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Other Columns by Oliver North
Oliver North Bio
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The Pen And The Sword
By Oliver North
February 3, 2006
Page 2 of 2
During World War II, Ernie Pyle's column -- a foxhole fighter's perspective on the war -- was avidly read in 400 daily newspapers and 300 weeklies -- because it was the real thing. After covering most of the European campaign, he went to the Pacific Theater and was killed by a Japanese bullet on April 18, 1945, during the invasion of Ie Shima, a tiny island off Okinawa, Japan.
Joe Rosenthal would never have captured the picture of those five Marines and a Navy Corpsmen straining to raise that flag atop Mount Suribachi if he hadn't gone ashore into the carnage called Iwo Jima in February of '45.
Joe Galloway was a young UPI reporter/photographer "embedded" with Hal Moore's under-strength battalion when they were helo-lifted into Vietnam's Ia Drang valley on Nov. 14, 1965. His stirring chronicle of that three-day battle against three North Vietnamese Army regiments could never have been drafted from a desk in Saigon.
None of these journalists tried to make themselves the centerpiece of the story. Neither did Woodruff or Vogt -- though others have done so. Though they all faced life-threatening peril, none of them ever crowed, as Dan Rather once proclaimed to Larry King, "danger is my business." None of them gave evidence that they considered themselves to be more important than the soldiers, sailors, airmen Guardsmen and Marines they were covering. All seemingly heeded another of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's pithy comments: "One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth." And unlike Amanpour, they all reported facts -- not opinions.
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To find out more about Oliver North, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA. >> Back -- Page 1 2
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