also just as sentimental as anybody else.

There is one pleasant boy in our company that I had talked with but didn’t have any little incident to write about him, so didn’t put his name down. The morning I left the company and was saying goodbye all around, I could sense that he wanted to tell me something, so I hung around until he came out. It was about his daughter.

This Marine was Cpl. Robert Kingan of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He has been a Marine 13 months and over here 11 months. His daughter was born about six weeks ago. Naturally he has never seen her, but he’s had a letter from her!

It was a V letter written in a childish scrawl and said:

Hello, Daddy, I am Karen Louise. I was born Feb. 25 at four minutes after nine. I weigh five pounds and eight ounces. Your daughter, Karen.

And then there was a P.S. on the bottom which said: “Postmaster – Please rush, My Daddy doesn’t know I am here.”

Bob didn’t know whether it was actually his wife or his mother-in-law who wrote the letter. He thinks maybe it was his mother-in-law – Mrs. A. H. Morgan – since it had her return address on it.

So, I put that down and then asked Bob what his mother-in-law’s first name was. He looked off into space for a moment, and then started laughing.

“I don’t know what her first name is,” he said. “I always just called her Mrs. Morgan!"

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The Pittsburgh Press (April 28, 1945)

Editorial: ‘So long’

He squatted at his typewriter, struggling again to array a troop of sturdy words that would serve his mood.

There were many words in his mind; but the ones he wanted had to come from his heart. And his heart was brooding, for another of his friends was dead. As man to man, he wanted to call out, “So long,” in an hour when so many were dying, so many that anything less than death was beginning to seem incredible.

The words came from his typewriter, slowly, but firmly and sincerely. They spoke of the terror of death and the way it can grip a man; and at the end they said: “I know that he, like myself, had come to feel that terror.”

Ernie Pyle snapped shut the lid on his typewriter. His story was done. It proved to be his last. Ernie had said: “So long.”

And so, with great sorrow, we print Ernie Pyle’s final column today.

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Ernie Pyle V Norman

Roving Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

This is Ernie Pyle’s last column. It is a beautiful tribute to Fred Painton, war correspondent who died of natural causes on Guam a few weeks ago. Ernie was on Okinawa when he was informed of Mr. Painton’s death. Ernie took time out from covering the war to write this touching story about his friend. Only a few days later, Ernie was killed.

OKINAWA (by Navy radio) – This is a column about Fred Painton, the war correspondent who dropped dead on Guam a short time ago.

Fred wrote war articles for Reader’s Digest and many other magazines. He even gambled his future once writing a piece for the Saturday Evening Post about me.

Fred was one of the little group of real old-timers in the European war. He was past 49 and an overseas veteran of the last war. His son is grown and in the Army. Fred had seen a great deal of war for a man his age.

He was just about to start back to America when he died. He had grown pretty weary of war. He was anxious to get home to have some time with his family.

But I’m sure he had no inkling of death, for he told me in Guam of his post-war plans to take his family and start on an ideal and easy life of six months in Europe, six in America. He had reached the point where life was nice.

Fred Painton was one of the modest people; I mean real down-deep modest. He had no side whatever, no ax to grind, no coy ambition.

He loved to talk and his words bore the authority of sound common sense. He had no intellectualisms. His philosophy was the practical kind. He was too old and experienced and too wise in the ways of human nature to belittle his fellow man for the failures that go with trying hard.

Prided self on production

Fred didn’t pretend to literary genius but he did pride himself on a facility for production. He could get a thousand dollars apiece for his articles and he wrote a score of them a year. And his pieces, like himself, were always honest. I’ve known him to decline to do an assignment when he felt the subject prohibited his doing it with complete honesty.

Fred’s balding head and crooked nose, his loud and friendly nasal voice, his British Army trousers and short leggings were familiar in every campaign in Europe.

He took rough life as it came and complained about nothing, except for an occasional bout with the censors. And even there he made no enemies for he was always sincere.

There were a lot of people Fred didn’t like, and being no introvert everybody within earshot knew whom he didn’t like and why. And I have never known him to dislike anyone who wasn’t a phony.

Fred and I have traveled through lots of war together. We did those bitter cold days, early in Tunisia, and we were the last stragglers out of Sicily.

We both came home for short furloughs after Sicily. The Army provided me with a powerful No. 2 air priority, while Fred had only the routine No. 3.

We left the airport at Algiers within four hours of each other on the same morning. I promised Fred I would call his wife and tell her he would be home within a week.

When I got to New York I called the Painton home at Westport, Connecticut. Fred answered the phone himself. He had beat me home by three days on his measly little priority! He never got over kidding me about that.

Natural death seems incongruous

As the war years rolled by, we have become so indoctrinated into sudden and artificially imposed death that natural death in a combat zone seems incongruous, and almost as though the one who died had been cheated.

Fred had been through the mill. His ship was torpedoed out from under him in the Mediterranean. Anti-aircraft fire killed a man beside him in a plane over Morocco.

He had gone on many invasions. He was in Cassino. He was ashore at Iwo Jima. He was certainly living on borrowed time. To many it seems unfair for him to die prosaically. And yet…

The wear and the weariness of war is cumulative. To many a man in the line today fear is not so much of death itself, but fear of the terror and anguish and utter horror that precedes death in battle.

I have no idea how Fred Painton would have liked to die. But somehow, I’m glad he didn’t have to go through the unnatural terror of dying on the battlefield. For he was one of my dear friends and I know that he, like myself, had come to feel that terror.

This is Ernie Pyle’s last column. The Press has printed all the stories written before he was killed by Jap machine-gun bullets on Ie Island, off Okinawa.

For the second time in little more than a year, we publish with sadness and deep regret the final column of a great reporter and a splendid human being. In February 1944, we printed the last column of Raymond Clapper who, like Ernie, met death covering the Pacific warfare.

It has been suggested that The Press publish some of Ernie’s former columns. But we have done this in the past when he was on vacations, and another publication of those columns would, we believe, probably be something of a letdown after the stories which led to his death.

Hence, this is goodbye to Ernie. As he, himself, wrote in the concluding sentence of his book Here Is Your War:

“When we leave here for the next shore, there is nothing we can do for the ones beneath the wooden crosses, except perhaps to pause and murmur: ‘Thanks, pal.’”

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‘Are you all right?’ Ernie asked of major just as bullet hit him

Pyle lived 2 or 3 minutes, officer said, but he was unconscious all the while
By Bryce Watson, USCG combat correspondent

This story just arrived. It tells of Ernie Pyle’s last words, and details of the ambush of which he was the victim. His last column is printed today, on this page.

ON THE IE SHIMA BEACHHEAD (delayed) – I watched a battered jeep return with the body of Ernie Pyle, bringing him 500 yards from the forward area.

The Ie Shima terrain is smooth here, looking like the Indiana farmland where he was born – except it is broken by lines of advancing tanks and tractors.

Maj. George H. Pratt, who was beside Ernie on that tragic instant, was sitting wearily in front of an abandoned Jap cave.

“Ernie Pyle,” Maj. Pratt said softly, “was worth two divisions as a morale factor alone.”

Ernie’s body had just been recovered from beneath the machine gun and sniper fire up ahead by John J. Barnes of Petersburg, Virginia. He was the driver of the jeep when it happened, and had remained with Ernie, pinned down by fire.

5 start out in jeep

The body was resting near Maj. Pratt. Ernie’s battledress was unpressed, his dusty shoes shielded from the sun by a poncho.

“He was one of the enlisted men really,” Maj. Pratt said.

When the jeep had started out, hours before, there had been four men in it besides Ernie – Dale Bassett from Denver, Colorado; Lt. Col. L. B. Coolidge of Helena, Arkansas; Barnes, the driver, and Maj. Pratt, who is from Eugene, Oregon. They were driving to the front lines.

Suddenly, a Jap machine gun opened up.

The swath of fire swung to the right and swept under the jeep which pitched to a halt.

Dive into ditches

All five men went into the ditches. Barnes dived to the left, the others to the right.

The machine gun swept back and forth across their positions.

“I looked to my left,” said Maj. Pratt. “Ernie looked at me and smiled. He raised up slightly and said: ‘Are you all right?’”

There had been a slight break in the firing. Just as Ernie Pyle asked his question, a burst got him.

Lives several minutes

“He went backward slowly,” Maj. Pratt said. “It was a head wound. Thank God he never knew what happened. It was two or three minutes before he was dead, maybe, but he was unconscious all the time.”

The machine gun was joined by sniper fire. All four men on the right side of the road managed to crawl away.

But Barnes had to remain until a special detail of infantrymen cleaned out the area, about four and a half hours later.

Then Barnes drove his flat-tired jeep back with Ernie’s body.

Voice breaks

As I talked to Maj. Pratt, his voice broke several times.

“He was so damned modest and human,” he said.

I walked toward the beach, to the temporary burial ground. Men were standing about, saying nothing.

There were other dead there. In death, Ernie Pyle was lying among the common, trudging foot soldiers – the brave men – he had glorified in life.

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That Girl: Your memory of Ernie his reward

Saturday, April 28, 1945

The following statement to Ernie Pyle’s readers is published at the request of Mrs. Pyle:

To all of you who have tried to find words to express the grief in your hearts for the deeply personal loss you feel because Ernie has gone from us, I want to say I am one of you. Our loss is a common loss. Your letters and messages made me feel you had come to me for comfort – the comfort that Ernie had given you each day.

That he will live in your hearts forever will be his reward – his monument.

MRS. JERRY PYLE

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Seventy-nine years later, it still rings true… :saluting_face:

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To the TimeGhost Army: Share your favorite Ernie Pyle stories here.

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Ernie’s writing style was very effective by speaking directly to regular people. He focused on the positive elements he observed and did not use his voice to denigrate anyone. He saw firsthand how important everyone’s role was to the war effort. If he did not write about a specific person then one can conclude he did not have anything positive to say about them. His voice was a rarity in his day and we would all be better served if he were here today writing stories.

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It’s difficult to choose my personal favorite of his stories: His dispatches from North Africa, his series of articles on the WACs, his dispatches from Italy and France, and even his rather hilarious time in Central Africa.