One was 80 miles behind the front the other was “a mobile surgical hospital, which was usually only about an hour’s drive back of the fighting. “There were two favorite hospitals where I dropped in now and then for a meal or a night,” he says. Operation Torch was the first major airborne operation for the United States, and an event in which several hard lessons were learned, such as reconnoitering approaches to beaches in person, instead of relying on maps. “The presence of American nurses was alleged to have nothing whatever to do with it.” “American tent hospitals in the battle area were favorite hangouts for correspondents,” he says. Pyle often lived rough for the years he followed our military, but he could come and go as he pleased, and he found his own comforts along the way. (For operational security, he did not usually give unit designations or exact locations.) That reads oddly now, but it must have been a tremendous comfort to families in the States, who would not otherwise have been able to get quick or reliable word from loved ones. Pyle tended to use the real names of Americans he met in the field, and sometimes their addresses back home. Here Is Your War is an edited collection of columns he wrote for the papers in 19, on the invasion of North Africa-first against the Vichy French, then the Germans and Italians. It was his straightforward, plain-spoken style that connected with readers, and his obvious affection and empathy for our soldiers fighting in the biggest and bloodiest war in history. He followed our troops through England, Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and the Pacific, was published daily or weekly in 700 newspapers, and won a Pulitzer for his human-interest reporting. Pyle may have been the most famous and best-loved writer of WWII. The bits, called “confetti” in the book trade, are time’s old hijinks and nothing to celebrate. They did not tear so much as crack, if I turned them wrong, and bits flaked off on the couch. Recently I found a first edition of WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle’s Here Is Your War (1943) in some boxes of books I was moving. Nickles, far right, being awarded the Bronze Star in 1944.
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