Submersion in war does not necessarily qualify a man to be the master of the peace

Local columnist Richard Louv:

Consider Ernie Pyle, the finest newspaper columnist of WWII. When pundits and policy makers romanticize the Greatest Generation, they often mention Pyle, as a symbol of an older time of sanctity, sacrifice and supposed warm fuzzies on the home front. In June, Hasbro made it official, issuing the Ernie Pyle GI Joe doll.

In truth, Pyle, particularly near the end, was not so warm and fuzzy

[snip...]

One last column, "On V-E Day," was discovered in his pocket. Pyle's biographer, James Tobin, writes: "For unknown reasons, Scripps-Howard's editors chose not to release the column draft, though VE Day followed Ernie's death by just three weeks. Perhaps they guessed it would have puzzled his readers, even hurt them. Certainly it was a darker valedictory than they would have expected from him." The Pittsburgh Press finally published the column, six months later.

Here are Ernie Pyle's final lines:

"Dead men by mass production – in one country after another – month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

"Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

"Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

"These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road

"We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That's the difference ... "

Go read the whole thing.