The Press-Dispatch
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And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief-and then a hope that the collapse in Europe would hasten the end in the Pacific." - Ernie Pyle in "On victory in Europe" A-4 Wednesday, September 2, 2020 The Press-Dispatch or what has been called "The Great- est Generation." If you can read these columns and not be moved by the plight of the common American GI and the sac- rifices they made so we could live at peace in this great country, you need to check and see if you still have a pulse. When we compare the system- ic covetousness of today versus the selflessness of those soldiers, it surely will force self-examination. The GIs whom Pyle lived with and wrote about were our fathers, grand- fathers and great-grandfathers. It should make us proud of them, but also should cause us to ponder if we are living up to the standard they set for us. Keeping alive these stories for our generations and future generations to read, and getting a glimpse of the sacrifices made for us will hopeful- ly lead us to living up to the respon- sibilities we have to our fellow man and future generations. These men's sacrifices are part of what makes America exceptional and unprecedented in world history. The Ernie Pyle World War II Mu- seum features the famous journal- ist's birthplace and a museum ded- icated to Pyle's life and writings as a war correspondent. It is owned by the Friends of Ernie Pyle, who are dedicated to preserving and expand- ing the legacy of the writer whose columns linked the soldiers on the front line to worried families on the home front. To preserve Ernie Pyle's memory is to preserve the sacrifices made by what has been dubbed "The Greatest Generation." To learn more about the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum or to make a donation to assist the ef- forts of the Friends of Ernie Pyle to honor him and that generation, go to www.erniepyle.org. On victory in Europe Editor's note: This is Ernie Pyle's last column. It was found in his shirt pocket when his body was recovered. By Ernie Pyle And so it is over. The catastro- phe on one side of the world has run its course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last. I suppose our emotions here in the Pacif- ic are the same as they were among Allies all over the world. First a shouting of the good news with such joyous surprise that you would think the shout- er himself had brought it about. And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief-and then a hope that the collapse in Eu- rope would hasten the end in the Pacific. It has been seven months since I heard my last shot in the European War. Now I am as far away from it as it is possible to get on this globe. This is written on a little ship lying off the coast of the Island of Okinawa, just south of Japan, on the other side of the world from Ardennes. But my heart is still in Eu- rope, and that's why I am writ- ing this column. It is to the boys who were my friends for so long. My one re- gret of the war is that I was not with them when it ended. For the companionship of two and a half years of death and misery is a spouse that toler- ates no divorce. Such compan- ionship finally becomes a part of one's soul, and it cannot be obliterated. True, I am with American boys in the other war not yet ended, but I am old-fashioned and my sentiment runs to old things. To me the European War is old, and the Pacific War is new. Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of high spirits it is so easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish them- selves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks. But there are so many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatu- ral sight of cold dead men scat- tered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world. Dead men by mass produc- tion-in one country after anoth- er-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 almost to hate them. Those are the things that you at home need not even try to un- derstand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went way 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. We hope above all things that Japan won't make the same stubborn mistake that Germa- ny did. You must credit Germa- ny for her courage in adversi- ty, but you can doubt her good common sense in fighting blind- ly on long after there was any doubt whatever about the out- come. Permission to re-publish Er- nie Pyle's column was given by the Scripps Howard Foundation and distributed by the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Ind. The Death of Capt. Waskow By Ernie Pyle AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITA- LY, Jan 10 (1944) (by Wireless) – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as be- loved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Tex. Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had been in this company since long before he left the States. He was very young, only is his middle twen- ties, but he carried in him a sinceri- ty and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him. "A fter my own father, he comes next," a sergeant told me. "He always looked after us," a sol- der said. "He'd go to bat for us ev- ery time." • • • I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow down. The moon was nearly full and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley. Sol- diers made shadows as they walked. Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed on- to the backs of mules. They came belly down across the wooden back- saddle, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiff- ened legs sticking awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked. The Italian mule skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies, when they got to the bot- tom, so an officer had to do it himself and ask others to help. The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule, and stood him on his feet for a moment. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there leaning on the other. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the stone wall along- side the road. I don't know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you don't ask silly questions …. 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. Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about him. We talked for an hour or more; the dead man lay all alone, out- side in the shadow of the wall. Then a soldier came into the cow- shed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there in the moonlight in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Capt. Waskow," one of them said quickly. Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally, there were five lying end to end in a long row. You don't cover up dead men in combat zones. They just lie there in the shadows until some- body else comes after them. The uncertain mules moved off to their olive groves. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually I could sense them moving, one by one, close to Capt. Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear. One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud: "God damn it! " Another one came, and he said, "God damn it to hell anyway! " He looked down for a few last moments and then turned and left. Another man came. I think it was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the dim light, for every- body was grimy and dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face and then spoke directly to him, as tho he were alive: "I'm sorry, old man." Then a solder came and stood be- side the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tender, and he said: "I sure am sorry, sir." Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the Captain's hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes holding the dead hand in his own and looking intent- ly into the dead face. And he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there. Finally he put the hand down. He reached up and gently straightened the points of the Captain's shirt col- lar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone. The rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pret- ty soon we were all asleep. Permission to re-publish Ernie Pyle's column was given by the Scripps Howard Foundation and distributed by the Ernie Pyle World War II Muse- um in Dana, Ind. Marking the end of WWII PYLE Continued from page 1