Ernie Pyle and D-Day

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy--D-Day. On June 6, 1944 hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors and aircrews participated in the largest combat assault in history. The odds were narrow, the cost would be enormous, but the prize was even more enormous. The beginning of the end of the blood and battle of World War II. We know the landings and the battles today in near-minute detail, and we know much of that history because of the journalists who covered the Normandy campaign. Writers like Ernie Pyle.

Hoff, "Ernie Pyle, 1944," digital, 2019

Although Ernie Pyle didn't land on D-Day but on the day after, his description of Omaha Beach filed on June 12 is classic journalism and would become classic Pyle. Mr. Pyle was the most famous war-correspondent of World War II, and had been a popular columnist even before the war. His brand of journalism was similar in tone to the writings of people like Will Rogers, a near-contemporary, and Mark Twain. His folksy, sunny, down to earth approach plus his identification with the common soldier made him enormously popular. Like everyone who witnessed the unspeakable carnage and death, war changed him. His words from the front in Europe and later from Asia grew darker if still richly informative. Mr. Pyle died during the Okinawa campaign, shot by a sniper in April, 1945.

Thanks, Mr. Pyle, for helping us remember the price paid three-fourths of a century ago.