Ernie Pyle (1900–1945)

Fascinating, mostly because it doesn't, and doesn't try, to give you an overview. It is, as Pyle frequently states, a worms-eye view of WWII in Africa. Pyle came ashore with the first American landings and stayed with and among the troops for the entire course of the fighting in northern Africa. He wasn't, strictly, embedded - he wandered more or less at will between groups, divisions, encampments, and battles. But he saw the whole thing standing (or ducked down in a foxhole) near the men show more who did the fighting, and the men and women who supported them behind the lines. The other thing that makes it so good is that these were written as dispatches, and have not been edited (much) to put them into book form. So when we meet someone, we do _not_ get an overview of where they end up - no "but his life was to be cut short" or "and by the end of the war he had risen in the ranks" or whatever. That's amazingly refreshing - we get to meet them just as Pyle did, as people "here and now". There's also the oddity (which makes sense, given what he was actually writing) that nearly everyone he meets is identified by full name and address (city at least, sometimes street address). He was writing for the folks at home, and connecting with their family members or friends in the war zone is part of that. He is an optimist, and tends to see the best in everyone and every situation - but he doesn't ignore the darker side of things, just doesn't focus on it (let alone to the exclusion of the brighter side of things, as some war writers do). War is horrific, and funny, and inspiring, and destructive, and all these things at once - and Pyle manages to convey that very well. I want more! There is more - his war dispatches start in England and continue through Africa (this book), Europe, and into the war in the Pacific, though he died there. There are also columns he wrote from before the war, traveling through the US and Canada. I'm going to read them all. show less

Ernie Pyle is the doyen of war correspondents, the poet of the infantry, a delightful and engaging friend. Everybody read Ernie's columns during the war, as he provided an honest on-the-ground look at the men who made up America's army. Ernie shared their dangers and hardships, sleeping rough, dodging bullets and shells while being drawn inexorably towards the front. This quest for the truest, closest picture of the war is what makes Pyle great, and also what got him killed in the invasion show more of Okinawa. This book is like having a incredibly observant and empathetic friend writing letters home, and should be required reading for student of WW2.

Let me close with a few quotes that sum up Pyle's work.

"Tunisia - April 22, 1943.
When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front, I wondered if I would sense any change in them.
The most vivid change is the casual and workshop manner in which they talk about killing. They have made the psychological transition from the normal belief that taking a human life is sinful, over to a new professional outlook where killing is a craft. In fact it is an admirable thing.
As a noncombatant, my own life is in danger only by occasional chance or circumstance. Consequently I need not think of killing in personal terms, and killing to me is still murder."

[a draft of his last column, found on his body]
"On Victory in Europe - 1945
Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.
But there are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world...
Dead men by mass production.
Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.
Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come to hate them.
These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.
We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That's the difference..."

What a writer. What a human being. show less

Ernie Pyle's masterpiece of wartime correspondence. I have seen many World War II movies, read some books, and talked to one or two veterans, but I never felt I had a good handle on how it was for the men there until reading this simple and profound book. It begins in June 1943 with the naval journey to Sicily, includes the Anzio beachhead and the savage invasion at Normandy. Pyle does not focus on heroism specifically, although there is plenty of that, but on the men themselves and their show more jobs. That is the common refrain throughout the book: They had a dirty job to do. They didn't want to be there, they didn't want to die, but the better they did their job the faster the war would be concluded and the more soldiers would be alive to go home. The book is filled with gripping, memorable and profound scenes, the most powerful of which may be the liberation of Paris, and the author's "A Last Word". Although the common soldier fills the book, Pyle also runs across some well-known names, including Omar Bradley and Bill Mauldin. The hardest aspect of the book is when Pyle describes a particular soldier in such detail that you feel a knowledge of the man, and then Pyle remarks almost as an aside that he heard weeks later that the soldier was killed in battle. Even more difficult is the realization that this great and simple and profound man, who reminds me of nobody in his journalistic style more than Bob Greene, was killed in the Pacific Theatre not long after the end of this book. show less

Although you run across his name in almost any WWII history that covers the American army, I’d never read anything by Ernie Pyle. Brave Men starts with the invasion of Sicily, jumps to the Anzio beachhead, then to England waiting for D-Day, then moves through France, ending with the liberation of Paris.


Pyle was an “embedded” war correspondent (I’m of the impression they all were until Vietnam). He didn’t stay with a particular unit, mingling with construction engineers, combat show more infantry, tank destroyers, artillery, dive bombers, stevedores, and ordnance repair units. Although he paints flattering portraits of a few generals (notably Omar Bradley) most of his reportage covers ordinary enlisted soldiers. Pyle frequently, almost obsessively, mentions soldier’s names and home towns; since he had been a travel correspondent before the war he knew a lot of places and could often mention a familiar spot to soldiers he was interviewing.


His writing is straightforward and “folksy”; the only case where he lets himself get emotional is while wandering amid the debris on the D-Day beaches and finding scattered bodies in the sand. He’s generally polite to the Germans, commenting (for example) about a scared young German soldier he saw in a field hospital; he never interviews any, though. He’s often close enough to the fighting to get near misses and mentions self-deprecatingly how scared he is (and, of course, he eventually bought a bullet that didn’t miss).


Brave Men doesn’t really add anything to the grand history of the war; Pyle avoided officer briefings and rear area command posts so he never really reported the “big picture” (to be fair, censorship probably wouldn’t have allowed it). But it does remind you that the war on the American side was fought by perfectly ordinary people in extraordinary situations – like all wars are fought, I suppose. show less