Ned Scott photographs found in Ernie Pyle’s book “Here Is Your War” 1945

A collage of Ned Scott photographs in Ernie Pyle’s famous book “This is Your War” have been discovered in this book’s first “motion picture” edition. This edition commemorates Ernie’s participation during the filming of “The Story of G.I. Joe”, producer Lester Cowan’s cinematic adaptation of Ernie’s book, in the Fall of 1944.

The book chronicles Ernie’s activity as a war corespondent which began with Operation Torch, the invasion of French colonial holdings in North Africa, in November 1942. The Tunisian campaign was the focus of Ernie’s activities as a correspondent. In the book Ernie details the panorama of allied war efforts to oust the Germans from North Africa. Later in the war, Ernie was killed by a sniper on Ie Shima, a small island off the northwest coast of Okinawa in April, 1945. The fatal irony is that Ernie’s book was first published in the same month he lost his life.

Perhaps feeling the shudder his own coming fate, Ernie touched on it in one passage which evoked the specter of sudden death in the war zone. Talking about future plans after the war, two of his M.P. buddies discussed their ideas. Ernie’s reflected on this aspect: “I noticed that both boys almost always prefaced their after-war plans with “If I live through it…” Nobody talked a great deal about that, but it was at the back of everybody’s mind. It was even in mine sometimes, despite the nice safety of my noncombatancy.”