Brave Men

By Ernie Pyle and David Chrisinger

The classic, human-scale account of the soldiers who fought in World War II, by Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle—America’s most famous and most loved war correspondent—featuring a new introduction by David Chrisinger, the author of the new Ernie Pyle biography, The Soldier's Truth

A Penguin Classic

When America entered World War II, Ernie Pyle followed the soldiers into the trenches. Long before television and the internet beamed combat footage directly to us, his dispatches from the front lines augmented the coverage of the war’s politics, strategies, and macro-level mobilizations to give the American public what he called his “worm’s-eye view” of the day-to-day life of the war. He captured, as John Steinbeck described it in Time magazine, the “war of the homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food . . . and bring themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage—and that is Ernie Pyle’s war.” A number-one bestseller upon its publication in 1944, Brave Men remains unmatched in its clarity, sympathy, and grit as a portrait of America’s boys who fought in Europe, and lives on as a testament to the enduring value of embedded journalism in reporting the truth.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593511169

Reviews for Brave Men

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although you run across his name in almost any WWII history that covers the American army, I’d never read anything by Ernie Pyle. Brave Men starts with the invasion of Sicily, jumps to the Anzio beachhead, then to England waiting for D-Day, then moves through France, ending with the liberation of Paris.
Pyle was an “embedded” war correspondent (I’m of the impression they all were until Vietnam). He didn’t stay with a particular unit, mingling with construction engineers, combat infantry, tank destroyers, artillery, dive bombers, stevedores, and ordnance repair units. Although he paints flattering portraits of a few generals (notably Omar Bradley) most of his reportage covers ordinary enlisted soldiers. Pyle frequently, almost obsessively, mentions soldier’s names and home towns; since he had been a travel correspondent before the war he knew a lot of places and could often mention a familiar spot to soldiers he was interviewing.
His writing is straightforward and “folksy”; the only case where he lets himself get emotional is while wandering amid the debris on the D-Day beaches and finding scattered bodies in the sand. He’s generally polite to the Germans, commenting (for example) about a scared young German soldier he saw in a field hospital; he never interviews any, though. He’s often close enough to the fighting to get near misses and mentions self-deprecatingly how scared he is (and, of course, he eventually bought a bullet that didn’t miss).
Brave Men doesn’t really add anything to the grand history of the war; Pyle avoided officer briefings and rear area command posts so he never really reported the “big picture” (to be fair, censorship probably wouldn’t have allowed it). But it does remind you that the war on the American side was fought by perfectly ordinary people in extraordinary situations – like all wars are fought, I suppose.

[jackichan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book if you're interested in details, lots of details about every step taken in the advancement of the troops Pyle was with. His "shout outs" to random men including their full home address whom really aren't in the spotlight for usually more than that and his "My people can do no wrong." attitude lead me to believe that much of his work is based on mere fabrications and elaborations of what really was. Appealing mainly to people who have served in the military or those with a thirst for all things military.In summary, FEEL GOOD ARMY BOOK, ♪♫HOO-RA♪♫.

[l4stewar · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, but a little dry.

[datwood_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ernie Pyle recorded World War II on the day-to-day human level, from the standpoint of the citizen soldier. Brave Men is a collection of his columns for Scripps Howard Newspapers from the fighting in Europe during 1943-44. It gives an immediacy even now to the history of the war.

[seoulful · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written with the quick, terse sentence structure of the front-line reporter, Brave Men gives an authentic impression of the atmosphere of war. The author, Ernie Pyle, overlays the harshness with a soft humor and love for the men he describes. From Sicily to Italy to England to France we travel with Pyle as he records great battles and small as told in vignettes of individuals or groups who make up the greater whole.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ernie Pyle is my favorite war writer, bar none. Sent to Europe to cover the war, he decided to interview those who were on the front lines instead relying on press releases from the officers. He wrote down what he heard, including stories, names and addresses. This touched the heart of those at home and brought the men who had gone to serve closer to them. His writing is endearing, filled with pathos, humor, patriotism and honesty.

[usnmm2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A must read for any WWII history buff. This is a collection of Pyles' columns about the every day G.I.

[wenestvedt_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This collection of contemporary WWII field reports from Ernie Pyle in the European Theater are plain-spoken, brief (newspaper column-length), and very affecting. In studying WWII from a vantage sixty years in the future, these columns are very useful for getting past the rosy halo that surrounds the WWII generation. (While I truly respect their sacrifices, there's a little to a lot of hagiography in many books, like Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation.") Michael Kelley is one of the few reporters today who come close to matching Pyle (see "Martyr's War" and the first part of "Things Worth Fighting For") but he died a year or two ago. Online, Michael Yon is writing this way, but he's just [late Sept. 2005] left Iraq for a while, so I fear that there won't be new pieces for some time.