Remembering journalists killed covering World War II
Remembering the war correspondents who died on assignment while covering World War II.
Read moreTag Archives: Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle killed on Ie Shima
The fighting man lost its best friend and greatest advocate on April 18, 1945, when Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine-gunner on Ie Shima.
Read moreOkinawa: The ‘easy’ victory that wasn’t
On April 1, 1945, U.S. soldiers and marines walked virtually unopposed onto the shores of Okinawa. They didn’t believe victory could be so easy. It wouldn’t be.
Read moreLiberation Day: When Paris went mad
The liberation of Paris was a day war correspondents in Europe had anticipated like no other, and the reality didn’t disappoint.
The magnitude of August 25, 1944 was such that, in Ernie Pyle’s words, “A good many of us feel we have failed in properly presenting the loveliest, brightest story of our time.”
Read moreKilled by friendly fire: Lesley J. McNair and Bede Irvin
More than a hundred Americans were killed by bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft on July 25, 1944 — a key Army figure and beloved Associated Press photographer among them.
Read moreD-Day: Ernie Pyle’s struggle to tell the invasion story
If there was one person the American public wanted to hear from once news of the Normandy invasion broke, it was Ernie Pyle. Through his work in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, millions had come to rely on the diminutive columnist’s vivid portrayals of everyday soldiers. Now that the most overwhelming day of the war had arrived, surely Ernie would
Read moreD-Day: Correspondents balance ambition, fear ahead of invasion
The classic bit that sums up the tension between the press and its handlers ahead of the Normandy Invasion first appeared in Leonard Lyons’ syndicated column on June 12, 1944: Shortly before the invasion began, Britain’s Ministry of Information was besieged by hundreds of newspapermen seeking credentials to cover the story. For a while the confusion seemed interminable. One disgruntled
Read moreHenry T. Waskow and the Ernie Pyle tribute that made him famous
By the end of 1943, Ernie Pyle’s dispatches had become the indispensable lens through which Americans on the home front viewed their war. Though he was twice as old as many of the men whose toils he chronicled, Pyle’s humble, in-the-trenches approach endeared him to four-stars and grunts alike. All it took was a glance at a couple of his
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World War II on Deadline 