‘To his readers, Ernie Pyle was a master of telling the story of the little guy, of describing the fears and daily strife of soldiers fighting in World War II. He was not just a passionate writer, however. An early “embedded journalist,” he worked alongside the troops, experiencing much of what they did, placing himself in danger as they did.’ [Indiana University website]
The following excerpts are from one of three of Pyle's columns written shortly after D-Day Normandy:
A Pure Miracle
NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 –
In this column I want to tell you what
the opening of the second front
in this one sector entailed,
so that you can know and appreciate
and forever be humbly grateful to those
both dead and alive who did it for you.
Ashore, facing us,
were more enemy troops than
we had in our assault waves.
The advantages were all theirs,
the disadvantages all ours.
The Germans were dug into positions
they had been working on for months,
although these were not yet all complete.
A one-hundred-foot bluff
a couple of hundred yards back from the beach
had great concrete gun emplacements
built right into the hilltop.
These opened to the sides instead of to the front,
thus making it very hard for naval fire
from the sea to reach them.
They could shoot parallel with the beach
and cover every foot of it for miles
with artillery fire.
Then they had hidden machine-gun nests
on the forward slopes, with crossfire
taking in every inch of the beach.
Now that it is over
it seems to me a pure miracle
that we ever took the beach at all.
Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements,
I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day,
after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.
By the time we got here the beaches had been taken
and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland.
All that remained on the beach was some sniping
and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast
of a mine geysering brown sand into the air.
a couple of hundred yards back from the beach
had great concrete gun emplacements
built right into the hilltop.
These opened to the sides instead of to the front,
thus making it very hard for naval fire
from the sea to reach them.
They could shoot parallel with the beach
and cover every foot of it for miles
with artillery fire.
Then they had hidden machine-gun nests
on the forward slopes, with crossfire
taking in every inch of the beach.
Now that it is over
it seems to me a pure miracle
that we ever took the beach at all.
[Ernie Pyle, IU Archives]
These Bitter Sands
Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements,
I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day,
after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.
By the time we got here the beaches had been taken
and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland.
All that remained on the beach was some sniping
and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast
of a mine geysering brown sand into the air.
That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage
along miles of shoreline.
Submerged tanks and overturned boats
and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps
and sad little personal belongings were
along miles of shoreline.
Submerged tanks and overturned boats
and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps
and sad little personal belongings were
strewn all over these bitter sands.
That plus the bodies of soldiers
lying in rows covered with blankets,
the toes of their shoes sticking up
in a line as though on drill.
And other bodies, uncollected,
still sprawling grotesquely in the sand
or half hidden by the high grass
beyond the beach.
[Click here for full article]
lying in rows covered with blankets,
the toes of their shoes sticking up
in a line as though on drill.
And other bodies, uncollected,
still sprawling grotesquely in the sand
or half hidden by the high grass
beyond the beach.
[Click here for full article]
Postscript -
‘Among the Allied casualties was Ernie Pyle...
Eight months later while covering the Pacific war,
he would be killed by a Japanese bullet in the head.’
[pg. 183, The Guns At Last Light, R. Atkinson, The Liberation Trilogy]
This concludes WW2: Ten Poignant Stories.
More war stories will follow, however, under a different banner.
Link to WW2: Ten Poignant Stories 10a
Last Photo GH
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