G.I. Joe

Turner Classic Movies showed “The Story of G.I. Joe” a couple of nights ago. I hadn’t seen the movie since I was around 15, so I recorded it. I haven’t yet watched it, but it’s there when I decide to.

The movie is based on Ernie Pyle’s writings from North Africa and Italy. The screenplay makes movie soldiers from real soldiers Pyle knew and liked. Among those movie soldiers is CPT. Bill Walker, patterned after CPT. Henry T. Waskow, commander of Company B, 1st Battalion 143rd Infantry, 36th Infantry Division. Waskow was killed on December 14, 1943, near San Pietro Infine, Italy. Pyle wrote one of his most remembered columns on the reaction of CPT Waskow’s soldiers. Part of the column: “I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.” You can read the column here:

http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/wartime-columns/the-death-of-captain-waskow/

CPT Waskow was killed during the Battle of San Pietro. You can watch the 38-minute video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9085887151290954373#

A bit more than 20 years ago I was at Camp Maxey, Texas, preparing to draw M113s for weekend drill. The camp manager, COL John Wisley, mentioned he and two of his men had gone to Austin a few weeks before for some maintenance reason. When driving on I35 through Belton, Wisley said to his men, “There’s the CPT Waskow VFW post. He’s the one Ernie Pyle wrote about.” COL Wisley said to me, “Bob, I didn’t expect them to know who CPT Waskow was, but they looked at me and one of them said, ‘Who’s Ernie Pyle?’”