Brave Men is Ernie Pyle’s masterpiece about the extraordinary efforts of ordinary men and women in the fight against the Axis.
High Point: The stories are personal to the point they seem as though they happened to one of your neighbors.
Low Point: The realization that Pyle was killed a few months after the publication of Brave Men.
Author: Ernie Pyle
Publication Date: 1944
Genre: History
Project Gutenberg: Not available
LibriVox: Not available
Movie/TV Adaptation: Story of G.I. Joe (1945)
Citizen Soldiers
If you have ever marveled at the way in which the common American stepped up during World War II, Ernie Pyle’s Brave Men won’t disappoint. It’s a masterpiece about the extraordinary efforts of ordinary men and women in the fight against the Axis.
This book describes events in Europe beginning with the invasion of Sicily and going through the liberation of Paris. There is little mention of overall military strategy or management of the war. Instead, the book focuses on the citizen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and medical personnel—describing their day-to-day existence as they fought, attempted to stay alive, and worked to maintain their sanity.
Personal Experiences
The stories are personal. Pyle lets you know what they did for a living before they left home to fight the war. For many, he even lists their home addresses. One can’t resist finding those houses on Google Maps. The sight of the houses where these men and women lived makes their stories seem as if they happened to one of your neighbors.
Pyle also shares his own experiences and worries. He describes getting accidentally attacked by American bombers during the Normandy invasion. He talks about his fear of snipers. Pyle was killed by a sniper in the Pacific a few months after the publication of this book.
Captain Waskam
All the accounts are fascinating. Some are funny. Others are intensely poignant such as the story of the death of Captain Waskam. Pyle describes how some of the men in the Captain’s unit come to say good-bye, and ends the account with the excerpt below.
“Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the Captain’s hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face. And he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.
Finally, he put the hand down. He reached up and gently straightened the points of the Captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.”
You should read this book.
