I just read an article about a
one-man off-Broadway play based on the war reporting of Ernie Pyle. Meanwhile, the
IU School of Journalism is reprinting three dozen of his dispatches. It is interesting that Pyle, perhaps the original embedded reporter managed to
report honestly about the horrors of war in spite of perhaps a more sweeping censorship department that read everything coming from the front. Pyle's
description of Normandy (previously discussed) is a classic contrasting a beautiful day on the beach, the human and material wreckage, and even empathy for German prisoners of war. And then there was
some black humor of surviving near misses that could have come out of
Catch 22 or
Slaugherhouse 5. His unfinished final dispatch reads like poetry:
"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."
posted by KirkJobSluder
on May 6, 2003 -
8 comments
It's D-Day Someone at work shared this Ernie Pyle column published just 10 days after the 1944 invasion of Normandy. It put a lump in my throat. Maybe it'll do the same for you. Excerpt: "I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.
It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn't know they were in the water, for they were dead."
posted by GaelFC
on Jun 6, 2001 -
14 comments
