Sponsored by Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP.
A beautiful reckoning with the life and work of the
legendary journalist Ernie Pyle, who gave World War II a human face for
millions of Americans even as he wrestled with his own demons.
At the height of his fame and influence during World War II,
Ernie Pyle’s nationally syndicated dispatches from combat zones shaped
America’s understanding of what the war felt like to ordinary soldiers, as no
writer’s work had before or has since. From North Africa to Sicily, from the
beaches of Anzio to the beaches of Normandy, and on to the war in the Pacific,
where he would meet his end, Ernie Pyle had a genius for connecting with his
beloved dogfaced grunts. A humble man, himself plagued by melancholy and
tortured by marriage to a partner whose mental health struggles were much more
acute than his own, Pyle was in touch with suffering in a way that left an
indelible mark on his readers. While never defeatist, his stories left no doubt
as to the heavy weight of the burden soldiers carried. He wrote about
post-traumatic stress long before that was a diagnosis.
In The Soldier’s Truth, acclaimed writer David Chrisinger
brings Pyle’s journey to vivid life in all its heroism and pathos. Drawing on
access to all of Pyle’s personal correspondence, his book captures every
dramatic turn of Pyle’s war with sensory immediacy and a powerful feel for both
the outer and the inner landscape. With a background in helping veterans and
other survivors of trauma come to terms with their experiences through
storytelling, Chrisinger brings enormous reservoirs of empathy and insight to
bear on Pyle’s trials. Woven in and out of his chronicle is the golden thread
of his own travels across these same landscapes, many of them still
battle-scarred, searching for the landmarks Pyle wrote about.
A moving tribute to an ordinary American hero whose impact
on the war is still too little understood, and a powerful account of that war’s
impact and how it is remembered, The Soldier’s Truth takes its place among the
essential contributions to our perception of war and how we make sense of it.
David Chrisinger is the executive director of
the Public Policy Writing Workshop at the University of Chicago’s Harris School
of Public Policy and the director of writing seminars for The War Horse, an
award-winning nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on the human impact of
military service. He is the author of several books, including Stories
Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guide to Writing about Trauma, and the
recipient of the 2022 National Council of Teachers of English George Orwell
Award.A beautiful reckoning with the
life and work of the legendary journalist Ernie Pyle, who gave World War II a
human face for millions of Americans even as he wrestled with his own demons
At the height of his fame and influence during World War II, Ernie Pyle’s
nationally syndicated dispatches from combat zones shaped America’s
understanding of what the war felt like to ordinary soldiers, as no writer’s
work had before or has since. From North Africa to Sicily, from the beaches of
Anzio to the beaches of Normandy, and on to the war in the Pacific, where
he would meet his end, Ernie Pyle had a genius for connecting with his beloved
dogfaced grunts. A humble man, himself plagued by melancholy and tortured by
marriage to a partner whose mental health struggles were much more acute than
his own, Pyle was in touch with suffering in a way that left an indelible mark
on his readers. While never defeatist, his stories left no doubt as to the
heavy weight of the burden soldiers carried. He wrote about post-traumatic
stress long before that was a diagnosis.
In The Soldier’s Truth, acclaimed writer David Chrisinger brings
Pyle’s journey to vivid life in all its heroism and pathos. Drawing on access
to all of Pyle’s personal correspondence, his book captures every dramatic turn
of Pyle’s war with sensory immediacy and a powerful feel for both the outer and
the inner landscape. With a background in helping veterans and other survivors
of trauma come to terms with their experiences through storytelling, Chrisinger
brings enormous reservoirs of empathy and insight to bear on Pyle’s trials.
Woven in and out of his chronicle is the golden thread of his own travels
across these same landscapes, many of them still battle-scarred, searching for
the landmarks Pyle wrote about.
A moving tribute to an ordinary American hero whose Impact on the war Is still
too little understood, and a powerful account of that war’s impact and how it
is remembered, The Soldier’s Truth takes its place among the
essential contributions to our perception of war and how we make sense of it.