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Show Brave Men By Ernie Pyle A Book Review I am very fond of the writings of Ernie Pyle. I bo't for my own use "Here's Your War," and read and re-read it some four times, each time with gusto. A humdinger. Then I saw that his volume, Brave Men was available, and I sent for a copy of that. The other night (while perusing it) the house burned down, fourteen people were murdered on the lawn, and a big plane with 26 on it crashed in the kitchen sink, but I read steadily on, unmindful, so absorbed absorb-ed was I. The Fire Chief burst in the door hellaba-looin', hellaba-looin', "By gum! I'll save ye yet, Granpappy." 'N I just sunk my nose deeper into the book and took a half hitch on the chair arm with my knee soze he couln't yank me out from it, and growled teestily - -"Aw Nutts! Can't a feller read a good book without with-out " Some people are that way. I went on reading. Ernie Pyle doesn't get academic, ever. He just noses along, chatting about now this, now that, a different thing on each chapter heading, and he carries you along, living with him, dirty, unshaved, unbathed, ill-kempt, but struggling along, ever forward. for-ward. You sleep with GI Joe, you eat with GI Joe; you march with a weary GI Joe. But you, top, stiffen stif-fen with pride as GI Joe stiffens with purpose as he goes into dangerous action, scared, hell yes, but not to turn him. And every once in a while Ernie takes an abrupt turn that makes you giggle, and removes re-moves the tension. He wears like an old shoe. Pal of the little man without tabs or stripes, Ernie knows what GI Joe suffers - - cold, wet, hunger, fear - - yet carries on. The infantryman is his first and last and only love. Ernie makes GI Joe quite palatable. Another would write from a swivel chair, and no matter how many words he cuts the air with, you all the time know it's from the swivel chair. But Ernie goes with GI Joe, sleeps with him, eats with him,and makes his reader, whether doughboy in the foxhole or brass hat looking on, know the war as no other writer can. So great a writer is Ernie, talking GI Joe, that the big chiefs in all ranks felt his worth, invite him with warmth to bunk with them for a change, and even they unbend to this guileless writer like a pal. He is welcome to them, welcome to come, or go to the front with all assistance, or welcome to rest and get away from it all without shaving or clambering into a tub. When Ernie tells of the GI Joe beefing his head off crabbing, the General laughs and tells one on himself and then you laugh. Ernie loosens loos-ens his pencil on 'em both. If my recomendation carries any weight, beg borrow bor-row or steal that volume, and sink your nose into it. Get a good comfy position in the slumpiest chair in the shack, and be delighted! I doubt if there is another writer on the Navy or Army front, who gets your interest, and holds your interest like Ernie Pyle. It seems so guileless, so natural, na-tural, so like the GI Joe you know, and want home. He never strains for heroics, yet when Joe is heroic, Ernie notes it down for you in tear compelling word painting. |