Remembering a brave wordsmith
Columnist Milan Simonich pays tribute to Ernie Pyle.
Ernie Pyle would have been embarrassed by this fuss. It’s National Columnists’ Day. The designation might sound meaningless to all but a couple of hundred insiders, something no more meaningful to most people than National Popcorn Day or National Actors’ Day.
But a good story lurks behind National Columnists’ Day, marked April 18.
Pyle died on that day in 1945 while covering World War II. A Japanese machine-gunner shot him on Ie Shima, an island in the Pacific.
Those bullets ended a remarkable life, one unmatched by any chronicler who ever worked in a war zone.
With a portable typewriter and a commitment to putting a human face on worldwide chaos, Pyle wrote six columns a week for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.
He concentrated on soldiers and sailors, their lives and, too often, their deaths.
Pyle, just 44 when he died, could have written his columns from a command post, relatively safe ground in wartime. But shielding himself meant he would have missed the best story of the day. His personal code kept him on the front lines.
Everyone who picked up a newspaper seemed to know Pyle.
“No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told,” President Harry Truman said on learning of Pyle’s death.
A native of Dana, Ind., Pyle had settled in New Mexico. The house he bought in Albuquerque was the only home he ever owned.
He didn’t stay there often during World War II. Pyle spent more time in foxholes and aboard ships than in his own living room.
New Mexico residents have a bad habit of dismissing transplants. Candidates for public office will brag about being 10th- or 15th-generation New Mexicans, then belittle an opponent who’s lived in the state for 30 years.
So extraordinary was Pyle’s talent that he never faced this parochialism.
Before the war, in 1938, Gov. Clyde Tingley read a series of stories Pyle had written on New Mexico. The governor was so impressed he made Pyle an honorary colonel on his staff.
Many more politicians took notice of
Pyle because of his coverage of the war.
Just before his death, the New Mexico Legislature passed a law designating Aug. 3, the columnist’s birthday, as Ernie Pyle Day.
Pyle’s style made it easy for politicians to like him. He favored stories about ordinary people in extraordinary times. Policy matters, deal-making and scandal didn’t captivate Pyle — not when he roved the country and not when he reported from combat zones.
Pyle once wrote a column about Steve Major, a soldier who displayed icy calm under pressure. Major had grabbed hold of a ticking bomb and defused it.
I interviewed Major more than 50 years after Pyle’s death. Major’s memories remained vivid.
“When Ernie talked to you, he made you feel like you had known him for years,” Major said. “He never went around probing into people’s backgrounds. He never raised his voice. He could make the conversation flow out of you.”
Much would change between politicians, soldiers and reporters in the generation after Pyle’s last column.
Aside from death and destruction, there was no comparison between World War II and Vietnam. One was necessary to save the country. The other tore the country apart.
Neil Sheehan established his greatness covering Vietnam. Sheehan titled his book about the war A Bright Shining Lie.
Another famous correspondent in Vietnam, David Halberstam, referred to U.S. generals and politicians as the “lying machine” for their depictions of the war and its progress.
Pyle might have been the last news columnist who did his job well without ever being confrontational with his government.
Had he lived a long life and continued as a roving columnist, he might have had no choice but to face down sheriffs who blocked Black people from registering to vote. Pyle might have profiled government workers whom reckless U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy had accused of being communists. Or Pyle might have waded into the violence of lunchcounter sit-ins.
In his time, the biggest story was World War II. The planet was at stake, and Pyle saw his job as highlighting the soldiers trying to save it.
Everyone knew how hard he worked. Six columns a week was a crushing load. He feared redundancy creeping into his columns, but he carried on without complaint.
Soldiers had a harder life, Pyle said. He was a mere observer. They were the ones risking their lives.
In that one instance, the columnist got it wrong.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.