So long, Ernie
Indiana-born Ernest Taylor “Ernie” Pyle in 1945 was one of the best-known and most well-liked American war correspondents. His syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide. Along the way, he had earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his first-person coverage of “dogface” grunts in the mud and the blood.
He had such a universal appeal that crews named their guns after him. Try to get that kind of love for a modern reporter.
Sailors aboard USS LST 392, discussing D-Day, when Ernie Pyle was their passenger and left his signature on their guns. Shown, left to right: SM3 Chas T. Repik, USNR; SC2c James F. Reardon, USNR; S1c Edward T. Wholley. (Bottom) BM2c Martin A. Reilly, USNR, and RM2C Gint Middleton, USNR. Photograph released December 4, 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-289953
Born in 1900, he wore a Navy uniform in the Great War, although only briefly. After covering WWII in England before the U.S. entered the war, then on the ground in North Africa, Italy and France, he shipped out for the Pacific in January 1945 aboard the light carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) and landed on Ie Shima with the Army’s 77th “Liberty” Division on 17 April to cover the Okinawa campaign.
Pyle, right, on the bridge of Cabot with the skipper –CAPT (later RADM) Walton Wiley Smith (USNA 1920)–during strikes in the North Pacific against Tokyo, February 1945. 80-G-262854-001
Ernie Pyle watches the invasion of Okinawa from a Navy warship, little realizing the death lay in wait in a gully on Ie Shima. 80-G-49872
The next day, Pyle was hit by a Japanese machine-gun bullet to the left temple just under his helmet, killing him instantly. He was one of 69 War Correspondents killed during the conflict.
His remains were later moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in 1949. A memorial to him endures on Iejima.
It reads, “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”
