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.