Ernie Pyle

Today's 'action figure' sat at a roll-top desk as editor of the 'IDS' 80 summers ago

By Jayne Spencer

While the original packaging box for the Pyle doll lists Indiana State University as the journalist's alma mater, Pyle actually came to IU to study journalism in 1919 , but left in his senior year without a degree.

He did, however, serve as editor of the Indiana Daily Student precisely 80 years ago, in the summer of 1922, and received the first doctor of humane letters degree IU ever bestowed, in 1944, the same year he received the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Pyle was killed the following April on the Pacific island of Ie Shima during a sniper attack.

Pyle served as a roving columnist for Scripps-Howard Newspapers and documented the lives of ordinary citizens coping with the Great Depression. Later he went to war, sending home columns about ordinary Americans coping with a war on foreign soil. His columns were collected into several books, one of which became the basis for the movie, The Story of G.I. Joe.

The G.I. JOE Ernie Pyle figure on toy shelves this summer comes with a field jacket, utility cap, trousers, scarf, boots and belt. It also comes equipped with an M1 helmet, goggles, canteen, bench, typewriter, entrenching tool, Pyle's signature "shovel," gas stove and a reproduction of the reporter's most famous newspaper story, "The Death of Captain Waskow." The figure retails for approximately $19.99 and Hasbro will be re-manufacturing the box in the fall to reflect his IU affiliation.

The Dana native took full advantage of his time in college. He belonged to the Sphinx Club, the Cootie Club (originally made up only of men who had fought in World War I, but eventually included most campus leaders), the Aeons, the Boosters Club and Sigma Delta Chi. Ernie Pyle Hall is the only building on the Bloomington campus named in honor of a student.

His Pulitzer Prize-winning column about U.S. Army Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas, datelined from the front lines in Italy, Jan. 10, 1944, may be read online at the Texas Military Forces Muesum Web site at the end of this story.

What Pyle might have thought of his ascension as an action figure hero in the 21th century will forever be speculation but his views about war were well articulated: "There was nothing macho about the war at all,” he once said. “We were a bunch of scared kids who had a job to do."

http://www.kwanah.com/txmilmus/36division/archives/waskow/appenda.htm