The Writer That GIs Called ‘Every Soldier’s Best Friend’

This installment of ‘When Character Counted’ introduces us to a journalist who died while serving his profession, his country, and U.S. soldiers.

American journalist Ernie Pyle circa 1945. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In the spring of 1943, war correspondent Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) filed a story on the American infantry fighting in Tunisia. Here is part of that piece:

“The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion. … They don’t slouch. It is the terrible deliberation of each step that spells out their appalling tiredness. … They are young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion make them look middle-aged.”

Developing a Craft

Pyle knew firsthand about middle age, as he was then in his early 40s and already gray and drawn with the rigors of being a war correspondent. By this time, his stories from the front had made his name a household word all across America. He wrote of sailors and airmen, of maintenance crews and supply outfits. The men he spoke with were eager to be included in his articles because he named them and so told their families and friends that they were all right. Other reporters sent home interviews with generals and reports of battles. Pyle brought home the boys and men fighting those battles.