Ernie Pyle was the most beloved war correspondent of World War II. He covered the war from North Africa to Northern France in the European theater before going to the Pacific to report on the Okinawa invasion.
“Brave Men,” originally published in 1944, is a classic collection of Pyle’s writings. It covers his activities from the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 through the liberation of Paris in August of 1944. The book was made up of his newspaper columns. Some were updated to reflect changes since he wrote them, noting what happened to those he had written about.
In the book, he lives in many different places: aboard a landing ship tank (LST) headed to Anzio, with engineers in Sicily; with an infantry company and artillery unit in Italy; among the aircrews of a dive bomber unit; a light bomber unit, and medium bomber unit in Italy, and England ordinance; and anti–aircraft units in France. He then told the story of the men (and occasional women) who belonged to it. Nothing grand, but rather relating the everyday experiences of life….