The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II
In contrast to several U.S.-initiated military conflicts, World War II is often seen as the “good war.’’ That is in part due to the pure evilness of the Nazis and fascists and the perceptions shaped by reportage of journalists like Ernie Pyle.
His Pulitzer Prize-winning columns focused on the experiences of rank-and-file soldiers and gave readers back home a sense of both the heroism and the horrors. Tragically, he was killed when the jeep he was riding in was shot at during the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945.
David Chrisinger analyzes Pyle’s writing and looks at it through a modern lens by visiting some of the key battle sites in his engaging and fast-paced book The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II. This is not a full-scale biography, but rather a deep dive into the most important part of Pyle’s life.
The author concisely sums up Pyle’s work: “For millions of American troops overseas, Ernie was their scribe, their translator, and their champion,’’ he writes. “Unlike most of his peers, Ernie tended to ignore the war’s big picture. With only a superficial grasp of military strategy and geopolitics, he chose to immerse himself in frontline living so he could tell stories from what he called the soldiers’ ‘worm’s eye view.’” (13)
Chrisinger’s use of “Ernie,’’ rather than Pyle, creates an intimate connection between readers and subject. With other writers that approach might seem presumptuous and also outrage purist writing teachers, but given the familiar tone of Pyle’s columns, in this instance, it works.
Pyle, who grew up on an Indiana farm, had been an editor and columnist with Scripps-Howard newspapers before covering the war. This background gave him the ability to connect with enlisted personnel and officers and resulted in writing that was anything but pompous.
Chrisinger’s use of “Ernie,’’ rather than Pyle, creates an intimate connection between readers and subject. With other writers that approach might seem presumptuous and also outrage purist writing teachers, but given the familiar tone of Pyle’s columns, in this instance, it works.
He described “tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night, of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle.” (14)
One of the battles that Pyle covered occurred at Kasserine Pass in west Central Tunisia in February 1943, the first time American forces met Axis troops in Africa. American troops suffered heavy losses at the beginning but later regrouped and with the help of British reservists regained ground and eventually defeated Germany in Tunisia. He tried to portray the initial retreat accurately but of course had to be cautious in his writing due to the censors.
“The withdrawal of our American forces from the vast Sbeitla Valley, back through the Kasserine Pass was a majestic thing in a way,’’ he wrote. “It was carried out so calmly and methodically. It differed in no way, except size, from the normal daily convoys of troops and supplies. (81)
When Chrisinger visits the battle scene, he notes that there is anti-American sentiment not because of World War II but because of the country’s attack on Iraq and the death of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator, a Sunni Muslim, was well-liked in Tunisia because he had used his treasures to repair some of the losses that country suffered during the war.
Pyle was also at one of the war’s most iconic battles, Normandy, and landed at Omaha Beach with the troops on June 7, 1944. His column was dramatic and more lyrical than many other of Pyle’s dispatches.
“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 that they were in the water, for they were dead,’’ he wrote. (222)
Chrisinger provides detailed summaries of this, and all the other battles described in the book. Some of the accounts could have been shorter in light of all the material available in other books. But Chrisinger’s enthusiasm for the topic prompts this writer to forgive him.
When Chrisinger, accompanied by a French historian, retraces Pyle’s steps he observes: “At the end of the beach, we reached the concrete remnants of a mostly intact bunker that once guarded the Vierville beach exit the Americans needed to push off Omaha and into the hedgerow country beyond. Over eighty years of coastal weather seemed to have done more damage to the bunker than American firepower had.’’ (212)
This blending of past and present is a compelling and potentially risky technique. But Chrisinger avoids the cardinal sin of presentism, which too many historians use to look at past events as if they were happening today. Chrisinger uses the past and present to inform one another, an approach used effectively by other authors, including the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz in books such as Confederates in the Attic. Chrisinger, who runs a program for the non-profit newsroom, The War Horse, that helps veterans write about their experiences, discusses Hurwitz’s influence in the book’s acknowledgments and the two shared an editor.
The eminently worthwhile, and much needed, goal of The War Horse is to give Americans, many of whom are increasingly disconnected from those who serve in the military, a better understanding of that important part of society. It is a vastly different world from Pyle’s era when almost everyone had a familial connection to the military.
However, even Pyle admitted in a letter to General Dwight D. Eisenhower the limits of his ability to inform people back home about the true nature of the experience of enlisted personnel.
He wrote that “the world of the infantryman is a world so far removed from anything normal, that it can be no more than academic to the average person. I think I have helped make America conscious of, and sympathetic toward him, but I haven’t made them feel what he goes through. I believe it’s impossible.’’(17)
Like many people, his fame and fortune did not prevent him from experiencing considerable sadness and tragedy. He drank heavily, often had bouts of depression and his wife suffered from severe mental illness and attempted suicide. Chrisinger’s account of that aspect of Pyle’s life, drawn heavily from Pyle’s detailed letters, is gut-wrenching.
Pyle’s work won him every conceivable journalistic prize and his books were the basis of a movie starring Burgess Meredith, better known to modern audiences for playing the Penguin in the Batman television series. Sadly, The Story of G.I. Joe, was not released until after Pyle was killed.
Like many people, his fame and fortune did not prevent him from experiencing considerable sadness and tragedy. He drank heavily, often had bouts of depression and his wife suffered from severe mental illness and attempted suicide. Chrisinger’s account of that aspect of Pyle’s life, drawn heavily from Pyle’s detailed letters, is gut-wrenching.
The book complements several others including two by noted academics.
James Tobin, a journalism professor at Miami University of Ohio, wrote a critically acclaimed biography of Pyle, Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II, which was published in 1997. It is a well-written account of Pyle’s life and a broader discussion of the challenges of war reporting.1
More recently, Northwestern University History Department Chair Deborah Cohen wrote Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on A World at War.2 Cohen’s book, which was released two years ago, focused on journalists such as John Gunther and Dorothy Thompson, who focused on the big-picture topics, though they also did some battlefield reporting as well.
Readers wanting a taste of the non-hardship part of World War II reporting should have a drink, or a piece of chocolate torte, in the lobby bar of that legendary and elegant hotel on the Ringstrasse in Vienna.
Both books combine academic rigor with lively writing, a combination that is all too often lacking these days.
As we lose more veterans of World War II each day, it is important that we keep the memory of that epic conflict alive. Chrisinger’s The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II, is a valuable contribution to that effort.
