At War45-04-2494Brave Men

Yes, he had used up his chances. On the island of EA before a burst of Jap Machine Gun fire, Ernie Pyle, America's best-loved war correspondent, died as so many American boys he'd written about. Ernie Pyle was killed in action.

National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books and War Time, presents Words at War, dramatizing the most representative books to come out of this great world conflict.

Our original schedule called for the presentation of another book, but the death of Ernie Pyle in the Pacific made his brave men the timeliest program we could bring you tonight. And so we bring you the story as Ernie Pyle wrote about the American fighting men, the songs they sang together and loved so well.

Here as a tribute to the little guy who held the love and affection of every American soldier he ever met, is Ernie Powell's last book entitled with his simple eloquence brave men. What is it like before battle? What do they think about?

Well, they're afraid, but not afraid of the physical part of dying. That isn't the way it is. The emotion is rather one of almost desperate reluctance to give up the future. To give up such things as seeing the old lady again, and going on to college, and getting married, and holding on your knee just once the kid you've never seen,

of becoming the champion salesman of your territory, of driving your cold truck around Kansas City once more. Yes, even of sitting in the sun again on the south side of a house in New Mexico.

It's these little hopes and ambitions for some bright tomorrow that makes up the sum total of the worry and anxiety in the hearts of the waiting men. I don't think you can ever fully understand the ties that grow between men who live savagely together relentlessly communing with death. That ties of great strength. There's a sense of