SOURCE: "Ernie Pyle's Last Stories of GI Joe," in The New York Times Book Review, June 2, 1946, pp. 3, 20.

In the following essay, Dempsey reviews Pyle's last book, Last Chapter, published thirteen months after the author's death, commenting that while its fragmentary nature may disappoint some readers, Last Chapter continued Pyle's effort to make the experience of the American soldier in battle real to civilians.

Ernie Pyle is the greatest and best loved of all that army of camp followers who traded green eye shades for tin helmets and fought the war with typewriters. The publication of this brief volume [Last Chapter], thirteen months after his tragic death on Ie Shima, reminds us again how much we owe to the man who told us—and who will tell the historians of the future—what war was like to the common soldier in the fifth decade of the twentieth century.

Pyle's...