Bobby Bragan
American baseball player, coach, manager (1917-2010)
Ernie Pyle
American war correspondent and writer
Ernest Taylor Pylewas an American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theaterand Pacific theater (1945).
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About the Ernie Pyle
Ernest Taylor Pylewas an American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theaterand Pacific theaterduring the Battle of Okinawa.
At the time of his death in 1945, Pyle was among the best-known American war correspondents. His syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide. President Harry Truman said of Pyle, “No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen.”
20 Quotes by Ernie Pyle
- 1.
If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 2.
If I can just see the European war out I think I might feel justified in quitting the war.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 3.
Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows – the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 4.
I’ve been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 5.
The American soldier is quick in adapting himself to a new mode of living. Outfits which have been here only three days have dug vast networks of ditches three feet deep in the bare brown earth. They have rigged up a light here and there with a storage battery.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 6.
In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory – there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 7.
All the rest of us – you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa – we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 8.
At last we are in it up to our necks, and everything is changed, even your outlook on life.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 9.
The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen’s valor only to break out again later.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 10.
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.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 11.
Swinging first and swinging to kill is all that matters now.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 12.
But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 13.
War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 14.
Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 15.
It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 16.
I’ve really been sick with this cold, but I think I might have kept the columns going anyhow except I was just so low in spirit, I didn’t have the will to struggle against them when my deadline was so close and I felt so lousy.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 17.
I was away from the front lines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front I wondered if I would sense any change in them.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 18.
The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 19.
Our artillery has really been sensational. For once we have enough of something and at the right time. Officers tell me they actually have more guns than they know what to do with.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer
- 20.
About every two minutes a new wave of planes would be over. The motors seemed to grind rather than roar, and to have an angry pulsation like a bee buzzing in blind fury.
Ernie PyleAmerican war correspondent and writer