On this Memorial Day 2024, here's Captain Henry Waskow, memorialized by the revered War Correspondent Ernie Pyle in what is often cited as the most widely read single column in American history: The Death of Captain Waskow (https://erniepyle.iu.edu/wartime-columns/captain-waskow.html)
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Pyle begins by writing of Waskow: "In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas."
The column was published January 10, 1944, nearly a month after Captain Waskow perished during fighting in the Italian Campaign outside Naples on December 14, 1943.
Writing on the return of Waskow's body from the battlefields: "The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear...Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I’m sorry, old man."
Pyle's column marked a notable departure from the media's detached approach to death, instead detailing the subdued activity following a single soldier's death. The Washington News gave The Death of Captain Waskow frontpage treatment and subsequently sold out that day's edition. Pyle's column was widely read on the radio and also incorporated into a war bond drive. For months afterwards, stacks of thank you letters from around the nation arrived to Captain Waskow's family in Texas.