Welcome to Litsy!

Ernie Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent. He spent much of WWII among US troops in both European and Pacific Theatres. Before being stationed with the military, he spent time in England during the blitz. This book is a compilation of the articles he wrote while in England and is a fascinating first hand account of what life on the British homefront was like. Great depiction of life in England amidst the uncertainty of war.

Spring comes early in England, and it is a lovely thing. Already the days are soft and gentle. It is wonderful to be alive when warmth and freshness spreads over the land. All through England people are looking forward to the real,blooming fullness of spring, for many of them, it will never happen. I could not bear to think that for me there might never, never be another spring.

New stage plays are opening all the time. "Gone With the Wind" is running into its second year, and you have to get seats ahead of time. Leslie Howard is making a film. Lawrence Olivier has passed his R.A.F. Medical examination.

Some friends and I, in a York pub, got into a conversation with a native Yorkshireman, and I couldn't understand a word he said. I wouldn't have let on except that the friends with me were all British soldiers and they couldn't understand him either. #saywhat #wwii #england

It was not until I went down seventy feet into the bowels of the Liverpool Street tube and saw humanity sprawled there in childlike helplessness that my heart first jumped and my throats caught. I know I must have stopped suddenly and drawn back. I know I must have said to myself, "Oh my God!" #wwii #liverpool #england #blitz #tube #humanity

A man bent on a mission of death finds time to appreciate beauty, too.

In getting things done he is not unlike Churchill. And that is the way to win a war. #wwii #lordbeaverbrook #england

"In this particular explosion these steel shutters were bent and twisted, some of them bashed in but others ballooned out toward the street like a weak spot in an inner tube. That is another freakish thing about bomb explosions- the pull is often greater than the push." #wwii #blitz #england

"For truly the blackout is a heavy and insidious thing. It gradually gets on your nerves until you feel as if you must throw it aside and let the light out into the night. Modern man is not attuned to natural darkness."

"You've read about the barrage balloons over London. Their purpose, as you know, is to keep German fliers high, from fear of running into them. At night they are floated into the sky at the end of thin steel cables. The balloons are silver-colored and shaped like very fat sausages; and they have pudgy stabilizing fins at one end that make them look like Walt Disney elephants with sour but coy faces." #wwii #london #blitz

"The British won't let anything interfere with their being British."

"London as a living, enduring institution is not gravely injured. Not in its architecture, or in its mode of existence, or its utilities, or its transportation, or its health. And above all, not in its spirit. So far, the blitz on London is a failure. London is no more knocked out than the man who smashes a finger is dead. Daytime life in London today comes very close to being normal." #wwii #blitz #london