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¶ From Hollywood: I had a long talk last night with Chris Cunningham of the United Press, who was with Ernie in Eng land and North Africa. He is here advising the United Artists studios on the production of a movie based on Pyle's book, Here Is Your War. He says that the studio is sticking fully to Ernie's stipulation that the picture must be dedicated to the infantry and tell a true story of the G.I.s. But the movie will be full of Ernie. And it will stress his frailties throughout. It will admit his fear of battle, his apprehension about his work, his latest quirk—the conviction that now he is in France, he is going to be killed.
¶ From Normandy: It was the afternoon that Cherbourg fell, and the fighting was still pretty hot. We went a little way and a 20-mm. began shooting at us from be hind. Most of the G.I.s hit the dirt behind a wall. Ernie, who was talking to a couple of them, kept standing and kept his hands in his pockets. I watched his face as he went down the street and he was scared all right. A little later we got mixed up in a tank-v.-pillbox duel and the pillbox knocked the tank out right outside of the house where we were. I said, "Let's get out of here," and Ernie said, "O.K., you get a start and then I'll follow you." I ran about 25 yards, didn't see Ernie, and stopped in another house. Presently he came along. When he reached me he said: "Some of those fellows that jumped out of that tank knew me from my picture so I had to stop and talk."
¶ From Indiana: I spent Sunday at Ernie's old home with his father, "Pop" Pyle, and his Aunt Mary Bales. It is a comfortable old white farmhouse on a dusty road three miles north of Dana. Several relatives and neighbors dropped in, and as usual the conversation turned toward Ernest (as his father and aunt call him, not Ernie). Aunt Mary got to talking about how Ernest on his last trip home told her that he didn't feel above any of them when she asked him how it felt to be a celebrity, and Hazel Frist put in: "There just ain't a bit of that in him, Aunt Mary." Aunt Mary said Ernest was born with a wanderlust, that she knew it all along. Mr. Pyle said: "He liked to ride horseback but he didn't like to work with them. Horses were too slow for Ernest. He always said the world was too big for him to be doing confining work here on the farm."