Ernie Pyle for the 21st Century

21st Century war correspondent
I am a history buff and have read a lot about World War II (I wasn’t even born yet, so I have no personal memories). I also spent my life as a journalist and a part-time soldier. You can’t be those things and not have read about Ernie Pyle.
Ernie Pyle was a singular American and a singular journalist. He wrote a newspaper column that was read by millions back in the states and told the story of the war from the dog-faced soldier’s point of view. He was very popular with the troops and a little less popular with the brass hats because he tended to take the side of the troops rather than their bosses.
There was a character in the Errol Flynn movie “Objective Burma” (1945) that was patterned after Pyle, I suspect. Pyle, who had followed the American GIs through the entire European campaign, from North Africa to Sicily to Italy to Normandy to VE-Day, was killed by a Japanese sniper covering the invasion of Okinawa in 1945.
Pyle probably is the epitome of what an American journalist, covering American troops, should be. There are very few like Pyle.
Today, however, there is a war correspondent by the name of Michael Yon, who I have been following for a number of years. During most of Iraq and a good part of Afghanistan, Yon has been embedded with American as well as allied troops. Unfortunately, his Pyle-like reportage has got him disinvited by the American military leadership from future embeds. It seems his experience as a former soldier and years of covering combat compel him to tell uncomfortable truths about the wars, which tend to recognize the worst of the enemy, the failures in leadership of American commanders and often the heroism of the unheralded foot-soldier.
He currently is “fighting” a campaign of his own to get the U.S. military to arm its medical evacuation helicopters so they can fight their way into hot landing zones to carry out wounded troops in the “golden hour” rather than often wait for Air Force planes or Army attack helicopters to provide cover for them. He has told several stories of young soldiers, good soldiers, who died unnecessarily because their evacuation was delayed because the landing zone for the Dustoff helicopter was hot and higher authorities wouldn’t let it land.
This is not a ding on the crews of those helicopters. More often than not they plunge right in, because they know the importance of their mission.
Anyway, if you really want to see the face of modern war and get a good perspective of what it is like for the men and women on the ground in Afghanistan … even though he is not there at the moment, he has a lot of really good sources … I would encourage you to follow his posts on his website, on twitter and on Facebook.
His name is Michael You. His website is www.michaelyon-online.com.
Not to puff up his ego any, but this old scribe thinks he stands up there with Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin.