Ernie Pyle: War Correspondent
Quick answer: Who was Ernie Pyle?
Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist whose World War II columns about ordinary soldiers ran in hundreds of newspapers. Born in Indiana in 1900, he was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on Ie Shima, off Okinawa, on April 18, 1945.
Ernest Taylor Pyle was born on August 3, 1900, and grew up on a rented farm in Vermillion County, Indiana, a shy, smart boy who wanted to see the world. He joined the Naval Reserve in 1918, but the war ended before he served, so he went to Indiana University. A semester short of graduating, he left in 1923 to take a $25-a-week reporting job in La Porte, and soon joined the Washington Daily News, starting a career with Scripps-Howard that lasted the rest of his life. He married Geraldine "Jerry" Siebolds in 1925, and the two quit their jobs to drive more than 9,000 miles around the country. He wrote one of the nation's first aviation columns, which moved Amelia Earhart to say that not to know Ernie Pyle was to admit you were unknown in aviation. Then came the roving column, and then the war. From North Africa, Italy, and Normandy, he wrote about the infantryman, the mud, and the dead with a plainness that bridged soldier and civilian, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. He went to the Pacific, and on April 18, 1945, he was killed by a Japanese machine gunner on Ie Shima. John calls him the standard every war correspondent still reaches for.
Why it matters for leaders: Telling the truth about the people doing the hardest work, in plain words, is a form of leadership in its own right.
Q: Where was Ernie Pyle killed?
A: On Ie Shima, a small island off Okinawa, on April 18, 1945. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Q: When did Pyle win the Pulitzer Prize?
A: In 1944, for distinguished correspondence.
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By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation