This is Jocco podcast number 39 with Echo Charles and me.

Jocco willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

I heard of a high British officer who went over the battlefield just after the

action was over. American boys were still lying dead in their foxholes, their

rifle still grasped in firing position in their dead hands. And the veteran

English soldier remarked time and again in a sort of hushed eulogy spoken only

to himself. Brave men. Brave men. And that is the name of the book we are going to

delve into now. Brave men. And a few episodes ago we talked with Kirin Dardi,

war photographer, and when we talked with him we talked about war correspondents

as well. And I wanted to get a war correspondent here. And in this case the one

that we're going to be talking to is possibly the most famous war correspondent

ever. Guy by the name of Ernie Pyle. And we will join him now on a warship

steaming towards an inevitable invasion. The frontline soldier I knew lived

for months like an animal and was a veteran in the cruel fierce world of death.

Everything was abnormal and unstable in his life. He was filthy dirty, ate if and

when, a slept on hard ground without cover. His clothes were greasy and he lived

in a constant haze of dust, pestered by flies and heat, moving constantly deprived

of all things that once meant stability. Things such as walls, chairs, floors, windows,

faucets, shelves, Coca-Cola, and the little matter of knowing that he would go to bed

at night in the same place he had left in the morning. The frontline soldier has to

harden his inside as well as his outside or he would crack under the strain.

Some thoughts from Ernie Pyle out on a ship getting ready for this invasion talking

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