Excerpts from Ernie Pyle's World War II columns

Scripps Howard News Service

- From a battlefield. Dated Aug. 14, 1944:

The afternoon was tense, and full of caution and dire little might-have-beens.

I was wandering up a dirt lane where the infantrymen were squatting alongside in a ditch, waiting their turn to advance. They always squat like that when they're close to the front.

Suddenly German shells started banging around us. I jumped into a ditch between a couple of soldiers and squatted. Shells were clipping the hedgetops right over our heads and crashing into the next pasture.

Then suddenly one exploded, not with a crash, but with a ring as tho you'd struck a high-toned bell. The debris of burned wadding came showering down over us. My head rang, and my right ear couldn't hear anything.

The shell had struck behind us, 20 feet away. We had been saved by the earthen bank of the hedgerow. It was the next day before my ear returned to normal.

A minute later a soldier crouching next in line, a couple of feet away, turned to me and asked, "Are you a war correspondent?"

I said I was, and he said, "I want to shake your hand." And he reached around the bush and we shook hands.

That's all either of us said. It didn't occur to me until later that it was a sort of unusual experience. And I was so addled by the close explosions that I forgot to put down his name.

X...X...X

From Paris upon the liberation of the city. Dated Aug. 28, 1944:

The streets of Paris are very wide, and they were packed on each side. The women were all brightly dressed in white or red blouses and colorful peasant skirts, with flowers in their hair and big, flashy earrings. Everybody was throwing flowers.

As our jeep eased thru the crowds, thousands of people crowded up, leaving only a narrow corridor, and frantic men, women and children grabbed us and kissed us and shook our hands and beat on our shoulders and slapped our backs and shouted their joy as we passed. I was in a jeep with Henry Gorrell of the United Press, Capt. Carl Pergler of Washington, D.C., and Corpl. Alexander Belon of Amherst, Mass. We all got kissed until we were literally red in face, and I must say we enjoyed it.

Once when the jeep was simply swamped in human traffic and had to stop, we were swarmed over and hugged and kissed and torn at. Everybody, even beautiful girls, insisted on kissing you on both cheeks. Somehow I got started kissing babies that were held up by their parents, and for a while I looked like a baby-kissing politician going down the street. The fact that I hadn't shaved for days, and was gray-bearded as well as bald-headed, made no difference. Once when we came to a stop some Frenchman told us there were still snipers shooting, so we put our steel helmets back on.

X...X...X

On leaving Europe. Dated Sept. 5, 1944:

This is the last of these columns from Europe. By the time you read this, the old man will be on his way back to America. After that will come a long, long rest. And after the rest -well, you never can tell.

Undoubtedly this seems to you to be a funny time for a fellow to be quitting the war. It is a funny time. But I'm not leaving because of a whim, or even especially because I'm homesick.

I'm leaving for one reason only - because I have just got to stop. "I've had it," as they say in the Army. I have had all I can take for a while.

I've been 29 months overseas since this war started; have written around 700,000 words about it; have totaled nearly a year in the front lines.

I do hate terribly to leave right now, but I have given out. I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has finally become too great.

All of a sudden it seemed to me that if I heard one more shot or saw one more dead man, I would go off my nut. And if I had to write one more column I'd collapse. So I'm on my way.

It may be that a few months of peace will restore some vim to my spirit, and I can go war horsing off to the Pacific. We'll see what a little New Mexico sunshine does along that line.

(Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper near Okinawa on April 18, 1945.)

From: http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=ERNIEPYLE-EXCERPT-05-12-04&cat=AN