American writer, journalist and syndicated columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 and was killed in Okinawa during World War II. He wrote a syndicated column during WW II that covered human interest stories of the over-all war front. He is considered by many to be the finest war correspondent of the century, and General Omar Bradley once said, “I have known no finer man, no finer soldier than he. My men always fought better when Ernie was around.” Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 as a Scripps-Howard columnist and correspondent.
Born near Dana, Indiana, Pyle graduated from the University of Indiana and began a lifelong journalism career. His early beginning was starting in 1928 what was probably the first daily aviation column in America. He quit the column in 1932. In 1935 Pyle became a roving reporter for the Scripps-Howard Newspapers and was a well known newspaper writer.
His rise to fame began when he covered the Battle of Britain during World War II, while America was still neutral. By 1943, he was covering the war full-time in North Africa. His dispatches and syndicated columns at one point earned him $69,000 in one year. He wrote “Here is Your War” and “Brave Men,” which became bestsellers. His impact was such that when he said GIs complained about the handbrake on their jeeps, the maker redesigned it, and when he suggested “combat pay” for the infantry, Congress provided it.
Pyle’s personal life was a tragic one. His wife, Geraldine, who he called Jerry, suffered from severe mental illness. In 1939, they had settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Pyle periodically came home to her, between visits to the war’s fronts. In 1941, he came back to the States to find that his mother had died and Jerry’s severe mental illness was further aggravated by an addiction to amphetamines and alcohol. In an attempt to snap her out of her problems, Ernie divorced her in 1942, then remarried her less than a year later. After covering the Omaha landing in Normandy and the liberation of Paris, he returned home to a hero’s welcome, though, upon going home to New Mexico, he found that Jerry’s mental illness had worsened. She attempted suicide while he was home.
After several months, Pyle left to cover the seizure of Okinawa in the Pacific theater of the war, promising Jerry it would be his last trip. On the island of Iwo Jhima, a Japanese sniper fired a machine gun at Ernie’s jeep. Just before he was struck in the left temple, he had turned to his friends to ask if they were all right. Pyle’s death on 4/18/1945 came only six days after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and President Harry Truman broke the news to the nation.
In 1983, he won the Purple Heart posthumously, announced at the dedication of the Ernie Pyle U.S. Army Reserve Center at Fort Totten, N.Y.
Link to Wikipedia biography