Sixty-three years after his death, a photo taken minutes after the death of Ernie Pyle surfaced and was printed in newspapers and online this week. It was a striking picture of Pyle, stretched out on the ground shortly after he was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima, April 18, 1945.
I was a fan of Pyle’s reporting and writing before I even got into this business.
After I read the story I went back and dug up one of his books, “Brave men’ I bring out once in awhile. Pyle made himself one of the guys during World War II, moving with and listening to the troops as they lumbered across Europe.
You can read his passages and understand more of what it was like in that war than anything I’ve seen or read about what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan.
All of the technology - the emails, the video cameras - can’t replace someone who takes the time to listen and understand what is happening.
Listen to some of his words: “I sat in the darkness on the forward deck helping half a dozen sailors eat a can of stolen pineapple. Some of the men of the group were hardened and mature. Others were almost children. They all talked seriously and their gravity was touching. The older ones tried to raionalize how the law of averages made it unlikely that our ship out of all the hundreds involved would be hit...Younger ones spoke but little. They talked to me of their plans and hopes for going to college or getting married after the war, always winding up with the phrase, ‘ If I get out of this fracas alive.’
“As we sat there on the hard deck - squatting like Indians in a circle around our pineapple can - it all struck me as somehow pathetic. Even the dizziest among us knew...’’
And it goes on and you cannot stop reading. Pyle became one with an entire generation. That picture reminded me of what our profession is supposed to be about but all too often depends on technology instead of the human touch.