Just One Old Ernie Pile

The American Thinker ^ | 27 May 2006 | Russ Vaughn, 2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Vietnam 65-66

[llevrok]

Just One Old Ernie Pyle

May 27th, 2006

As a boy of four in ’44 I missed out on his style;

But at thirty-six in ’76 I learned more of Ernie Pyle.

To read his tributes to our troops always brought the question why,

That my own war’s correspondents didn’t hold our troops as high.

I’d witnessed acts of bravery as great as World War Two,

But press accounts of those same acts were seldom, they were few;

More likely to be displayed in morning print or evening news,

Were American acts of cruelty to prop up protestors’ views.

Ernie placed himself in battle’s midst, not seeking safer shelter;

He sought the trenches sought the fight, sought out the helter-skelter.

He told the folks back in the States grim truths about their brave,

Providing families insights they could reread, they could save.

Ol’ Ernie gave the folks back home proud memories they could treasure,

Unlike sly Walter Cronkite feeding enemies evening pleasure.

Nope, Ernie wrote of men he loved up until his final deadline,

Unlike Arnett and other creeps seeking only a bigger headline.

Where did they go those of the press who believed America good?

The ones who’d write about our troops and for the things they stood?

What madness does possess them that they now extol our losses,

Finding fault in all we try to do, debasing all our causes?

We serve, we fight so that they might have freedom to convey,

The good things that we’re doing, the good we do each day.

But instead they undermine us in their sniping, gloating style;

I’d swap every damned one of ‘em for just one old Ernie Pyle.

Russ Vaughn, 2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Vietnam 65-66

[wildcatf4f3]

thank you. forwarded this to "everyone".

[tet68]

Bump.

[NCC-1701]

He is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (aka Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaii. His grave is easy to find as it is on the very end of a road nearest to the statue shown every week on "Hawaii 5-0". Buried next to him is Elison S. Onizuka, of os the STS-51L Challenger astronauts. If you get a chance, visit Ernie Pile (Pyle?) and all those buried in Punchbowl. I have many times.

[archy]

He is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (aka Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaii. His grave is easy to find as it is on the very end of a road nearest to the statue shown every week on "Hawaii 5-0". Buried next to him is Elison S. Onizuka, of os the STS-51L Challenger astronauts. If you get a chance, visit Ernie Pile (Pyle?) and all those buried in Punchbowl. I have many times.

Additional, fyi:

The farmhouse in Dana, Ind., where World War II journalist Ernie Pyle lived from age two to 18 is gone.

Owner Gene Goforth, whose family bought the house after Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper in 1945, hired a bulldozer to raze the house last month after a local Ernie Pyle museum decided not to move the structure to its downtown Dana location.

"It was very sad. It was just heartbreaking that we needed to do something with it," Goforth says.

Goforth inherited the two-bedroom house in 1974, using it as a summer residence until five years ago. After several robberies, however, the Texas resident decided "it would be better to just get rid of it," he says. Goforth ruled out selling the house because he said it would cost $60,000 to renovate it first. He did not disclose the demolition cost but said it was significantly less than renovation.

Several years before he chose to destroy the house, however, Goforth asked the local Ernie Pyle Historic Site to move the house to its downtown Dana location. "I offered it to them for nothing," Goforth says.

But the state of Indiana, which operates the museum as one of its 14 historic sites, was "not interested" in the house, says Laura Minzes, deputy director of historic sites, structures, and real estate at the state's department of natural resources. "Taking it out of context was really missing the whole point. Our feeling was that it was crucial that it remain part of the farm," she says. "Money was a factor as well."

Minzes says Goforth did not offer the house for free but could not recall his asking price. The state never investigated the cost of moving the house.

Last year, 3,674 people visited the Ernie Pyle Historic Site, where admission is free. Still, no Pyle fans seemed to know about the threat to the farmhouse.

"We were a little surprised that nobody called us," says Jeremy Risen, community preservation specialist in the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana's western regional office in Terre Haute. Dana has no preservation organization, Risen says. "We rely on local groups to keep us informed, so this is an example of where the system breaks down."

Although the house Pyle lived in the longest is gone, the only house the war correspondent owned still stands in Albuquerque. Pyle and his wife, Jerry, built the wood-frame house in 1940. Seven years later, the house became the Ernie Pyle Memorial Library and is still open to the public as both a library and a makeshift museum.

I have no home. My home is where my extra luggage is, and where the car is stopped, and where I happen to be getting mail this time. My home is America.

-- ­Ernie Pyle

[NCC-1701]

Thanks for the additional info.