Ernest 'Ernie' Pyle is remembered as 'the preeminent war correspondent of his era', who achieved fame and a massive readership for his battlefield reports that were published between 1942 and 1945
There were numerous famous American war correspondents and photographers in Europe during the liberation of France, including Bert Brandt, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, Bill Mauldin, Lee Miller, Carl Mydans, Mary Welsh and many more. Another of this group was Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) whose work stands apart from the others – with the exception of cartoonist Bill Mauldin.
Like Mauldin, Pyle's legacy is his stories about ordinary American soldiers – the 'dogfaces' – in combat. Indeed, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of US infantry soldiers being shelled and sharing K-rations in Normandy. Born in the US state of Indiana he enrolled at its university where his enthusiasm for journalism and travel blossomed. Subsequently, he worked for numerous titles including as a columnist – the 'Hoosier Vagabond' – for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, something that would later affect his experiences of World War Two.
After a transatlantic trip in 1940 to…
