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HomeMy WebLinkAboutWorld War II Walter Cronkite Remembers W ollio WAR 11 tf ., Jr.' t - ' + - Y f `, ' k" 4 `fir ),,� /. • . . k . ., _ .i '( . _' i it it- = ir. ' 44 -' ' : ,.,„;.' ':-_, Ai-f 1-, d - 78L14:17 .. \c, - n WALTER CRONKITE R EMEMDER$ lAt ALTER CRONKITE, ONE OF THE GREAT JOURNALISTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY, LAUNCHED HIS NEWSPAPER CAREER in 1925 at the age of nine when he began delivering copies of the Kansas City Star. After his family moved to Houston the following year, Cronkite became a reporter for, and later the editor of the Campus Cub, the occasional school paper at San Jacinto High School. As a high school student, Cronkite won the Texas Interscholastic Press Association newswriting competition. He went on to land a summer job at the Houston Post and subsequently served a short stint as a sports reporter at radio station KNOW in Austin during his student days at the University of Texas. Before long, Cronkite left school to pursue journalism with the Scripps Howard newspaper chain in Austin, Scripps Howard's Houston Press, radio station KCMO in Kansas City, and then the United Press in Kansas City, Dallas, and El Paso. He even spent a period broadcasting football games at radio station WKYin Oklahoma City. He landed back at the United Press in Kansas City at a fateful time... . FROM THE BOOK A REPORTER'S LIFE BY WALTER CRONKITE COPYRIGHT ©1996 BY M AND SA, INC. • REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 10 Texas Highways r _ THE WAR I S ON ernment to desert Hitler and come over to the Allied side. Their I WAS on the desk the night the bells on the teletype machines most important broadcast would be President Roosevelt's announce- rang out the signal for a flash: "Germany invades Poland." ment of the invasion and his appeal for the colonials in West Africa The war was on. In a few weeks I would be summoned to the to honor their French patriotism and join the Allied cause. [ ... ] foreign desk in New York. A team of Army communications technicians had been put The great conflagration that engulfed Planet Earth in the aboard the Texas to install Clandestine Radio Maroc's transmis- fourth decade of the twentieth century is popularly known as sion equipment. The proud Army types, possibly under orders World War II. Actually, it was the War of Failure. The most exten- of extreme secrecy turned down the offer of the Texas' commu- sive and costliest war was the result of "civilized" man's failure nications officer to help with the installation. once again to resolve differences without resorting to violence. As When on that African D -Day, the Texas fired off its big fourteen- long as nations cannot learn to live cooperatively, there must be inch guns for the first time in anger, even the ship itself suffered conflict. As long as there are aggressors, there will be resisters. the repercussions. It was as if, instead of disgorging the shells, she had been hit by them. She shud- WAR CORRESPONDENT dered, she shook, she staggered. Cera- [ ... ] A COUPLE of months after Pearl As I STOOD THERE TREMBLING mic bathroom fixtures shattered and Harbor, my United Press bosses sent me WITH WONDER, PLAYING CARDS some pipes burst. to Navy headquarters in New York for And just as it was getting warmed up credentials to go to sea with the North BEGAN RAINING FROM THE HEAVENS. with President Roosevelt's message to 1 Atlantic convoys —so far the nation's the people of France, Radio Maroc was only combat role, except for getting what ONE DROPPED 0 N THE BACK blown right off the air by the concussion. was l e f t of our Pacific fleet out on rather 0 F MY HAND THAT WAS GRIPPING 'If they had asked, we could have told flimsy early patrols. them how to prevent that," shrugged a The United States military was as un- THE RAIL. IT WAS THE ACE Navy communications officer. prepared for handling the requirements OF SPADES. The firing of those big naval rifles is of the press as it was for meeting the awesome and, to the uninitiated, fright enemy. It extemporized that civilian war ening. The great belch of yellow flame correspondents would be given the privileges of officers and threatens to engulf the ship herself, and the blast of heat sears should wear officers' uniforms without insignia of rank or branch the freshman war correspondent on the bridge. The gun blows of service. And we would be identified as correspondents by a its own great smoke ring and the shell can actually be seen dis- green brassard with a large white "C" to be worn on the left arm. appearing toward the horizon through the middle of the dough - So adorned, I went off to war. [ ... ] nut. Whatever has been loose on the deck is sent skyward, sucked into the vacuum the explosion has left behind. ABOARD THE BATTLESHIP TEXAS As I stood there trembling with wonder, playing cards began BY SEPTEMBER I was en route with a sizable fleet from Norfolk raining from the heavens. One dropped on the back of my hand to attack Morocco as part of the North African invasion. Our that was gripping the rail. It was the ace of spades. small task force, led by the pre -World War I battleship Texas, was The previous day Admiral Monroe Kelly had called me to his to take the small town of Port Lyautey and the French arsenal quarters. He noted that the men of the Texas, at least officially, there, said to be the biggest in North Africa. had never been briefed on the ship's mission and now he was There may be nothing more amusing than the Army afloat, about to take care of that with a short speech over the public- except perhaps the Navy ashore. The Army put aboard the Texas a address system. He allowed as how he would like to conclude his team of reservists and hastily converted civilians recruited by the little talk with "something heroic, something memorable, some - Office of War Information to operate something they called thing like `Your country expects every man to do his duty" "Clandestine Radio Maroc." Their sole function was to broadcast "You're a writer, Mr. Cronkite, perhaps you could help me propaganda intended to persuade the army of France's puppet gov- come up with something." [FACING PAGE] We considered ourselves a pretty exalted group. An Air Force public relations man dubbed us "the Writing Sixty- ninth," a parody of World War l's legitimate heroes, the Fighting Sixty- ninth. Putting on flying clothes, we were (left to right): Gladwin Hill, William Wade, Robert Post, myself, Homer Bigart, and Paul Manning. Andy Rooney missed the photo session. September 1997 11 Ii I regret to say that I failed to do my duty. I couldn't think of any - impassable. It was pitted with shell holes. To the side, rubble thing either heroic or memorable. The admiral's request did marked where houses had been. The last shell hole was right on open a question in my mind. Was there by chance a public rela- the edge of the arsenal. It had blown down the gate and we passed tions man along as Washington crossed the Delaware? And did through, to be hailed by an elderly French soldier. He limped he suggest, "General, it would look great if you would stand up toward us with his cane, his World War I medals neatly arrayed on in the boat"? his chest. He introduced himself as the arsenal superintendent. Not many minutes into [the African] D -Day it seemed that the "Ah, gentlemen," he said in quite good English. "I see you are Texas was about to undergo her baptism by fire. A flight of fight- from the Navy. From the battleship, perhaps? I am an artillery - er planes came diving out of the clouds directly for her. We had man. Two world wars now. And, gentlemen, let me congratulate been advised that the Vichy French were putting up some aerial you. Never have I seen such shooting. You cut every road lead - resistance to the invasion, and every gun ing to the arsenal and not one shell on the Texas opened fire. The sky above inside to do any damage. You have left it us was black with antiaircraft bursts as AIR FORCE M A J 0 R H A L LE Y S H O N intact for yourselves. My congratula the fighter planes peeled off to escape tions. Splendid shooting, splendid." the barrage, and as they exposed their SAID, C R 0 N K I T E, YOU'VE DRAWN Our lieutenant returned his salute wings, there were the big white stars THE STRAW TO REPRESENT THE and, his reconnaissance completed with identifying them as off the U.S. carrier something less than satisfaction, or- down at Casablanca. Fortunately, none ALLIED PRESS 0 N A VERY IMPORTANT dered the jeep back to the beach. [ ... ] was hit, and a moment later a furious MISSION. N O GUARANTEE YOU'LL Captain Roy Pfaff was on the ship's pub- Following this episode, Cronkite believed lic-address system. GET BACK. BUT I F YOU DO, YOU'LL that the Texas was headed for Casablanca, "Men, there is nothing worse in war ,, where he would be able to cover more of the than firing at your own men. We've been HAVE A GREAT S T 0 R Y . I K N E W North Africa campaign. Instead, the Tex - drilling on aircraft identification ever IT HAD TO BE D-DAY. as was bound for Norfolk, Virginia, and since we left Norfolk. There is no excuse away from the action. Fortunately for the for this. I'm going to find the man who reporter, he was able to file a batch of sto- gave the order to fire and I'm going to have him before the mast. ries as the first correspondent back from North Africa. Then he "But, men, my God, if you're going to shoot at them, hit them!" returned to Europe for the remainder of the war. In 1943, Cronkite and seven other correspondents were selected to RECONNAISSANCE fly on missions with the Air Force. Before they could go, the reporters WHEN PORT Lyautey was secured, I went ashore with the had to undergo several weeks of training, which included aerial gun - Texas' gunnery officer, who was anxious to assess the accuracy nery with a .50- caliber machine gun, high - altitude survival, first aid, of their fire as they attempted to destroy the French arsenal out and aircraft identification. During 1943 and 1944, Cronkite and his behind the hills beyond the town. colleagues flew numerous bombing missions with the American and As we approached the town center, a colonel in a jeep stopped British air forces from their base in London. His final wartime us. "Lieutenant," he said, "one of your big shells landed in the exploit with powered flight would come on D-Day, June 6, 1944. town square and didn't go off. All our traffic is detouring around it. Could you get a party ashore to remove it ?" D-DAY AND AFTER "Colonel," the lieutenant answered, "we've got an old rule in MY D -DAY assignment was to stay in London and help write the U.S. Navy: Once the shell leaves the muzzle of the gun, it the lead story. My reaction to not getting to accompany the troops doesn't belong to the Navy any longer. Good day, sir." was somewhat ambivalent, I'm afraid. I hated missing the experi- ;- The Texas' big guns had spent the better part of two days ence, but on the other hand, landing on a beach in the face of the pounding the arsenal, or so we thought. Our spotter planes were massed German armies could prove to be somewhat unpleasant. reporting that the shells appeared to be landing right on target, The whole world knew that the invasion was imminent. The but through our binoculars we weren't seeing the sort of explo- secret being guarded to the very death was exactly when and where. sions that should have followed such marksmanship. I had just turned in when a knock at my apartment door and Now ashore, our jeep drove toward the arsenal, huddled under the following voice identified my midnight visitor as Hal Leyshon. the seaside bluff. As we approached, the road became almost He was an Air Force major in public relations and a good friend s- 12 Texas Highways from many evening sorties in the pubs of London. Now he stood that meant returning home. We landed on a fog - shrouded run- there in full uniform, dignified, official as all get out. way with those bombs still armed. Now, that was a hairy landing. He demanded to know if my roommate, Jim McGlincy, was A few days later I would return to Normandy for a longer stay. there. Jim was somewhere with the troops on the south coast. Intrepid Ninth Air Force engineers, under heavy fire, had man- Was there anybody else there? He confirmed that there wasn't aged to lay down a landing strip up on the bluff just behind by personally poking his nose into all the rooms and closets. Omaha Beach. Under pretense of covering the engineers' feat, I Finally he said: "Cronkite, you've drawn the straw to represent flew over for a closer look at the war. There I began to catch up the Allied press on a very important mission. It will be danger - with my colleagues and hear some of their hair - raising stories ous. No guarantee you'll get back. But if you do, you'll have a about their first hours on the beaches. I ran into Charlie Lynch, great story. You can turn it down now, or you can come with me. a redoubtable Canadian who had survived the landing while car - And security is on you can't tell your office." ing like a mother hen for a case containing three homing I dressed. I knew it had to be D -Day. I figured if I made it, the pigeons. His outfit, Reuters news service, had used pigeons to UP would forgive me. beat rivals to news of arriving ships in the days before the tele- One squadron of heavy bombers had been ordered at the last graph. Now they were up to their old tricks. - moment to bomb a heavy artillery emplacement that command- Huddled on the beach, he typed out his first dispatch on the ed Omaha Beach. It would go in just as the troops were landing, special lightweight paper Reuters had supplied. He tucked the and, to ensure accuracy, it would attack at low level —a maneu- folded pap into a capsule on the leg of Pigeon No. 1. And he let ver made difficult by its normal tight formation and one it had the bird fly. It circled him twice and then flew direct as an never practiced. arrow — toward Berlin. He had no better luck with the other two The weather was lousy, but through the broken clouds I had pigeons, which he damned as feathered turncoats. a good look at the unbelievable armada of Allied ships. There My Normandy stay was a short-lived exercise, as the UP sum- didn't seem to be room in the ocean for another vessel. And then, moned me back to London. I arrived there with my musette bag just as we approached the beach — blackout. The cloud cover loaded with some of Normandy's famed Camembert cheese. In was total. that first month or so, when our troops were still pretty well Our bomb bay doors were open, our bombs were armed to go stuck in Normandy, the trademark of an officer returning to off on contact. But we couldn't see the target. And we couldn't London from the front was unmistakable. The heady odor of see our own planes flying in close formation on either side. Any Camembert stunk up many a London elevator. collision would probably set off a chain ARoirvE explosion, wiping out the squadron. Normally bombs would be jettisoned over enemy country, but our orders for- bade that. No one knew in that first hour where our airborne had landed or even how far ashore the landing troops might have gotten. Squadron leader Lewis Lyle led that as• , potentially explosive flight up through , the clouds. When we broke out, he planned to make a full circle and try again for the target, but then he - ? • recalled that during his briefing he'd been told that there would be so many planes at so many altitudes that strict flight patterns had to be observed, and � Of Eisenhower and I made a trip back to Normandy to film his reminiscences for the 20th anniversary of D -Day. s –0 September 1997 That fall, Cronkite was assigned to a mission called "Market Garden." had last seen him at the bar, the center of attention as he spun sports stories for an enthralled audience. I guessed that the 101st [ ... ] The mission was to land three divisions of airborne had discouraged him from attempting the landing. troops to grab a road north through the Netherlands to the Taylor's deputy gave me the bad news. I wasn't going by para- bridge over the Rhine, which the Dutch call the Maas, at chute. I was assigned to a glider. I had seen the fate of the glid- Arnhem. The main body of the British army under Montgomery ers in Normandy — impaled on the stakes the Germans had would then roll down this corridor, across the bridge, and turn planted, splintered to kindling by midair crashes, crumpled by east to invade the German homeland. hard landings. I would have refused the assignment if I had I was assigned to the U.S. 101st Airborne, ordered to land just thought I could face my colleagues ever again. At least, I ration - outside Eindhoven [in the Netherlands] to take the southern alized, with the tow plane a blissful couple of hundred feet ahead, extremities of the road. I had no knowl- it ought to be a nice quiet way to die —no edge of any of this when the telephone call roaring engine, just a nice silent glide came on that morning in September '44, WITH A FULL GI VOCABULARY into eternity. with the prearranged code to come along I was wrong. Those American Waco on "that picnic we'd been talking about." OF UNREPEATABLE WORDS HE ADVISED gliders were built of aluminum tubing I went to press headquarters in ME...THAT I WAS WEARING A with canvas skins. The canvas cover [London's] Grosvenor Square, decked beat against the aluminum, and it was out, as previously ordered, in full combat HELMET WITH AN OFFICER'S BIG WHITE like being inside the drum at a Grateful regalia. To my surprise, there was Dead concert. S t a n l e y W o o d w a r d , star sports reporter STRIPE RUNNING DOWN ITS BACK ... Over t h e d r o p z o n e , t h e second sur- of t h e New Y o r k H e r a l d Tribune. I h a d I T WAS THE ONLY CHANCE I HAD TO prise: The tow rope was dropped and not met him previously. He had just down we went. No glide —a plunge almost arrived in London, the Trib having final- LEAD TROOPS IN THE WHOLE WAR. straight down. I was muttering to myself ly yielded to his pleas for an overseas 1 DIDN'T DO BADLY. that I knew these things wouldn't fly. assignment. The man the paper had des - Actually we had a great pilot, doing it just ignated for the airborne mission, Ned right. The technique was to dive, right up Russell, was in Paris. When a message from the military was left until the point just before the G -force would snap the wings off the on the Trib desk for Russell instructing him to show up at 20 plane —a mad dive to evade enemy ground fire. fr Grosvenor, the dutiful Woodward appointed himself Russell's For the same reason, our pilot didn't let us roll long once we substitute without having any idea of the nature of the story. were on the ground. As soon as he felt the ground was soft Stanley was a little overaged for combat duty— overaged and enough —the good loose black dirt of a potato patch —he nosed somewhat overweight. His eyesight was extremely poor. He the glider in, totally oblivious to the danger he was facing right showed up at 20 Grosvenor in his dress uniform khaki jacket, up there in front. The plane did a half flip, the dirt came pouring pink trousers, oxford shoes, and with a demand to know what in, our helmets went flying off. this was all about. So tight was security that I did not know any I was with a headquarters company of about fourteen men. We of the details, nor did the public relations staff. I suggested to dug ourselves out of the dirt. I grabbed a helmet and slapped it the baffled Woodward that he accompany me to our assigned on my head. There was some enemy fire. Gliders collided over - base. Once in the car, I whispered to him that this was an air- head, spilling their guns and human cargo around us. I crouched borne mission, that we would be parachuting into someplace, and ran toward what I thought was our rendezvous point —a presumably behind German lines. It seems hardly adequate to drainage ditch at one side of the large landing zone. I glanced say that he was astounded. He stared long and hard at me behind me, and there, apparently following me, were several through his bottle -thick glasses. men. One of them shouted: "Hey, Lieutenant, are you sure we're At 101st headquarters we found the officers' mess in a fit of a going in the right direction ?" mission-eve adrenaline rush —aided and abetted by a considerable I shouted back that I wasn't a lieutenant; I was a war corre- infusion of alcohol. We were embraced, toasted and regaled with spondent. With a full GI vocabulary of unrepeatable words he horror stories of the 101st's hairy landing in Normandy. Sometime advised me, rather strongly, that I was wearing a helmet with an midevening we were invited to General Maxwell Taylor's quarters officer's big white stripe running down its back. It was the only for a private briefing. At this point Woodward could not be found. I chance I had to lead troops in the whole war. I didn't do badly. 14 Texas Highways r -! The press at the Nuremberg Trials was seated perhaps 40 feet from the COURTESY WALTERCROWTE defendants. To my right is The New York Times' Drew Middleton; to my left, Dick Clark and Ann Stringer, both of the United Press._ The drainage ditch was that way. w I don't recommend gliders as a way to go to war. If you have to go, march, swim, crawl— anything, but don't go by glider. I got to that drainage ditch and was working my way toward tt, '' the copse at the end. In that little woods was supposed to be the 1 headquarters' company, and the radio transmitter that would get my story out. I stumbled on a heavyset fellow .- -- .- .:�i�= Y Y vy perched uncom- implausibly, on the edge of the ditch. His helmet was et pushed back on his head, which he held in his hands in obvious anguish. >.. "Stan?" I asked. "Is that you, Stan?" Woodward looked up through bloodshot eyes, the picture of a man with a raging hangover. "Nobody told me," he mumbled, "that it was going to be like this." Before we were to be escorted to the airport, Montgomery's Soldiers in combat are scarcely paragons of fashion, but Stan's press aide, a Brigadier Neville, came into the press room. Neville habiliment was ridiculous. It seems that he had passed out at the was some sort of civilian retread, but he affected the most lam - bar and the fun- loving officers who had become his drinking bud - pooned of the British colonial service. He carried a riding crop that dies, certain that he wanted to go along, had dressed him and he whipped at his boots as he walked, as if to urge himself along. placed him aboard the glider. `Pool correspondents," he announced. "Attention! Inspection!" Funding combat clothing for his outsize frame had presented Ridiculous, pompous and unprecedented orders to a gaggle of an insuperable challenge. The pants were at least four sizes too civilian correspondents. But the subservient British press small. They wouldn't close at the fly and were held together at marched forward. I slouched after them. They passed Neville's the beltline by a piece of rope. He had already split the jacket at inspection, receiving only some minor suggestions, but appar- the shoulders. Fortunately, the boots, at least, fit. ently the colonel was repelled by my appearance. He looked with Stan turned out to be a good sport and one terrific correspon- particular disfavor on my boots. dent in the few days he was at the front. Our greatest difficulty "Get this man a pair of gaiters," he ordered. was at night, when he could not see at all, and our greatest chal- Gaiters were the white leggings the British army wore over lenge was navigating down the slick sides of the Zon Canal, onto pants leg and boot top. I wasn't about to give up my combat boots a tiny raft made of empty fuel tins, and up the other side. for those ugly wrappings. "Brigadier Neville," I said, "we Americans dumped a helluva In the weeks that followed, the 101st Airborne, correspondent lot of tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 to avoid wearing those Cronkite among them, held the sliver of road before British troops gaiters, and I'm not about to start now" arrived and secured the surrounding area. It may have been my finest hour. The British Empire wilted before my determination, and I met the King in my good FINEST H 0 011 American combat boots. As TIE front cooled down, we had a visit from royalty. King George paid his first visit to British troops on the Continent a After the war ended in 1945, Walter Cronkite covered the brief sortie of a few hours. British army public relations named a Nuremberg Tribunal the following year, then worked for the United it pool of correspondents to cover his arrival at Eindhoven Airport, Press in Moscow for two years. He returned to the United States in and I was selected as the American representative. 1948, and eventually became one of "the Murrow bays" at CBS. I was still in the same airborne combat outfit I had been wear - Later, as the evening anchorman at CBS, he came to be known as ing for the past couple of weeks. As a matter of fact, I was rather "the most trusted man in America." On March 6, 1981, at the age proud of my airborne combat boots, my pants legs tucked into of 64, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite went off the air after 19 years Lil them in the best paratrooper fashion. as the top U.S. anchorman. * September 1997 15