From a reader:

If you ever have a chance, set aside a few hours and read Ernie Pyle’s “Here is Your War” (assuming you have not already). Before picking up this book two days ago I knew who Ernie Pyle was and had a good idea of what his reporting is like, but the experience of reading this stuff is overwhelming. The contrast with the MSM today is maddening, but what I didn’t expect while reading this was that I have even developed a frustration with right wing war accounts.
With the MSM treating every soldier as a victim and reporting first and foremost on American body counts, I can understand the need among the right to praise the soldiers for their great sacrifice, to tell them “thank you” at every turn, and highlight great acts of heroic sacrifice and battlefield success. And yet while it is obvious that Pyle and his millions of readers maintained these same sentiments in their hearts, his reporting was never so sentimental.
Fortunately, there were few if any reporters in the 1940’s that would have learned of enemy plans to ambush American troops and then just sat back and watched it happen (see Jennings, Wallace, et. al.). Pyle (and I assume the rest of the American press corps) were anything but neutral on the outcome of the war. Freed from that disgust that we on the right feel these days reading most Iraq press accounts, Pyle didn’t need to make his sentiments stand out. And so he could write about the soldiers showing that they were just like us. He could write stories about hilarious screwups without fear that he was dishonoring the American soldier. And he could write about the reality of lives lost on the battlefield without the need to put every loss on the cross. Mainly when you read his stuff you just feel like we are all in this together, and we are in it to win whatever it takes.
Anyway, check out this quick excerpt from a story he wrote about a bomber that was literally blown into a million pieces when a German rocket hit the bomb bay doors:
“Fellow fliers of the ill-fated American crew were naturally pretty blue over the accident. But, as they said, when anything as freakish as that got you your number was just up regardless. And they went on with the war as usual.” Man!