Ernest Taylor Pyle (August 3, 1900 – April 18, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theater (1942–44) and Pacific theater (1945). Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima (then known as Ie Shima) during the Battle of Okinawa.
At the time of his death in 1945, Pyle was among the best-known American war correspondents. His syndicated column was published in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers nationwide. President Harry Truman said of Pyle, "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."
Early life and education
Ernest "Ernie" Taylor Pyle was born on August 3, 1900, on the Sam Elder farm near Dana, Indiana, in rural Vermillion County, Indiana. His parents were Maria (Taylor) and William Clyde Pyle. At the time of Pyle's birth his father was a tenant farmer on the Elder property. Neither of Pyle's parents attended school beyond the eighth grade.
Pyle, an only child, disliked farming and pursued a more adventurous life. After graduating from a local high school in Bono, Helt Township, Vermillion County, Indiana, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War I. Pyle began his training at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but the war ended before he could be transferred to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station for additional training.
Pyle enrolled at Indiana University in 1919, aspiring to become a journalist. However, IU did not offer a degree in journalism at that time, so Pyle majored in economics and took as many journalism courses as he could. Pyle began studying journalism in his sophomore year, the same year he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and began working on the Indiana Daily Student, the student-written newspaper. During his junior year Pyle became the newspaper's city editor and its news editor; he also worked on the Arbutus, the campus yearbook, although he did not enjoy the desk-bound work. Pyle's simple, storytelling writing style, which he developed while a student at IU, later became his trademark style as a professional journalist and earned him millions of readers as a columnist for Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate.
In March 1922, during his junior year at IU, Pyle and three of his fraternity brothers dropped out of school for a semester to follow the IU baseball team on a trip to Japan. Pyle and his fraternity brothers found work aboard the S.S. Keystone State. During its voyage across the Pacific Ocean, the ship docked at ports such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Manila, as well as in Japan before returning trip to the United States. Pyle's interest in traveling and exploring the world continued in his later years as a reporter.
After his trip across the Pacific, Pyle returned to IU Bloomington, where he was named editor-in-chief of the Indiana Summer Student, the summer edition of the campus newspaper. During his senior year at IU, Pyle continued his work at the Daily Student and the Arbutus. He also joined Sigma Delta Chi, the journalism fraternity, and was active in other campus clubs. In addition, Pyle was selected as a senior manager of IU's football team, making him a letterman along with the other members of the team in 1922.
Pyle left school in January 1923 with only a semester remaining and without graduating from IU. He took a job as a newspaper reporter for the Daily Herald in La Porte, Indiana, earning $25 a week. Pyle worked at the Daily Herald for three months before moving to Washington, D.C., to join the staff of The Washington Daily News.