“I got awful sick of Pyle this last year," an ordinarily amiable gentleman remarked recently. "The whole country's so intent on making him a god darned little elf I don't understand it How people can get all tied up in Pyle is beyond me." The speaker was Ernie Pyle's oldest friend and college classmate, Paige Cavanaugh. His job at the moment is to make sure that The Story of GI Joe, a movie about the infantry as seen through Ernie's eyes, does not overly glamorize its journalist hero Cavanaugh is bored by the apotheosis of Pyle and has said so in writing. In a letter to Ernie, he announced, "I have completed my plans for the postwar world and I find no place in it for you." Certain differences between the public's conception of Pyle and his own knowledge of the subject provide Cavanaugh with much tart amusement, By his articulate admirers Ernie has come to be envisaged as a frail old poet, a kind of St. Francis of Assisi wandering sadly among the foxholes, playing beautiful tunes on his typewriter. Actually he is neither elderly, little, saintly nor sad. He is 44 years old, stands 5 ft 8 in tall; weighs 112 lb., and although he appears fragile he is a tough, wiry man who gets along nicely without much food or sleep. His sense of humor, which leavens his columns with quaint chuckling passages, assumes a robust earthy color in conversation. His laugh is full-bellied. His profanity is strictly GI. His belch is internationally renowned, "Ernie is the world's champion Belcher," a friend once remarked enviously. " He doesn't burp, he belches. It’s not a squashy, gurgly belch, but sharp and well-rounded, a clean bark with a follow-through. It explodes." Although Pyle is America's No. 1 professional wanderer, he is fundamentally a sedentary person who likes nothing better than to sit in an overheated room with a few good friends.
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