A Mighty Wartime Pen

Sitting in the relative safety and comfort of their own living rooms many Americans were encouraged to support the efforts of the GIs in the field not by the battlefield victories that were reported in the newspapers and on the radio during World War II but by a reporter who lived with the average citizen-soldiers actually fighting the war.

Ernie Pyle was born a farmer’s son in 1900 and had achieved a fair measure of journalistic success prior to the outbreak of the second world war, even becoming the managing editor of the Washington Daily News. However, after moving to London in 1940 to report on the effects of the German air blitz on the occupants of the city, he soon became "America's most widely read war correspondent." according to Time Magazine.

This achievement was due in part to his willingness to put himself in harm’s way, he went with the US Army to North Africa, Sicily, Italy and was with the Allied troops during the Normandy landings of D-Day, but more so his popularity with the folks “back home” was due in large measure to his style of writing from the viewpoint of the average soldier. He was able to capture and share with his readers the sacrifices that their sons were making while also humanizing the war with his first-hand glimpses of the humor, compassion, dignity, and bravery of the men that he was embedded with.

Probably no other reporter has ever been, nor will ever be, as popular with the troops as Pyle. He was considered one of them and enjoyed that distinction. Shortly before he was killed on a routine patrol by a on Okinawa in 1945 Pyle earned journalism’s highest award, the Pulitzer Prize for his wartime reporting.

As a testament to his popularity, he once wrote a column in which he argued that since airmen received extra money, “flight pay”, due to the hazardous nature of flying, the soldier in the field deserved what he termed “fight pay”. Shortly thereafter Congress passed what has been called the Ernie Pyle Bill which authorized an additional 50% of a soldier’s pay for serving in a combat zone.

Many feel that his contributions to the war effort were exceptionally helpful in maintaining morale, both at home and among the troops he lived with and died with.