Pyle was born August 3, 1900, near Dana, Ind. After studying journalism at Indiana University. Pyle worked as a newspaper reporter with the LaPorte Herald. He later wrote a daily aviation column for the Washington Daily News. In 1935, he became a roving reporter, traversing the U.S., Canada and South America writing human-interest stories for Scripps Howard newspaper.
From 1940 to 1945, Pyle covered the horrors of World War II from the cities, beaches, hedgerows, trenches, deserts and jungles of England, North Africa, Italy, France and the South Pacific. Nearly 700 newspapers carried his work. In 1944, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished war correspondence during 1943.
Pyle's pen was silenced April 18, 1945, by sniper fire on the island of Ie Shima during the Okinawa campaign. President Harry Truman honored Pyle with this tribute: "No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen."
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