My dad was a WWII vet and Ernie Pyle was a subject of family conversation on a number of occasions. The GI's absolutely loved him because he told the story as it really was. The other correspondents were hanging around headquarters miles from the line, sipping cognac with the brass while Pyle was out in the mud with the troops. He told the stories about the lack of decent footwear in the winter campaigns, the lice, the frostbite, the hunger, the awful replacement policy of throwing untrained troops among strangers and the horrendous casualties suffered among those green troops.
He told of the awful casualties inflicted on US troops by the 9th air force fighter/bomber wings - the US lost far more men to the their own 9th air force than they ever suffered by the luftwaffe.
Nobody else would tell those stories, but Pyle did and the GI's loved him for telling the truth as nobody else would. The brass hated him.
Here's a picture on the Belgian border and used in a Pyle dispatch, though I don't think he himself took the photo. My dad is the guy in the middle and it's the first shower, de-licing and change of uniform since the landings 3 months before in June, the photo is taken in early September, 44. They had been in non-stop combat for the previous three months and were filthy, covered in lice and eating cold rations for most of that period. Those summer uniforms issued in September were worn right through the bitter cold of the Ardennes campaign. They didn't get winter uniforms until pulled off the line in February for the Siegried line offensive.
Pyle was the only one telling the truth from the GI's perspective.
