Ernie Pyle and the death of Captain Waskow

Texas Military Forces Museum ^ | 1/10/1944 | Ernie Pyle

[centexan]

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas....

Memorial Day tribute to my Uncle and all who served and continue to serve this great nation.

[centexan]

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He’d go to bat for us every time."

"I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I’m sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

[centexan]

Captain Waskow’s last letter home:

Greetings;

If you get to read this, I will have died in defense of my country and all that it stands for—the most honorable and distinguished death a man can die. It was not because I was willing to die for my country, however—I wanted to live for it—just as any other person wants to do. It is foolish and foolhardy to want to die for one’s country, but to live for it is something else.

To live for one’s country is, to my mind, to live a life of service; to—in a small way—help a fellow man occasionally along the way, and generally to be useful and to serve. It also means to me to rise up in all our wrath and with overwhelming power to crush any oppressor of human rights.

That is our job—all of us—as I write this, and I pray God we are wholely successful.

Yes, I would have liked to have lived—to live and share the many blessings and good fortunes that my grandparents bestowed upon me—a fellow never had a better family than mine; but since God has willed otherwise, do not grieve too much dear ones, for life in the other world must be beautiful, and I have lived a life with that in mind all along. I was not afraid to die; you can be assured of that. All along, I prayed that I and others could do our share to keep you safe until we returned. I pray again that you are safe, even though some of us do not return.

I made my choice, dear ones. I volunteered in the Armed Forces because I thought that I might be able to help this great country of ours in its hours of darkness and need—the country that means more to me than life itself—if I have done that, then I can rest in peace, for I will have done my share to make the world a better place in which to live. Maybe when the lights go on again all over the world, free people can be happy again.

Through good fortune and the grace of God, I was chosen a leader—an honor that meant more to me than any of you will ever know. If I failed as a leader, and I pray to God I didn’t, it was not because I did not try. God alone knows how I worked and slaved to make myself a worthy leader of these magnificent men, and I feel assured that my work has paid dividends—in personal satisfaction, if nothing else.

As I said a couple of times in my letters home “when you remember me in your prayers, remember to pray that I be given strength, character and courage to lead these magnificent Americans.” I said that in all sincerity and I hope I have proved worthy of their faith, trust and confidence.

I guess I have always appeared as pretty much of a queer cuss to all of you. If I seemed strange at times, it was because I had weighty responsibilities that preyed on my mind and wouldn’t let me slack up to be human—like I so wanted to be. I felt so unworthy, at times, of the great trust my country had put in me, that I simply had to keep plugging to satisfy my own self that I was worthy of that trust. I have not, at the time of writing this, done that, and I suppose I never will.

I do not try to set myself on a pedestal as a martyr. Every Joe Doe who shouldered a rifle made a similar sacrifice—but I do want to point out that the uppermost thought in my mind all along was service to the cause, and I hope you all felt the same way about it.

When you remember me, remember me as a fond admirer of all of you, for I thought so much of you and loved you with all my heart. My wish for all of you is that you get along well together and prosper—not in money— but in happiness, for happiness is something that all the money in the world can’t buy.

Try to live a life of service—to help someone where you are or whatever you may be —take it from me; you can get happiness out of that, more than anything in life.

Henry T. Waskow

[The_Media_never_lie]

Wow, what a tribute to a brave man. Ernie Pyle was no slouch, either.

[WorkingClassFilth]

A beautiful story from Pyle’s ‘Brave Men.’ When I read it, it stuck in my mind as a real tribute. Thank you for sharing your uncle with all free peoples - he was truly a patriot and great man. Makes a body wonder what he would’ve become if he had survived the war.

[LucyJo]

Bump and save.

Thank you for the post. God bless all our military men and women - past and present - and their families. We could use a few Ernie Pyle’s these days.

[NCC-1701]

I have been to see Ernie Pyle’s grave at Punchbowl in Hawaii. Very beautiful setting. Ellison Onizuka, who was killed aboard the shuttle Challenger is buried a few plots away. Two of the many, many great Americans buried there.

[heartwood]

Beautiful. Thank you.

[GOPJ]

Great post. Thanks.

[rfreedom4u]

I am from Belton, Texas and we have a high school named after him. I read this years ago when I read Ernie’s book. Made me even a little more proud to be from Belton.

[centexan]

I forgot to credit the book "Brave Men" by Ernie Pyle. Thanks for mentioning the book. I found the original front page of The Washington Daily News from January 10, 1944. They ran the article without a headline with only this comment:

"Page one is different today because we thought Ernie Pyle's story would tell you more about the war than headlines that Russians are 35 miles inside Poland , or that Yank fliers are backing up Yugoslavia"

[gigster]

I am a lucky man, in as much that, I have an original copy of “Brave Men”, complete with period newspaper clippings, describing some of the battles in the book.
It is a humbling experience, to me, to read of these men who gave everything for us.
Ernie Pyle brought the stories of all the men, who didn’t have a voice, otherwise, to the people who needed to hear them.

I salute all of Our American Heroes, who gave the ultimate sacrifice, so we can be here ,today.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Agreed. Thanks to all of them - the old guard and the young Turks coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan - I have great hope for the young lads of today's wars - every bit as much as the BO regime fears them . . .

[Lancey Howard]

I remember when you first posted this a few years ago. I even bookmarked this site from that thread:

http://www.bisd.net/waskow/history.aspx

Thanks for posting this again. It should be a Memorial Day tradition. Excellent!

FRegards,
LH

[Lancey Howard]

NEW YORK (AP) - The figure in the photograph is clad in Army fatigues, boots and helmet, lying on his back in peaceful repose, folded hands holding a military cap. Except for a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he could be asleep.

But he is not asleep; he is dead. And this is not just another fallen GI; it is Ernie Pyle, the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II.

As far as can be determined, the photograph has never been published. Sixty-three years after Pyle was killed by the Japanese, it has surfaced—surprising historians, reminding a forgetful world of a humble correspondent who artfully and ardently told the story of a war from the foxholes.

Read more...

[davetex]

Great post, best I’ve seen in a while. Thanks for sharing.

36th Texas, good men, brave men. May God Bless them all.

[centexan]

I am from Belton, Texas and we have a high school named after him. I read this years ago when I read Ernie’s book. Made me even a little more proud to be from Belton.

There is a Memorial Day service tomorrow at 10:00AM at the VFW in Belton that's named in honor of Captain Waskow.

[alfie]

i do believe that was the scene depicted at the end of the movie “G.I. Joe” with Robert Mitchem.

[centexan]

i do believe that was the scene depicted at the end of the movie “G.I. Joe” with Robert Mitchem.

That is correct. Mitchum played "Capt. Walker." I recently found a letter from Ernie Pyle to my Mother where Ernie explained that Mitchum's character was based on Captain Waskow but it was better "a fictitious name be used since the character is to be a composite one and will enact many incidents which would not truly depict Captain Waskow as himself."

[Arrowhead1952]

Canteen and Texas hero ping

[centexan]

Memorial Day bump in honor of our fallen heroes.