ERNIE PYLE AND AN UNKNOWN
By Allan R. Andrews, Editor,
Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan.
First published April 13, 1997.
I've often remarked that cemeteries are for the living.
To walk through a quiet, garden-like compound marked with memorial stones provokes reflection. Though many are frightened at the prospect of traversing a graveyard, such a stroll can serve to remind us of our mortality and help us recall those who left behind the same work we are doing.
Late last year, business took me to Hawaii, and good timing allowed my wife to make the trip, giving us four days in Waikiki without the children.
For me, it was a first. I've crossed the Pacific Ocean numerous times since moving to Japan, but this was the first time I'd ever set foot on the soil of our 50th state.
As would any good first-time tourist, I took a tour of the Waikiki-Pearl Harbor area. We visited the Arizona Memorial, drove through Chinatown, stopped on a wharf not far from the Aloha Tower, and drove through the Punchbowl to visit the war memorial cemetery on the hill.
The tour bus on which we were riding merely made a pass through the cemetery, stopping briefly so passengers could admire some spindly legged birds on the lawn.
I looked out the window at the headstones. We had parked directly in front of the grave of Ernie Pyle, with the headstones of two unknown soldiers flanking the famous reporter's resting place.
According to our guide, being buried between two unknown soldiers was one of Pyle's requests.
Pyle died on April 18, 1945. A sniper's bullet killed him on the island of Ie Shima, just off the coast of Okinawa, where island-hopping American forces were making a push toward mainland Japan.
In previous tributes written about him, it's been said that Pyle died because he didn't duck. He apparently looked up to check that his companions were O.K. and that's when the sniper's bullet found him.
Saying that he didn't duck is itself a tribute to Pyle's doggedness in covering the war; he didn't duck danger.
He covered the blitz of London; he covered the landing on the beaches of Anzio; and when the assignment came, he went halfway around the world to cover the other front in Okinawa.
April 18 -- the date of Pyle's death -- has been officially designated as National Columnists Day in honor of Pyle. The organization that pushed for the official day, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, wants the memory of Pyle to remind those of us who write for a living of what comprises the best attributes of an American columnist.
The society urges columnists to remember Pyle and write about him each year as this anniversary of his death comes around.
Pyle is warmly remembered and accolades for him continue even 50 years after his death. It truly impresses me that Pyle remembered and asked to be buried among the unknowns who fought and died in defense of their country.
Pyle dropped out of Indiana University in 1923, short of a degree, but eager to go to work as a journalist.
Before he became famous covering World War II, Pyle was a national columnist who had crossed the United States 35 times.
When he did go to war, Pyle knew the danger. He said ``there's just no way to play it completely safe and still do your job.''
When then-President Harry Truman spoke to the nation of Pyle's death, he said, ``No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told.''
I think Pyle wouldn't have minded one bit that I'm going to attend to a lesser known soldier.
My colleagues in the NSNC will forgive me and understand, I think, if I divert my attention on April 18 of this year from Ernie Pyle and remember someone else.
I never knew this soldier, but his name is on an award we give annually to military journalists, and his story is mounted with photos in display cases in our lobby at Stars and Stripes in Tokyo.
His name, along with two others who worked for Stars and Stripes, is engraved in the new Arlington, Va., Freedom Forum Memorial to journalists who died doing their job.
Twenty-eight years ago, a gutsy newspaper reporter, cut from the same material as Pyle, argued his way into being given orders to report to Vietnam to cover the war there for Pacific Stars and Stripes.
Paul D. Savanuck dropped out of college--en route to a journalism degree--at the University of Maryland in his senior year in 1967 to join the Army. Echoes of Ernie Pyle seem to lie in his decision.
A native of Baltimore--born the year after Pyle died--Savanuck volunteered for duty in Vietnam. He did so as a challenge to himself. ``This was a point in my life where I could meet something head-on instead of avoiding it,'' the 21-year-old told a colleague. Again, an echo of Pyle's words regarding danger is clear. There's just no way to avoid it, Savanuck might have said.
I can't know for sure, but I have a feeling that Savanuck read just about every word that Pyle wrote. In the small record we have of Savanuck's war days, Pyle's shadow seems to loom large.
Pushing to become a Stars and Stripes reporter, Savanuck finally got his wish on April 4, 1969, when he was assigned to Stripes' news bureau in Saigon.
He filed a story with accompanying photos on a Philippine unit operating near the Cambodian border. It was the last story he wrote.
In a letter back to his parents and on a letter accompanying his attempt to gain admission to Harvard, Savanuck had written: ``I have found what I want to do . . . journalism, . . .''
Volunteering to do a story on pacification in the DMZ, Savanuck headed north. He camped with a cavalry regiment that was attacked by North Vietnamese troops. Wounded while taking pictures, he discarded his camera and rushed to help more seriously wounded soldiers.
He was hit in the back by automatic weapon fire. He was 23 years old when he died. The date was April 18, 1969.
On that day, Ernie Pyle, 1900-1945, met Paul D. Savanuck, 1946-1969, journalist.
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