The uppermost thing in all G.I.’s minds today is the death of Ernie Pyle. He was more important to the ordinary foot soldier than a general.—April 19, 1945
I was a block away from his house when I noticed Dad was sitting on a lawn chair in the front yard. It was Wednesday, our breakfast day, but he’d never been waiting for me like that before. As I got closer, he stood and walked to the curb. He leaned in as I rolled the window down.
“What do you think of my flag?” he asked.
“What flag?” I asked, looking past him.
He was grinning like someone who was keeping a great secret.
He motioned for me to follow him. I parked the car.
“Stand right here,” he said.
I stood in the grass next to his chair. He went to the garage and returned with a pole about six feet long. Some sort of fabric was held between his arm and his side. His posture was erect, his stride confident, almost a march. He slid the pole into a hole in the ground that I hadn’t noticed and wiggled it until it was sturdy.
He unfolded the fabric; it was an American flag. Then he attached it to the pole. With a simple sliding motion, he erected the flag twenty feet in the air. The flagpole proudly displayed the flag. He stood back and looked up at it and then at me.
“It’s great!” I said.
My father had always been patriotic. He was always the first one to put up a flag on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and all of the other flag-raising holidays. During parades he stood and took his hat off when the flag was marched by. So this new addition didn’t surprise me.
Each week after, when I arrived, the flag was raised. He followed proper flag etiquette, taking it down at night since it wasn’t illuminated. Sometimes, he raised it right when I arrived to pick him up. He loved it when the wind blew just right so that the flag was unfurled perfectly.
I loved watching him raise it. There was such pride in every movement he made. When it was clicked into its final position, he’d look up. It was a symbol of strength and somehow he drew strength from it.
A few weeks had passed when I stopped to pick him up for breakfast and he was sitting next to the flagpole. He raised himself from the lawn chair, giving it one last glance before getting into the car. I’d driven just a few blocks when he spoke.
“It’s for Mal,” he said. “The flag. It’s for Mal.”
It all came together then. He wasn’t drawing strength from the flag itself but from what it represented: his fallen friend. And when he sat out there, next to the flagpole, it was his friend’s presence that gave him strength.
As we continued on to breakfast, I felt a well of emotions. My father and I had come full circle. At the beginning, I’d felt the need to fill every silence with words, every emotion with explanation. But as we rode together and then ate together, there was no need to do that. We understood each other, and we knew that silence too could be communication.
Over the next few months, I would find him out there, in the lone lawn chair, just sitting, looking up at that flag or watching people walk by his house. When he heard that you could order a flag that had been flown over the White House, he ordered one and replaced the one he had. He knew all of the holidays and occasions that one is supposed to raise the flag, and he made up a few of his own too. He put it up as a celebration of birthdays and out-of-town visits from family. And sometimes he put it up for no apparent reason at all.
What I began to realize, though, was that the flag was more than just a patriotic symbol. It meant that he hadn’t forgotten. He’d never been able to go to a funeral or memorial service for Mal. There wasn’t a grave to visit. But now, after more than fifty years, he had a place to go to remember.
Mal’s death marked the greatest tragedy of my father’s young life. It was felt by him and somewhere it was felt by his family. But within a month’s time, the whole nation would mourn together. My father put words to that loss in a letter home.
April 13, 1945
Dear Folks,
I was on liberty yesterday and out at a show at Kaimuki when they flashed the news of the presidents death on the screen. Of course everyone read it over a couple of times before believing it. Practically everyone walked out of the theatre kind of dazed. I was among them. Got on a street car heading back for Honolulu. A big negro top sergeant sat down next to me. Someone in the front of the bus held up an extra of the paper that said “Roosevelt Dies.” The negro said “I heard it but I didn’t believe it.” Tears were streaming down his face. Then as I walked across the street a boy asked me if I know why colors were lowered all over town. News came quick and it was hard to believe. It happened at 11:05 a.m. Hawaiian time.
Spent a couple of hours talking to the lady at the U.S.O. about the proposed ex-railroaders club. We really got off to a flying start. I told her I hardly knew from one day to the next whether I’d be here or not but she said that part was OK. So we mapped out plans for a meeting the 23rd. She insisted that I was a good sign painter so grabbed a ruler and pen etc and made a big multi color notice to put up in the lobby.
Oh yes, if Chad B. arrives, it will probably be right where I am. Hope you can run down his address for me when Mr. Broughton finds out about it.
Glad the Honolulu paper is getting thru to you. Now maybe you’ll get some of the local news I never think of.
Everyone is going in for baby kittens for pets now. They are kind of cute when they are little. Have a ma cat and five kittens kind of mottled gray color live where I’m working and at the main office a set of pure black ones.
Have several advantages to my job. I’m temporarily on the staff now so I get a special card that lets me in to the shows without standing in line an hour or so and I get my mail an hour earlier. I don’t have to stand “quarters” for half hour every morning listening to a bunch of routine bulletins. A hard working man has advantages all right. By the way—I’m “working” now. Doing nothing as usual. Have a messenger watch this afternoon from four hours. Just drink cokes and gab with the gang.
Well, this letter must end.
Love, Murray
“Do you remember when President Roosevelt died?” I asked.
“Oh yes. I remember it very well,” he said.
He proceeded to tell me the story of being at the Kaimuki movie theater and then on the bus. The story he told was identical to the one in his letter.
“I just read about it in one of your letters,” I said.
“Really?” he asked. “I wrote about that?”
I nodded.
“You have a fantastic memory, Dad. You told the story almost verbatim,” I said.
“I don’t know about the good memory. I don’t seem to remember anything these days. I get in the car and can’t even remember where I’m going,” he said.
“Well, that’s nothing,” I said. “I do that all the time.”
He thought for a moment.
“Some things I just remember in detail,” he said.
“You know, Mom says you have a photographic memory. She says you always have.”
“Oh, I don’t have a photographic memory,” he replied. “Your mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
I didn’t tell him that my sisters and I thought that too. I didn’t tell him how different he is. I didn’t tell him that it’s not normal to read a book in one night and then be able to tell every detail about it decades later. I didn’t tell him how unusual it is that he easily understands complex schemes and commits them to memory, apparently without even realizing it. My father is the smartest man I’ve ever known. And yet when it came to emotions, it was a different story.
What does it take for a man who remembers everything to forget? His best friend dying in his arms? As I read the letters dated late April, I could see an accumulation of events that were added to the death of his friend. Were they part of what drove him to bury it all away?
April 19, 1945
Dear Folks,
The uppermost thing in all G.I.’s minds today is the death of Ernie Pyle. He was more important to the ordinary foot soldier than a general. He seemed to be right in there with them all the time and above all, he headed right back into action out here after “serving his time” in the European Theatre. Ernie could have stayed home without hurting his reputation or anything. I usually read his columns before the funnies even. They usually say exactly what the enlisted man is thinking all the time.
Didn’t do anything unusual but eat ice cream—and that’s not unusual. Got a hair cut but forgot to tell them to shave the cookie duster off. Too bad. Maybe next year.
I was the messenger this morning and got to write letter this afternoon. Guess I’ll have to brush up on my code and typing a bit too as I get speed tests in those subjects. It’s getting more complicated.
I hardly even knew who was vice president let alone where he was from. Of course now we know we are in good hands. He can probably do a little drinking and get us out of the national debt or something. Still seems hard to believe F.D.R. isn’t at the helm.
Wish you could get a picture of the Fiat with the first door open and the family or at least part of it—gathered ’round.
That’s all there is—there is no more.
Write. Love, Murray
Dad rode over to my house on his Segway. We sat on the front porch, talking about nothing. Then I remembered Ernie Pyle.
“Who was Ernie Pyle?” I asked.
“You don’t know who Ernie Pyle was?” he replied.
He was dumbfounded.
“Well, Ernie Pyle was probably the best news reporter who ever lived. You know, nowadays we see all this news from what they call imbedded reporters. You know what that means, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The reporters who go right along with the troops.”
“Right up to the front lines,” he said. “Ernie Pyle did that during WWII. He went with the soldiers right up to the front lines. And in the end it cost him his life. He was shot by a sniper. The GIs probably mourned him more than they did Roosevelt. He was just one of the guys. He told the stories in a way that everyone could understand from the guys themselves to the housewife at home. Anyway, he was a hero to us.”
Too much was happening at once in his letters. I felt overwhelmed and I wondered if that’s how he felt when he was going through it. First he’d lost his friend, then news of President Roosevelt’s death, and finally Ernie Pyle’s. When he talked about Ernie Pyle, it was like he was talking about the death of a friend. I wondered what it felt like to him back then. Did he feel like the world was falling apart, every foundation ripped away? Perhaps that’s why he kept his memories in a secure place for more than fifty years. Did one thing stack on another until he couldn’t take it anymore?
It is said that people don’t commit suicide over one thing; it’s always a number of things, the accumulation of which becomes unbearable. I wondered if my father’s mind simply knew how much he could take and built a wall to save him. With the wall’s foundations firmly planted, even before he returned home, he could go on living. Had his life been spared by his mind’s ability to do this? It was impossible to even consider the alternative.