[In the following essay, Streeter praises Pyle's "deeply human portrait of the American soldier in action."]

Ernie Pyle has drawn a graphic and absorbing picture of the fighting in Tunisia. [in Here Is Your War]. He has also achieved something far more difficult and important—a full length, deeply human portrait of the American soldier in action.

This ability to disclose the individual beneath the war-stained uniform of the soldier is what has made Pyle one of the most popular of the war correspondents. He writes only of what he sees, and he sees the tilings that those at home want most to know: what their boys eat, where they sleep, what they talk about, and how they react to the fatigue, dirt and danger of a fighting front.

Pyle spent most of his time in North Africa with the men who were shooting and being shot at. He sees them not as "soldiers," but as boys from the farms and the cities, the plains and the uplands of forty-eight States. He sees them as ex-storekeepers, soda jerks, truck drivers, clerks, cowpunchers, farmers and gas station attendants—dumped into a small segment of North Africa, called upon to perform dangerous and unaccustomed tasks—yet still civilians at heart.

From the general staff point of view, a military campaign consists of a carefully worked-out plan, executed with precision and skillfully timed. A campaign is also composed of myriads of incidents, small in themselves but vitally important to those who take part in them. History is written as much by the reaction of individuals to the impact of relatively trivial things as it is by the leaders.

It is this phase of war which interests Ernie Pyle:

I haven't written anything about the Big Picture, because I don't know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worm's-eye view, and our segment of this picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don't want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked, silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding-rolls and A rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tents and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter, too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers, and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves.

These are the materials from which the story is woven; innumerable strands which, when drawn together, disclose the magnitude of the over-all accomplishment. It is the story of thousands of bewildered, frustrated and very human beings, who through their daily actions and reactions merged into an irresistible fighting machine.

There is no embellishment, no fine writing. This is not a book of memories, revived and polished on a sunny terrace in Connecticut. It was written behind rocks scarred by snipers' bullets, in pup tents, foxholes and dugouts, in freezing cold and cruel heat, in the midst of dust and dirt and unnamed crawling things which shared the common quality of being repulsive.

It concerns only what came within the range of Pyle's vision. He wrote of what he saw—whether or not it fitted with preconceived notions of how men behaved in battle. If man chooses to appear ridiculous when he is supposed to be sublime that is no fault of the reporter. In fact, Pyle seems to enjoy letting the greatness in men manifest itself through their weakness.

This book is going to be of particular interest to thousands of old gaffers all over the country who, twenty-five years ago, fought the battle of Quarante Hommes and Huit Chevaux. They will discover here that the American soldier, 1943 model, has not changed in the least from the one they knew in 1918. His reactions to jeeps, tanks, mines, dive bombers and 88s are the same as those of a former generation to quads, artillery horses, duck boards, French freight cars and 77s. None of them liked any of them.

An American army is once more fighting on foreign soil and its attitude to foreigners is the same as that of its predecessor. Language barriers meant nothing in 1918. They mean nothing today. The Yanks' amazement at the inability of other races to understand pidgin English (especially if shouted) is as great as ever and equally tinged with indignation.

The interest of the 1943 fighting man in the post-war readjustment of international problems continues to remain at zero. His chief concern is to get the show over with and get home to the family, the girl and the land of hamburgers, flivvers, name bands, Coke and movies—just as it was with the men of 1918.

When aroused, these Yanks are fierce and determined fighters. But the bitterness which fighting generates disappears as it always has like morning mist when the shooting stops. When called on for a real battle job they will burst their hearts to accomplish their objective, getting shot in the attempt if need be. Put them on a fatigue detail behind the lines, however, and they will go to just as much trouble to duck it as their brothers-in-arms of a quarter-century ago.

"Taking things as they find them. Only vaguely understanding. Caring less. Grumbling by custom. Cheerful by nature. Ever wanting to be where they are not. Ever wanting to be somewhere else when they get there. Sacrificing without thought of sacrifice. Serving as a matter of course. Content to leave the flag waving to those at home." Those words were written twenty-five years ago. They are apparently equally true today.

The backdrop is new, but the actors appear to remain the same. Perhaps this is only to be expected. For in spite of the difference in equipment and techniques the bond between the men of 1943 and 1918 is a close one in view of the fact that a majority of the boys now on the battle fronts or in training are the sons of those who cussed and groused through World War I. It is a sort of father and son tournament on a global scale.

Ernie Pyle's book is easier to discuss than to describe, for it makes no pretense of being a connected narrative. Rather it is a series of candid camera shots beginning on a transport in an English harbor and continuing through the day when Rommel's war-weary army seated itself on the Tunisian plain and waited stolidly for someone to cart it away to an internment camp.

The thousands who have followed his dispatches from North Africa as they appeared daily in The New York World-Telegram are already familiar with the style. Bit by bit he builds a cross-section of a life without roots or reason, lived in a fantastic country, by men many of whom had never been farther than a day's automobile ride from the old home town until war picked them up and deposited them on the other side of the world.

Man is an adaptable creature, however. Gradually the transition from civilian to soldier is taking place. The naive optimism of the training camps is being forged by reality into tougher and more enduring metal. Pyle sums it up in his final paragraph.

This is our war, and we will carry it with us as we go on from one battleground to another until it is all over, leaving some of us behind on every beach, in every field. We are just beginning with the ones who lie back of us here in Tunisia. I don't know whether it was their good fortune or their misfortune to get out of it so early in the game. I guess it doesn't make any difference once a man has gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them any more. They died and others lived and nobody knows why it is so. They died and thereby the rest of us can go on and on.