Ernie Pyle survives WWII?

The Vulture

Banned
What if Pyle isn't killed on Ie Shima, but survives the war and goes on to a career in the States, possibly covering the Korean War later?
 
What if Pyle isn't killed on Ie Shima, but survives the war and goes on to a career in the States, possibly covering the Korean War later?


Vulture,

Those are two tough questions...

Pyle would have been in his early 50 during Korea and, while he might have been tempted to "relive" his WW2 experiences there, one has to wonder if he would have been physically and mentally up to it.

Despite being "only" a correspondent, he didn't have an "easy" war. (as if anyone does.) He was treated such at it was for "shell shock" or what we now call PTSD. I've read that his travels, rapidly moving from actual combat to the relative calm of rear areas to the US and back again, aggravated this. He never had time to "acclimate" himself as it were.

His personal life was no help either. His wife, whom he divorced and then remarried during the war, was a worthless drunk and arch manipulator. During one period back in the US when he should have been recuperating, Pyle was instead forced to deal with another of her failed suicide attempts and subsequent hospitalization. He was constantly either arranging for her to dry out, cleaning up after her binges, or waiting for the feces to hit the fan in other ways and usually doing so from overseas via letter and telegrams.

Then there's his type of reporting. The Korean period would have still seen the his newspaper columns as a viable, robust form of journalism. With the explosion of TV in the 50s, and the continued life of radio which people tend to forget, it wouldn't last that way for long however. By decade's end most remaining newspaper columns were "chatty" gossip pieces that presaged the "infotainment" we drown in today.

I would think Pyle would make tours of Korea, just not a frenetically as he did WW2 because of health concerns/PTSD. I also think that Pyle would be reinventing himself for television, much as Murrow did, but with a different emphasis than Murrow. Pyle was more of a Mark Twain or Will Rogers style journalist, so he wouldn't be doing an investigative program like See It Now. Instead I see him doing pieces more like Charles Kuralt's On The Road series. Pyle would have been an "anti-muckraker" of sorts, although his reports would still have their results much like his campaign for "fight pay" for combat infantrymen in WW2.


Bill
 
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