Fates of war bring strange coincidences. Few Americans of today ever heard of Ie Shima - not to be confused with Iwo Jima, site of a crucial WWII battle in the Central Pacific.
With the conquest of Iwo Jima in April 1945, American bombers could fly uninterrupted the 1,200 miles from the Marianas to Japan. The next strategic step was to capture Okinawa, the planned staging area for the final assault on the main Japanese islands.
Ie Shima is a small island close to Okinawa. Several Marine and Army divisions were assigned to assault the main island. The Army's 77th Infantry Division that had participated in the capture of Guam in the Marianas was assigned to capture Ie Shima and its airfield.
It was on Ie Shima, with a burst of Japanese machine gun fire, that a heavy, spiraling bullet nailed Ernie Pyle in his left temple, abruptly ending the life of America's most celebrated war correspondent. It was symbolic and fitting that, in death, Ernie was among the soldiers he championed, including our own Jerry Hastings of Winslow, Ill.
What sequence of events brought these two men within a few yards of each other on that fateful April day?
Ernie Pyle was born in 1900 on a tenant farm near Dana, Ind. He was a small, shy kid. In his country schoolhouse he usually sat apart from his classmates during games. As a teenager during WWI, he joined the Naval Reserve. As the war ended, he was released after three months and entered Indiana University where he studied journalism and worked on the student newspaper.
Pyle left IU a semester before he graduated. It's unclear whether he left because he had a run-in with a faculty member or because he found the university too provincial for his tastes.
He started with a small newspaper in Indiana, but soon found his way to a tabloid, the Washington Daily News. While there, he met a woman from Stillwater, Minn. - the beginning of a rocky marriage. He soon tired of deskwork and in the mid-1920s traveled some 9,000 miles in his Ford roadster to see America.
By 1928 he became the country's first aviation columnist. America's famous female aviator, Ameila Earhart who later mysteriously disappeared flying in the South Pacific, once commented, "Any aviator who didn't know Pyle was a nobody."
Pyle returned to the Daily News, and later traveled to California and began writing about his trips. He suffered occasional bouts of depression and was never satisfied with the quality of his writing.
It was a trip to London at the end of 1940 - "A small voice came in the night and said go" - and a report on Nazi bombing that brought Pyle his first brush with fame. His reports gave America a picture of the war's impact on Europe. Following America's entry into the war, Pyle became a war correspondent. It was his reporting from North Africa in 1942 and 1943 that cemented his reputation as a war reporter.
Pyle didn't focus on the movement of armies and the activities of generals. Instead, he focused on the perspective of the common soldier. He wasn't required to file daily stories and strategic situations. He was allowed to roam about and look for stories. He filed them in his mind, and then went away from the front lines to write them up.
His columns brought home to innocent Americans the horror, loneliness and homesickness that every combat soldier felt. Although he wrote of his own feelings and emotions, as he watched men wounded and saw them die, he was interpreting what soldiers felt.
In one of his first columns from Africa he told how he sought shelter in a ditch with a frightened soldier as they were strafed by a Stuka. When the Stuka flew off he tapped the soldier on the shoulder, "Whew, that was close, eh?" The soldier didn't answer. He was dead.
His most famous column was "The Death of Captain Wascow," appearing while Allied forces were pinned down on Italy's Anzio Beach. Pyle described how, on a moonlit night, soldiers were leading mules down a mountain trail with dead soldiers draped across the backs of the mules. Not every Army captain is adored by his soldiers. Captain Waskow was exceptional. Pyle describes in a poignant account the reaction of his soldiers as they find that one of the bodies is their highly respected and beloved captain.
In 1944, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He was not present for the presentation, as he was on the scene during D-Day. Pyle didn't want to be on the beach at Normandy the day after D-Day. But because he was, he captured a photo that was used in the movie, "Saving Private Ryan."
Later in 1944, he was nearly killed during the accidental bombing of American troops by the Army Air Force near St. Lo, France. During these months he saw more dead people than ever before, and became depressed. Mentally and emotionally drained, "I don't think I could go on and keep sane," he told readers.
He went to his adopted home in Albuquerque, N.M. to recuperate. By January 1945, the small, shy reporter with a lifelong obsession, "I suffer the agony in anticipation of meeting people for fear they won't like me," had achieved fame and fortune, and was loved and adored by his vast readership and the common soldiers about which he wrote so vividly.
He could have stayed home. "But I can't," he wrote. "I'm going (to the Pacific) because there's a war on and I'm part of it, and I've known all the time I was going back. I'm going simply because I've got to - and I hate it."
His premonition of death on the road to Ie Shima was prophetic.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Monroe Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
With the conquest of Iwo Jima in April 1945, American bombers could fly uninterrupted the 1,200 miles from the Marianas to Japan. The next strategic step was to capture Okinawa, the planned staging area for the final assault on the main Japanese islands.
Ie Shima is a small island close to Okinawa. Several Marine and Army divisions were assigned to assault the main island. The Army's 77th Infantry Division that had participated in the capture of Guam in the Marianas was assigned to capture Ie Shima and its airfield.
It was on Ie Shima, with a burst of Japanese machine gun fire, that a heavy, spiraling bullet nailed Ernie Pyle in his left temple, abruptly ending the life of America's most celebrated war correspondent. It was symbolic and fitting that, in death, Ernie was among the soldiers he championed, including our own Jerry Hastings of Winslow, Ill.
What sequence of events brought these two men within a few yards of each other on that fateful April day?
Ernie Pyle was born in 1900 on a tenant farm near Dana, Ind. He was a small, shy kid. In his country schoolhouse he usually sat apart from his classmates during games. As a teenager during WWI, he joined the Naval Reserve. As the war ended, he was released after three months and entered Indiana University where he studied journalism and worked on the student newspaper.
Pyle left IU a semester before he graduated. It's unclear whether he left because he had a run-in with a faculty member or because he found the university too provincial for his tastes.
He started with a small newspaper in Indiana, but soon found his way to a tabloid, the Washington Daily News. While there, he met a woman from Stillwater, Minn. - the beginning of a rocky marriage. He soon tired of deskwork and in the mid-1920s traveled some 9,000 miles in his Ford roadster to see America.
By 1928 he became the country's first aviation columnist. America's famous female aviator, Ameila Earhart who later mysteriously disappeared flying in the South Pacific, once commented, "Any aviator who didn't know Pyle was a nobody."
Pyle returned to the Daily News, and later traveled to California and began writing about his trips. He suffered occasional bouts of depression and was never satisfied with the quality of his writing.
It was a trip to London at the end of 1940 - "A small voice came in the night and said go" - and a report on Nazi bombing that brought Pyle his first brush with fame. His reports gave America a picture of the war's impact on Europe. Following America's entry into the war, Pyle became a war correspondent. It was his reporting from North Africa in 1942 and 1943 that cemented his reputation as a war reporter.
Pyle didn't focus on the movement of armies and the activities of generals. Instead, he focused on the perspective of the common soldier. He wasn't required to file daily stories and strategic situations. He was allowed to roam about and look for stories. He filed them in his mind, and then went away from the front lines to write them up.
His columns brought home to innocent Americans the horror, loneliness and homesickness that every combat soldier felt. Although he wrote of his own feelings and emotions, as he watched men wounded and saw them die, he was interpreting what soldiers felt.
In one of his first columns from Africa he told how he sought shelter in a ditch with a frightened soldier as they were strafed by a Stuka. When the Stuka flew off he tapped the soldier on the shoulder, "Whew, that was close, eh?" The soldier didn't answer. He was dead.
His most famous column was "The Death of Captain Wascow," appearing while Allied forces were pinned down on Italy's Anzio Beach. Pyle described how, on a moonlit night, soldiers were leading mules down a mountain trail with dead soldiers draped across the backs of the mules. Not every Army captain is adored by his soldiers. Captain Waskow was exceptional. Pyle describes in a poignant account the reaction of his soldiers as they find that one of the bodies is their highly respected and beloved captain.
In 1944, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He was not present for the presentation, as he was on the scene during D-Day. Pyle didn't want to be on the beach at Normandy the day after D-Day. But because he was, he captured a photo that was used in the movie, "Saving Private Ryan."
Later in 1944, he was nearly killed during the accidental bombing of American troops by the Army Air Force near St. Lo, France. During these months he saw more dead people than ever before, and became depressed. Mentally and emotionally drained, "I don't think I could go on and keep sane," he told readers.
He went to his adopted home in Albuquerque, N.M. to recuperate. By January 1945, the small, shy reporter with a lifelong obsession, "I suffer the agony in anticipation of meeting people for fear they won't like me," had achieved fame and fortune, and was loved and adored by his vast readership and the common soldiers about which he wrote so vividly.
He could have stayed home. "But I can't," he wrote. "I'm going (to the Pacific) because there's a war on and I'm part of it, and I've known all the time I was going back. I'm going simply because I've got to - and I hate it."
His premonition of death on the road to Ie Shima was prophetic.
- John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Monroe Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
