Ernie Pyle

Ernie Pyle, full name Ernest Taylor Pyle (1900-1945), American journalist, born near Dana, Indiana. He attended the University of Indiana but left before graduating. Pyle was a reporter, copy editor, and aviation editor until 1932, when he began to write a daily column as a roving reporter for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. His simple, warm, human writing style was widely popular, especially during World War II (1939-1945). In 1944 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in reporting for his distinguished reports from the European battlefront. On April 18, 1945, on the island of Ie Shima in the southwestern Pacific Ocean near Okinawa, he was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire. His columns, which eventually appeared in 200 newspapers, were published in book form as Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1946).