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Least Likely to Succeed. The subject of these reports received from TIME correspondents last week is—as they demonstrate—well on his way toward becoming a living legend. Four years ago he was an obscure roving reporter whose syndicated column of trivial travelogues appeared in an unimpressive total of 40 newspapers. At that time almost any class of war correspondents would have voted him least likely to succeed. Aged 40, small and skinny (5 ft., 8 in., 115 lbs.), perpetually sick or worrying that he was about to be, agonizingly shy, he was completely lacking in the brash and dash of the Richard Harding Davis tradition. He had a great gift of friendship, but it was always an effort for him to meet new people and he especially disliked crowds. Neat in his habits, he hated dirt, disorder and discomfort. Above all, he hated and feared war. Except for a few months of naval R.O.T.C. during World War I, he knew nothing about it. He stood in awe of professional war correspondents and firmly believed himself incompetent to become one.
Yet now, four years later, he is the most popular of them all. His column appears six days a week in 310 newspapers with a total circulation of 12,255,000. Millions of people at home read it avidly, write letters to him, pray for him, telephone their newspapers to ask about his health and safety. Abroad, G.I.s and generals recognize him wherever he goes, seek him out, confide in him. The War Department and the high command in the field, rating him a top morale-builder, scan his column for hints.* Fellow citizens and fellow-newsmen have heaped honors on him.
"Homesick, Violent, Common Men." What happened to Ernie Pyle was that the war suddenly made the kind of unimportant small people and small things he was accustomed to write about enormously important. Many a correspondent before him had written of the human side of war, but their stories were usually about the heroes and the exciting moments which briefly punctuate war's infinite boredom. Ernie Pyle did something different.
More than anyone else, he has humanized the most complex and mechanized war in history. As John Steinbeck has explained it:
"There are really two wars and they haven't much to do with each other. There is the war of maps and logistics, of campaigns, of ballistics, armies, divisions and regiments—and that is General Marshall's war.
"Then there is the war of homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food, whistle at Arab girls, or any girls for that matter, and lug themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage—and that is Ernie Pyle's war. He knows it as well as anyone and writes about it better than anyone."