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Abstract
The military campaign following the TORCH landings in French North Africa in November 1942 provided the material conditions behind the creation of a particular type of war reporting, what can be called ‘the Pyle style’ after its foremost practitioner, Ernie Pyle. Such reporting looked not to explain the larger strategic landscape or the progress of specific battles, but rather focused on the small picture and the ordinary soldier, depicted as stoically heroic under trying conditions. This style was forged by the special conditions in North Africa, which included the specific Allied censorship regime, transmission delays, the small scale of the early fighting, and the fact that the Allies sought to downplay the dominant role played by British forces through most of the campaign. This style of war reporting has heavily influenced American journalism to this day, and has shaped the image of the American soldier at war ever since.
Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the support of the Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Boomhower, Soldier's Friend, 2.
2 Tobin, Ernie Pyle's War, 143, 4.
3 Nichols, Ernie's War, xiv.
4 Moskos and Ricks, Reporting the War, 8.
5 Liebling, “Pyle Set the Style,” 70.
6 This analysis is based on a reading of the dispatches of American correspondents filed from French North Africa from November 1942 until May 1943 obtained by examining all stories about the French North African campaign contained in four newspapers—the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune—which collectively carried stories from both the Associated Press and the United Press agencies. The Times and the Tribune also had their own correspondents in North Africa, Drew Middleton and Jack Thompson, respectively. This review was supplemented by consulting the papers of several journalists who reported from French North Africa, including Hal Boyle, A. J. Liebling, Merrill (Red) Mueller, Charles Collingwood, John MacVane, and others. Pyle's dispatches were accessed through David Nichols's collection (cited above) of Pyle's copy as distributed by Scripps Howard's United Features Syndicate. Pyle revised and published in book form a more extensive collection of his columns from North Africa as Here Is Your War in 1943.
7 For British reporting from North Africa in particular, see Moorehead, The End in Africa; D’Arcy-Dawson, Tunisian Battle; and Jordan, Jordan's Tunis Diary.
8 Nichols, Ernie's War, xiv.
9 Fussell, Wartime, 73.
10 For editorial encouragement of soldier's names and addresses for hometown stories, see Glenn Babb, Foreign Editor to AP foreign bureau chiefs and correspondents, memo, 20 July 1944, Box 63, Subject Files, Associated Press Corporate Archives. [Henceforth APCA].
11 Tobin, Ernie Pyle's War, 101.
12 Pyle, Here Is Your War, 133, 136.
13 Even while reporting on the disastrous American retreat though the Kasserine Pass in February, for example, the AP's Hal Boyle sent back a dispatch about one such motorcycle mounted traffic MP. See typescript copy datelined 18 February 1943, Box 2, Folder 1, Harold Boyle Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. [Henceforth WHS].
14 Tobin, Ernie Pyle's War, 204.
15 Pyle, Here Is Your War, 247–8.
16 Nichols, Ernie's America, xxi.
17 For the rise of personal reporting in the popular press, see, among others, Daly, Covering America, 60 and Dicken-Garcia, “Changes in the News During the Nineteenth Century,” 229–56.
18 “History of AFHQ Part I (August-December 1942)”: 71, RG 498 Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, United States Army (World War II), Entry 578, File 18, National Archives at College Park. [Henceforth NACP].
19 AFHQ to Chiefs of General and Special Staffs, memo, 1 November 1942 and AFHQ to Commanding Generals of All Forces, memo, 9 October 1942, RG331 Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 3A, Box 67, NACP.
20 History of Field Press Censorship, 9–10.
21 “List of Correspondents in Theater,” AFHQ memo, 24 Feb 1943, RG 165 War Department General and Special Staffs, Entry 418, Box 320, NACP.
22 Phillips to Chief of Staff, memo, 28 September 1942, RG 331, Entry 3A, Box 67, NACP.
23 “Basic Field Manual: Regulations for Correspondents Accompanying U.S. Army Forces in the Field” (FM30-26), 21 January 1942, RG 498, Entry 375, Box 2, NACP.
24 Eisenhower to AFHQ G-2, cable, 17 November 1942, World War II Documents, Box 2, Walter Bedell Smith Papers, Eisenhower Presidential Library.
25 Jordan, Tunis Diary, 109–10.
26 Beyond censorship for security, the press in Algiers also faced a blanket prohibition on reporting on the fraught political situation in French North Africa. See Fine, “Snakes in Our Midst.”
27 D’Arcy-Dawson, Tunisian Battle, 28.
28 Gallagher, Back Door to Berlin, 78. For further discussions of signals and communications difficulties, see Eisenhower, Papers, 719, 818, 826–7, 1017.
29 Surles to Eisenhower, telegram, 9 December 1942, RG 331 AFHQ Microfilm, Box 115 Reel 71-D, NACP.
30 Col. Joseph Phillips to Chief of Staff, AFHQ, memorandum, 10 December 1942, RG 331 AFHQ Microfilm, Box 115 Reel 71-D, NACP.
31 Eisenhower, Papers, 826.
32 Thompson, Crystal Clear, 51.
33 Desmond, Tides of War, 294–7.
34 Atkinson, Army at Dawn, 176–7.
35 Atkinson's Army at Dawn is the best recent military history of TORCH and the Tunisian campaign. See as well the Army's official history, Howe, Northwest Africa.
36 For more on French enmity toward the British during this period, see Atkinson, 26–7.
37 Middleton, Our Share of Night, 167.
38 Howe, Northwest Africa, 679.
39 Boyle's papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society contain copies of all of Boyle's reporting for the AP throughout the French North African campaign, including both his spot news reports (which he filed almost daily) and his less frequent “Leave from a Reporter's Notebook.”
40 Hal Boyle, “Leaves from a Reporter's Notebook,” typescript, 27 January 1943, Boyle Papers, Box 4, Folder 1, WHS.
41 Hal Boyle, “Leaves from a Reporter's Notebook,” typescript, 9 February 1943, Boyle Papers, Box 4, Folder 1, WHS.
42 Boyle to Frances Boyle, letter, 6 September 1943, Boyle Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, WHS.
43 Copies of most if not all of MacVane's broadcast scripts are contained in his personal papers housed in the Wisconsin Historical Society. These scripts have additional historical value because they are among the few in archives that contain all of the military censors’ marks. The records of the censorship branch of Allied Force headquarters were lost shortly after the war ended.
44 John MacVane, NBC broadcast script, 9 December 1942, John MacVane Papers, Box 1, Folder 5, WHS.
45 Robert Bunnelle, “Memorandum on Press Relations in the European Theater,” 27 January 1944, Foreign Bureau Correspondence, Box 3, Folder “London 1944,” APCA.
46 Desmond, Tides of War; Mathews, Reporting the Wars, 175–97; Knightley, First Casualty, 270–333; and Sweeney, Military and the Press, 93–120.
47 See Ambrose's many volumes on World War II but especially Citizen Soldiers and D-Day; Brokaw, Greatest Generation; Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan; and Hanks and Spielberg, Band of Brothers. See also Matthews, Our Father's War and Douglas Brinkley, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc.
48 Ambrose, D-Day, 26.
49 Bodnar, “Good War” in American Memory, 201.
50 Among the growing number of studies of remembrance of World War II, see most notably Adams, Best War Ever; Bodnar, “Good War” in American Memory; Casaregola, Theaters of War; Fussell, Wartime; and Rose, Myth and the Greatest Generation. For studies of the image of the military in American culture, especially trenchant are Dawes, Language of War; Huebner, Warrior Image; and Lewis, American Culture of War.
51 Berg, Lone Survivor.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Richard Fine
Richard Fine, Department of English, Virginia Commonwealth University, 900 Park Avenue, Hibbs Hall, Room 306, Richmond, VA 23284-2005, USA.