How America's Greatest War Correspondent Remembered

From Chris Hedges' "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"


"When Ernie Pyle, the American war correspondent in World War II, was killed on the Pacific island of Ie Shima in 1945, a rough draft of a column was found on his body. He was preparing it for release upon the end of the war in Europe. He had done much to promote the myth of the warrior and the heroism of soldiering, but by the end he seemed to tire of it all:

"But there are many of the living who have burned

into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men

scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows 

of hedge throughout the world.

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 to

almost hate them. These are the things that you at home need

not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns

of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just

didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque

and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands.

That's the difference.