In the social media-Julian Assange era, would Americans click 'like' for Ernie Pyle?
Pyle was not a wartime watchdog who uncovered ineptitude. His writing was powerful because he spoke truths and asked questions that resonated at home.
Would America today embrace the next Ernie Pyle? He wasn’t a muckraker, a hacker or a spiller of wartime secrets. He didn’t precipitate lawsuits or landmark court rulings. He got his information the old-fashioned way, by being there. And he told his stories with a down-to-earth elegance that connected with his readers.
Pyle developed his conversational, homespun style in the 1930s as a roving reporter. “This roving job has taken me to every state in the Union (except Utah, and I’m on my way there now),” he wrote. “Everywhere I go people are jealous of me. They think it must be wonderful just to ride around with your expenses paid and have nothing to do but write one column a day. They’re practically right. They’d be completely right if it weren’t for the column.”
It was like sitting on the porch with your neighbor sipping lemonade or iced tea. Every day, Ernie would amble on over to your place, sit down, and tell you how his day went. He wasn’t afraid to “tell it to you straight,” but neither did he push things beyond the limit. When World War II came, he was able to capture the interests, the concerns and the hopes of a nation with respect, and also with forthright honesty.
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No one ever accused Ernie Pyle of disclosing military secrets. He didn’t. During World War II he wrote from the hearts of the soldiers to the heartland of America. He engaged in participatory journalism decades before George Plimpton made it a household phrase. In one column, he wrote of digging a ditch in the moist sand of the North African desert, “The day got hot, and we took off our shirts. One sweating soldier said: ‘Five years ago you couldn’t a got me to dig a ditch for five dollars an hour. Now look at me. "You can’t stop me digging ditches. I don’t even want pay for it; I just dig for love.’”
Love for the 'mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys'
Pyle shared America’s deep appreciation for the sacrifices made by its soldiers, and conveyed them with blunt eloquence. “Now to the infantry — the God-damned infantry, as they like to call themselves," he wrote. "I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.”
He wasn’t afraid to inject analysis into his play-by-plays, and he asked the same questions the folks back home would have asked. In his column describing the surprisingly easy entry into Sicily, Pyle wrote: “It was wonderful and yet it all was so illogical. Even if the Italians did want to quit, why did the Germans let them? What had happened? What did the enemy have up its sleeve?”
On the strength his 1943 columns, Pyle won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for “distinguished war correspondence.” His work would only improve. Indiana University described his Jan. 10, 1944 column, “The Death of Captain Waskow,��� as “the most famous and most widely-reprinted column by Ernie Pyle.”
Here is his account of how soldiers reacted upon seeing the lifeless body of their beloved captain: “Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there. And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.”
No sugarcoating, but Pyle was no watchdog
His report on the Normandy invasion was particularly stark. “I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France," he began "It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.”
Pyle raised our hopes when they needed raising, but he didn’t sugarcoat war. He became a vital asset for our troops, their families, and his country. His columns became best-selling books. On April 18, 1945, when he was shot dead by a Japanese sniper, our nation didn’t just lose a columnist, it lost a powerful megaphone.
His writing was powerful not because he uncovered ineptitude, not because he was on a mission to expose wrongdoing, but because he spoke truths that captured the essence of his contemporary readers.
Do today’s Americans hold the same values? Would they impugn an Ernie Pyle, not for failing to report the warts (Pyle certainly did), but for failing to be an adequate watchdog?
If so, that would be a shame. Columnists should not come in one flavor. They should represent a diversity of styles to match the diversity of the audience. You need not hit the “like” button on every column you read, but, at the very least, you should select the “respect” button.
Christopher Carosa is president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The anniversary of Ernie Pyle’s death is now National Columnists' Day in his honor; Chris urges readers to check out Pyle’s wartime columns here.
