Consider
Pyle’s best-known column, “The Death of Captain Waskow,” datelined “AT THE
FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944.” Pyle is unafraid to use the first
person (and the second and third) but the column is not about him or his
reactions. He writes: “You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed
at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions,” which is followed by “We
left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the
cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of
mules.” I don’t know if Pyle read Hemingway or the hard-boiled crime
writers, but stylistic similarities, minus the sentimentality and nihilism, are
obvious. No pyrotechnics, preaching or preening:
“One soldier
came and looked down, and he said out loud, ‘God damn it.’ That’s all he said,
and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, ‘God damn it to hell
anyway.’ He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.”
On June 21,
1944, two weeks after D-Day, “somewhere in France,” Pyle writes a column of
anecdotes “on the lighter side,” which includes this paragraph:
“I helped
carry one corpse across a couple of fields. I did it partly because the group
needed an extra man, and partly because I was forcing myself to get used to it,
for you can’t hide from death when you’re in a war.”
Pyle was born
on this date, Aug. 3, in 1900, and died on the island of Iejima on April 18,
1945, killed by a Japanese machine-gunner. The men of
the 77th Infantry Division erected a monument at the site of his death. The inscription
reads: “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18
April 1945.”
1 comment:
Steinbeck was reminded of Pyle during Steinbeck's trip to Vietnam:
But now, on the last night [aloft in an AC-47 on combat
deployment in Vietnam], with the mission completed and only the
winking ground fire and that receding behind us, I was afraid. More
than that--I was scared. I could see the stray and accidental shot
hit a flare and the whole ship go up in a huge Roman candle of
incandescent searing light. I thought how silly it would be on my
last night. I think it was the first time I had thought of myself,
me, as being in danger. And then curious memories came back to me
like movie shorts. I had a drink with Ernie Pyle in San Francisco.
Ernie ordinarily dressed like a tossed salad but now he was wearing a
new Eisenhower jacket. I said, "Just because you're going to the
Pacific do you have to be a fashion plate?"
Ernie said, "It's new. I shouldn't have bought it. I'm not
going to need it." And his first time on the line he got a bullet
between the eyes.
And Capa leaving Paris for the war in East Asia. We made a
date for dinner in Paris a week away. And Capa said, "I hate to go on
this one. If I didn't need the money, I wouldn't go. I've had it. I
tell you this is the last time." And it was.
And only last week lying in the bunker with a boy who said,
"Five more days--no, four days and thirteen hours, and I'll be going
home. I thought the time would never come." And it didn't. He was
killed on the next patrol.
I was cold all over and trembling maybe somewhat from the
grinding of the guns. And already we were landing and the mission was
done and we were back early.
-- John Steinbeck, "Puff, the Magic Dragon", _America and
Americans and Selected Nonfiction_, 2003
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