Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America.

During its voyage across the Pacific Ocean, the ship docked at ports such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Manila, as well as in Japan before returning trip to the United States.

[17] Pyle met his future wife, Geraldine Elizabeth "Jerry" Siebolds (August 23, 1899 – November 23, 1945), a native of Minnesota, at a Halloween party in Washington, D.C., in 1923.

[20] In June 1940, Pyle purchased property about 3 miles (4.8 km) from downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, and had a modest, 1,145-square-foot (106.4 m2) home built on the site.

"[34] In 1932, at the age of thirty-one, Pyle was named managing editor at the Daily News, serving in the position for three years before taking on a new writing assignment.

Upon his return to Washington, D.C., and while he filled in for the paper's vacationing syndicated columnist Heywood Broun, Pyle wrote a series of eleven articles about his trip and the people he had met.

("Deac") Parker, editor-in-chief of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, said he had found in Pyle's vacation articles "a sort of Mark Twain quality and they knocked my eyes right out".

[36] In 1935, Pyle left his position as managing editor at the Daily News to write his own national column as a roving reporter of human-interest stories for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate.

[4] Despite his growing popularity, Pyle lacked confidence and was perpetually dissatisfied with his writing; however, he was pleased when others recognized the quality of his work.

Pyle continued his daily travel column until 1942, but by that time he was also writing about American soldiers serving in World War II.

[33][5] Pyle initially went to London in 1940 to cover the Battle of Britain, but returned to Europe in 1942 as a war correspondent for Scripps-Howard newspapers.

He returned to the United States in September 1944, spending several weeks recuperating from combat stress before reluctantly agreeing to travel to the Asiatic-Pacific Theater in January 1945.

[4][38] After returning to the United States in March 1941 and taking a three-month leave of absence from work to care for his wife, Pyle made a second trip to Great Britain in June 1942, when he accepted an assignment to become a war correspondent for Scripps-Howard newspapers.

Pyle's wartime columns usually described the war from the common man's perspective as he rotated among the various branches of the U.S. military and reported from the front lines.

[31][39] Collections of Pyle's newspaper columns from the campaigns he covered in the European theater are included in Here is Your War (1943) and Brave Men (1944).

[40] Through his work, Pyle became friends of the enlisted men and officers, as well as those in leadership roles such as Generals Omar Bradley and Dwight D.

[45] After the North African and Italian campaigns, Pyle left Italy in April 1944, relocating to England to cover preparations for the Allied landing at Normandy.

[47]In July 1944, Pyle was nearly caught in the accidental bombing by the U.S. Army Air Forces at the onset of Operation Cobra near Saint-Lô in Normandy.

[48] A month after witnessing the liberation of Paris in August 1944,[49] Pyle publicly apologized to his readers in a column on September 5, 1944, stating that "my spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused" and he said that if he "heard one more shot or saw one more dead man, I would go off my nut".

He thought the naval crew had an easier life than the infantry in Europe, and wrote several unflattering portraits of the Navy.

After traveling to Guam and resuming his writing, Pyle went on to report on naval action during the Battle of Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater during World War II.

Before landing he wrote letters to his friend Paige Cavanaugh, as well as playwright Robert E. Sherwood, predicting that he might not survive the war.

"[64] Echoing the sentiment of the men serving in the Pacific theater, General Eisenhower said: "The GIs in Europe––and that means all of us––have lost one of our best and most understanding friends.

"[59] Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who frequently quoted Pyle's war dispatches in her newspaper column, My Day, paid tribute to him in her column the day after his death: "I shall never forget how much I enjoyed meeting him here in the White House last year," she wrote, "and how much I admired this frail and modest man who could endure hardships because he loved his job and our men.

Walter Morrow, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, claimed that Pyle's columns from his travels across the United States in the 1930s were "the most widely read thing in the paper".

"[71] As Life magazine once described Pyle and his work: "He now occupies a place in American journalistic letters which no other correspondent of this war has achieved.

Pyle is best remembered for his World War II newspaper reports of the firsthand experiences of ordinary Americans, especially the G.I.s serving in the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe in particular.

[5] In describing the soldiers he had met, Pyle remarked:Their life consisted wholly and solely of war, for they were and always had been front-line infantrymen.

Congress passed formal legislation in May 1944 to provide American soldiers with a 50 percent increase in pay for their combat service.

[citation needed] The Indiana Historical Society acquired Ernie and Jerry Pyle's personal library from IU Bloomington's School of Journalism in 2005 and moved the collection to its headquarters in Indianapolis.