Imperial Valley press., 1945-04-18

! II was as the troops pushed east
| ward to root out JapS dug in on the
Iegusugu mountain north of the
town, that Pyle was killed by tic
hidden machine-gunner.
SECOND To GO
Pyle was the second Seripps-
Howard United Features columnist
killed in action in the Pacific in a
little more than a year. Raymond
| Clapper, famous Washington COL
umniSt, was killed in an air crash
during the invasion CT the Mar
shalls in February, 1914.
Pyle started covering sthe war in
England and North Africa. He
stayed with it, except for a brief
furlough home, until the Americans
were sweeping the Germans out of
France.
Then he came home again, leay-
ing the front, he explained. simply
because he couldn't stand the sight
and smell of death any longer.
He didn't want to go tc war again,
but he felt he owed it to America S
SoldierS ana sailors and marines
to report what they we're doing in
the Pacific.
LANDED ON OKINAWA
He landed Oh Ckinawa ON what
they called Love Day the day of
the first assault.
The news CT Pyle's death sad
dened an already bereaved White
House. A few moments after the
report got out, President Truman
said:
The nation is quickly saddened
again by the death of Ernie Pyle
No man in this war has so we'll told
the story of the American fighting
man as American fighting men
wanted it told. More than any other
man he became the spokesman CT
the ordinary American in arms do
ing so many extraordinary things.
It was his genius that the mass and
power of our military and naval
forces never .obscured the men who
made them.
He wrote about people in arms
as people still, but a people moving
in a determination which did not
need retentions az a part of power
Nobody knows how many indi-
viduals in our forces and at home
he helped with his writings. But
all Americans understand now how
wisely, hCw warm m-heartedly, how
honestly he served his country and
his profession. He deserves the
gratitude of all his countrymen."
FOX-HOLE REPORTER
Pyle was a foX-hole reporter. He
said Re knew nothing about strategy
or tactics. What interested him was
the Gil in the dust and the muck.
So that was what he wrote about.
He had spent the years before the
war writing a rambling column
about places he lad seen and people
he had met.
He lacked the physique for war.
He was slight, weatherbeaten, gray
haired, and balding. He was i'll much
of the time. He was no longer young
he would have been 45 on A
ugust 3,
But he liked people. When he
went to war, lie kept on writing
about people. The people he wrote
about were in. the foX-holes, SO
Ernie spent lot Of time in fox
holes.
Once in North Africa scme Ger
man Stukas began dive bombing
and strafing the place where he
was. He dived into a ditch behind
a soldier.
When the raiu was ever, he
nudged the soldier ard said, View,
that was close, eh?" The soldier
didn't answer. He was dead.
Eye, saying over and over again
that he was constantly afraid, went
from near-miss to near-miss, from
North Africa to Ie.
Once at Anzio a bomb knocked
him out of his bunk. He reported
it, but most of the column for that
day was about the others who were
in the hut with him. He told how
Robert VermilliOn, United Press
correspondent, tried to get out from
under the debris and couldn't SID
Vermillion, Hey, somebody set me
out of here"
In France, Pyle finally saw all the
death he could stand for a while
He wrote candidly that he could
not longer take it. He had to come
home.
Soldiers wrote him letters telling
him they knew just how he felt,
ard they didn't blame him.
But Pyle couldn't stay away from
war that he felt was his as much
as it was the Joes fighting it. So he
went to Okinawa.
BORN IN INDIANA
Pyle was born August 3, 1900, on
farm near Dana, Indiana. His
father, William C. Pyle, still lives
there His mother, about when he
wrote from time to time in his col
umn, died while he was in England
in March, 194l.
He was married July 7, 1925, TO
Geraldine Siebolds then a civil SER
vice commission government clerk in
Washington. She came from Still
water, Minnesota. Mrs. Pyle lives
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where
they built a home a few years ago.
Ernie att ended Indiana University
for three ard half years and quit
without graduating. He broke into
the newspaper business on the La
port Gndiana) Herald, then was
brought to Washington, D. c., by the
late Earle Martin, the neditor OF
Scripps-H -Howard's Washington Daily