Ernie Pyle is remembered as the greatest war correspondent of World War II. His columns about the common soldier were syndicated in 400 newspapers. He was killed by a Japanese machine gunner on Ie Shima on April 18, 1945.\n\nBut Pyle kept a private notebook — a small black book — that was never published. It was found among his effects after his death and returned to his widow. She read it once and locked it away. It was rediscovered decades later while cataloging papers at the University of Indiana.\n\nIn the notebook, Pyle wrote things he could never put in the newspapers — the stories too raw, too personal, too devastating for readers in Peoria and Denver.\n\nMarch 1945, a village in Germany:\n"An old man stood in the rubble of his house for three days while the shelling continued. He was searching for his wife's wedding ring. He had seen it fly off her finger when the shell hit the house. The American soldiers offered to help but he refused. He said: 'This is my house. This is my wife's ring. This is my work. You have your war to fight.' The shell that took her ring also took her. He never found it."\n\nFrom the Pacific:\n"Today I met a Japanese prisoner — a boy, not older than 17. He had a copy of Shakespeare in his pocket — Hamlet, in English. He told me his teacher in Osaka had loved Shakespeare. He was not a soldier. He was a cook. He had been at the front 11 days and was the first to surrender. He kept quoting Shakespeare. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' The irony hit me so hard I couldn't write for an hour."\n\nA later entry:\n"I have been in this war for four years and I have seen things no one should ever see. I have written about them in my columns, making them sound noble and dignified and heroic. But they are not noble. They are not dignified. They are not heroic. They are messy and they are ugly and they are the worst things human beings have ever done to one another. And I am tired."