Ernie Pyle was the most beloved war correspondent of World War II. He covered the war from North Africa to Northern France in the European theater before going to the Pacific to report on the Okinawa invasion.
“Brave Men,” originally published in 1944, is a classic collection of Pyle’s writings. It covers his activities from the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 through the liberation of Paris in August of 1944. The book was made up of his newspaper columns. Some were updated to reflect changes since he wrote them, noting what happened to those he had written about.
In the book, he lives in many different places: aboard a landing ship tank (LST) headed to Anzio, with engineers in Sicily; with an infantry company and artillery unit in Italy; among the aircrews of a dive bomber unit; a light bomber unit, and medium bomber unit in Italy, and England ordinance; and anti–aircraft units in France. He then told the story of the men (and occasional women) who belonged to it. Nothing grand, but rather relating the everyday experiences of life.
American journalist Ernie Pyle, circa 1945, types at a desk in a jacket, a knit cap, and goggles. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Pyle’s style is what made him so popular back then, and why he is still worth reading today. He looks at the war from a retail level. He mentioned those he encountered by name, giving their home town, and occasionally their street address. (Modern readers can look them up on Google Earth and wonder if today’s residents know of its heritage.) His prose is straightforward and spare, highly readable.
Most of those he wrote about were not famous. A few, like Bill Mauldin, were becoming famous. Others, like future sportscaster Lindsey Nelson, would become famous in the 1950s through the 1970s, but others were unknown GIs in World War II. (Internet searches on names Pyle mentions sometimes yield interesting surprises.)
The book contains some of Pyle’s best writing, including his best-known column, “The Death of Captain Waskow.” It follows a pattern pioneered by Pyle pre-war, roving the United States, looking for ordinary people with interesting stories. It was a format followed by Charles Kuralt postwar and Salena Zito today.
“Brave Men” is being re-released in a new edition with an introduction by Pyle biographer David Chrisinger. It is worth reading, or reading again. It is a reminder of the best in America back in the 1940s. Yet much of what he writes about still exists in today’s small-town and rural America.
“Brave Men” by Ernie Pyle with an introduction by David Chrisinger. (Penguin Classics)‘Brave Men’
By Ernie Pyle, with an introduction by David Chrisinger
Penguin Classics, May 30, 2023
Paperback: 544 pages