[In the following essay, Hovey attempts, through a review of Brave Men, to explain why Pyle was the most popular war correspondent in America during World War II.]

Like Franklin Roosevelt and the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ernie Pyle is the people's choice. They elected him their favorite war correspondent for the duration shortly after Americans first began to fight Germans in this war, and his popularity has steadily increased. The explanation, I think, is simple: Ernie Pyle consistently has contributed the best job of reporting and writing about the Americans who have to fight the war. Pyle's popularity puzzles our British friends, who concern themselves more with articles on strategy and the political aspects of the conflict. But Americans have been most interested in the human side, and that side is Ernie Pyle's war.

Ernie's columns on the battle for Tunisia were collected in a book called Here Is Your War. It was so popular that his dispatches on the campaigns in Sicily and Italy, the Normandy invasion and the break-through which liberated Paris have been incorporated in a new volume, Brave Men. Pyle's best columns, such as the one in Brave Men on Captain Henry T. Waskow, wear well. In addition, the books tell the reader far more about what war is like than he could ever glean from histories or military texts. For Pyle writes about the whole army—the doughboys, tankers, artillerymen, engineers, bomber pilots, aerial gunners, the soldiers of ordnance and the quartermaster corps. As one reviewer said, when future generations of Americans seek to know what kind of army fought for them in this war they will be thankful for Ernie Pyle.

As a correspondent who campaigned with Ernie Pyle in Africa and Italy, I have profound respect for this little man who hates war so passionately and writes about it so well. I also envy him. That envy increased as I read Brave Men. I constantly asked myself why Ernie had done a better job than the rest of us; how he had gotten closer to the American soldier and his thoughts, hopes, fears and reactions; why he had been able to portray better the tragedy of war.

Most war correspondents envied Ernie the freedom his job afforded, and we liked to think that was a major reason why he was more successful than we. Most of us had daily deadlines to meet. We had to go to the front each day; dip briefly into the war, then drive back to base and file "spot" stories on developments. Ernie could remain in the field with one unit for five days at a time; get to know many soldiers, then come back and write enough columns for a week. But that does not explain his effectiveness. Not at all. Apart from any advantage his job gives him, Ernie Pyle is a great reporter.

A recent New Republic advertisement said, correctly, that our soldiers overseas do not yet know why they are fighting; that they understand few implications of the struggle between democracy and fascism, and they look on war only as a job they must do and get done with quickly. Many of us tried to write that effectively in dispatches from the Mediterranean. But the one who did it best was Ernie Pyle. Early in Brave Men, he describes assault ships nearing Sicily:

Then darkness enveloped the whole American armada. Not a pinpoint of light showed from those hundreds of ships as they surged on through the night toward their destiny, carrying across the ageless and indifferent sea tens of thousands of young men, fighting for … for … well, at least for each other.

Later, he writes that he has "been around long enough to know that nine-tenths of morale is pride in your outfit and confidence in your leaders and fellow fighters." And after listing the incredible hardships of infantry fighting in Normandy hedgerows, he observes that soldiers continually went back to them "because they were good soldiers and they had a duty they could not define."

It is tragic but true that American soldiers fight "at least for each other"; that morale generally is not based on an understanding of the war, but on pride in one's unit, and that men do return to the lines because they are "good soldiers," not because they can define their mission in Europe.

Pyle writes informatively about all branches of the service. His detailed "plugs" for such unadvertised units as ordnance, the quartermaster corps, anti-aircraft and the combat engineers are deserved and they help bring one's perspective of the army into focus. His best writing, however, is reserved for the infantry. That is natural, for Ernie Pyle, like anyone who has seen infantry fighting close up, is prejudiced on the side of the doughboy. In my opinion, a writer who can help make the nation "doughboy conscious" is helping to win the war. Ernie Pyle has stimulated this process more than anyone else.

If I were asked to select one column from Brave Men, I would choose the one on Captain Waskow, a Thirty-sixth Division company commander from Texas, who was worshiped by his men. It is the article one newspaper ran boldface across its entire front page, explaining that the editors believed it would give readers more real information about the war than communiquàs from the various fronts. It describes a scene at the foot of an Italian mountain trail the night the body of Captain Waskow is carried down on the back of a mule. At the foot of that trail were several soldiers and Ernie Pyle. In simple, powerful writing, Pyle reveals the feelings of the men at the loss of their leader.

Other notable chapters describe the vicious fighting to win the Normandy beaches, the incredible courage of an RAF pilot, pinned in his crashed plane in no-man's land for eight days with a broken leg, and the liberation of Paris. But one of the most unforgettable passages for me is the one summing up the author's thoughts on the discouraging campaign in Italy, where "the enemy had been hard and so had the elements. Men had had to stay too long in the lines. A few men had borne a burden they felt should have been shared by many more. There was little solace for those who had suffered, and none at all for those who had died, in trying to rationalize about why things had happened as they did."

It was terribly difficult for anyone to acquire "the long view" in Italy during that bitter last winter. It was terribly difficult for our soldiers to convince themselves they were not fighting the war practically by themselves. Ernie Pyle explains why.

A last word about the brave man who wrote Brave Men. Describing the job of an officer who had to spend every day in a landing craft in Anzio harbor, checking ship cargoes "with shells speckling the whole area," Ernie asserts, "I wouldn't have had his job for a million dollars." But in the next paragraph, Ernie says, "I rode around with him one day.…"

Perhaps that furnishes a clue to Ernie Pyle's popularity.