Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent. He worked as managing editor of The Washington Daily News and later became a roving journalist for Scripps-Howard Alliance. After many years following the fighting in Europe, he traveled to the South Pacific, where a sniper's bullet took his life.

David Chrisinger (introduction) is the author of The Soldier's Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II and several other books, including Public Policy Writing That Matters, for which he won the National Council of Teachers of English George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. He directs the Harris Writing Workshop at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and leads memoir-writing workshops for military veterans and their families through The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom named in honor of Ernie Pyle that aims to improve our understanding of the true costs of military service. He lives in Chicago.