THE SOLDIER'S TRUTH

The World War II career of America’s most popular war journalist.

In 1944, with a Pulitzer Prize under his belt and his column circulating to more than 14 million readers, Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) was exhausted. He was ready to return from liberated France to his ailing wife and the seclusion of the New Mexico desert. However, the war drew him back in, and he died during the American landing on Ie Shima. Chrisinger, a writing instructor and author of Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor's Guide to Writing About Trauma, illuminates the approach to reporting that won Pyle so many fans but cost him his life. The author shows how Pyle captured “the average guy’s picture of the war” by living among soldiers, collecting their stories, and relaying them to his readers in immersive detail. Though he shows that Pyle’s journalism was not without detractors—Arthur Miller thought it too focused on “the boys who make homes in foxholes” and not enough on the war’s “meaning”—Chrisinger does not comment directly on Pyle’s merit. Instead, he puts his writing into context for modern readers, providing “the stories beneath the stories Ernie told his readers” and the wider-angle accounts of troop movements and battles that Pyle typically left out. Moreover, the author provides ample quotations from Pyle’s columns, showing us a portion of what wartime readers would have seen: a pilot trapped in his downed plane calmly smoking a cigarette and waiting for whatever came next; a soldier taking cover in an Italian cowshed and musing on the best way to keep his son out of the next war; the ride into Paris in August 1944 (“they tossed flowers and friendly tomatoes into your jeep”). Displaying Pyle’s detailed snapshots of victory, levity, fatigue, death, and grief, Chrisinger leaves his readers free to form their own conclusions about Pyle’s journalistic achievements.

The compelling story of “America’s most beloved war correspondent,” who lost his life recording soldiers' real experiences.