I am stymied. How do I defend the publication in so many newspapers, including Stars and Stripes, of a photograph of a dead body, when I myself find it so painful to look at. And yet – this is the dilemma – looking at it is hugely hypnotic and poignant for me, and for so many others. In the end I can only commiserate with those offended by the publication, and at the same time take refuge, if not comfort, in the circumstance that makes the photograph so important to me. Not only to me, I am sure, but to newspeople everywhere who share the circumstance of a common profession with the dead man.

The dead man was Ernie Pyle, the legendary war reporter. The photograph, published with an op-ed article in Stars and Stripes earlier this month, was taken shortly after he was killed by a Japanese sniper on the island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa, on April 18, 1945. The photograph made its way to The Associated Press, which distributed it with a long article. Both were reproduced by hundreds of newspapers, television stations and Web sites.

Here and there, people offended by the photo wrote to complain. A letter writer to Stars and Stripes, William Ellis of Camp Carroll, South Korea, said the paper owes Pyle’s “family and admirers” an apology. “You screwed up, big-time.” Among those sending comments to other media, a desire to “let the man rest in peace” was a common refrain.

These folks were saddened, or sickened, or angered when they saw the photo and no amount of justification for its publication by me and a multitude of editors will make those feelings go away. It would be like trying to convince somebody he was wrong to complain that cod liver oil tasted bad. “It really tastes good, you see, and it’s good for you, just as it’s good for you to see dead people on the battlefield.”

But for those who grew up worshipping Pyle as a hero of journalism, the photo had a different effect. He was the reporter whose nationally syndicated columns one pored over again and again, owing to the reporting skill and brilliance of language he brought to his work. As admired newspeople go, he was the gold standard, long before Woodward and Bernstein, or Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and all the TV anchors. His specialty was telling the story of the long-suffering GI whose sacrifices eventually helped win World War II. When he died months before the Pacific war ended, then Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, said: “More than anyone else, he helped America to understand the heroism and sacrifices of her fighting men. For that achievement, the nation owes him its unending gratitude.”

And that great effort resonates in this newspaper: One of Pyle’s best buddies was Bill Mauldin, the Stars and Stripes artist whose cartoons brought home the GIs’ gritty existence in cartoon form. And, also, Stripes reporters to this day follow the Pyle tradition of reporting on and among the foot soldiers, as they are doing right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is another thing this episode brings to mind: The danger that accompanies journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 64 newspeople died worldwide while on duty in 2007. Many died in World War II too, along with Pyle.

Against this backdrop, one can look upon that photograph not with disgust but with the compassion and awe and curiosity that filled Pyle’s life and work. He was accustomed to seeing death in war, and wrote eloquently about it. In what some say was his finest column, written in Italy in 1944 and titled “The death of Captain Waskow,” he wrote:

“You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.” And in the same column: “You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody comes after them.”

There lay Pyle, stretched as if asleep, hard against the hilltop where the sniper got him, his hands folded on his cap. No broken, twisted and bloody body here, “grotesque and pasty,” as Pyle would put it. It’s as if he were laid out neatly at a wake, where his soldier-friends, reader-fans and newsmen-admirers could come up and say their final goodbyes.

I believe that many, seeing that old photo, said just that to him.