NEW YORK — "It seemed unlikely that a photograph in death of someone as well-known as war correspondent Ernie Pyle could exist for more than six decades without turning up in print — somewhere.
And as it turns out, it did.
In a Feb. 4 story, The Associated Press said a recently surfaced picture of the famed World War II reporter lying dead in a ditch on a tiny Pacific island had never been published "as far as can be determined," based on an extensive search of wartime and postwar archives.
Subsequently, the AP learned that the photo — taken by Army photographer Alexander Roberts shortly after Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on April 18, 1945 — did appear previously in at least two publications more than a quarter century ago.
On Dec. 14, 1979, the Daily Times-News of Burlington, N.C., ran the picture with a story about B.F. Coleman Jr., a local resident who, as a Navy chief petty officer in 1945, had acquired a copy from a naval photographer aboard USS Panamint, a command ship in the Okinawa campaign.
The picture also appeared in "Buddy Ernie Pyle: World War II's Most Beloved Typewriter Soldier," a 1982 book by Rudy Faircloth, who in 1945 was an Army photographer on military leave from AP. The 83-page personal memoir contains examples of Pyle's writings and Faircloth's recollections of meeting Pyle and being nearby when he was killed. Faircloth died last year at age 92."
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Go Google Ernie Pyle if you are unaware of who he was.
"There’s nothing nice about the prospect of going back to war again. Anybody who has been in war and wants to go back is a plain damn fool in my book."
- Back Again, Feb. 6, 1945
Two and a half months later, Pulitzer-winning Ernie was felled by a Jap round.
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