Sam [Hales] arrived last night … I was in a single room about the size of a good-sized table top until last night and now Sam and I are together in a double where we probably will stay until we can find some sort of flat. Bob Musel has been looking frantically at places for three weeks and he has made exactly no headway. A couple good air raids might scare a few people out of town, but on the other hand might likewise increase the housing shortage. C’est l’guerre!…
A strange coincidence (My God, I’m beginning to write like London newspaper headlines): Although all bars close at eleven and I don’t get off until then, I managed to get home the other night in time to slip into the American Bar downstairs for a quick one before retiring. There I ran into an American flyer who turned out to be from Texas. “Where in Texas” I inquired and “Houston” he answered. Well, to cut the story a bit short, he was in my graduating class at San Jacinto (pronounced Ja-sin-to) and knew everybody I knew—but we had never met. Amazing, isn’t it? Now, of course, I don’t remember his name. Oh well.
Dearest, they have the most wonderful horses over here. You would love them. Most of them are light colored and they are small—they really don’t seem large enough to be doing the heavy duty to which they are required. But the marvelous part is the wonderful sweet expression on their pusses. They are shaggy and a whisp of white hair always hangs over one eye, just like Veronica, and from their elbows down they are feathery, just like Judy.
Speaking of Judy, I miss her so terribly. I damn near cry every time I see another pup, and particularly a cocker although no cocker particularly the large English versions, are as pretty as our Judy … Walter
BETWEEN THE TWO World Wars, relatively few Americans, besides the wealthy and such famous expatriate writers as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, traveled to Europe. Cronkite’s first trip abroad the previous fall had allowed him only a glimpse of wartime England. Betsy had never traveled outside the United States. So Cronkite devoted many pages in his correspondence to travel writing, as in his description in his letter of January 25, 1943, of taking Betsy’s “nephoo” Bob Manring on a walking tour of London. Manring, about the same age as the Cronkites, was a close friend. According to Cronkite family lore, he was in London on a “hush-hush” assignment.
The references to “Woolcott” and “Barrymore” were to theater critic and Algonquin Circle wit Alexander Woollcott and to theater and film actor John Barrymore, both of whom had died within the past year.
Cronkite closed this letter asking to be remembered to Mom, Petty, Molo, Betty, and Allan. “Mom” was his own mother, Helen Fritsche Cronkite; “Petty” was a pet name for Betsy’s father; “Molo” was a pet name for Betsy’s mother; “Betty” was Betty Maxwell, Betsy’s sister-in-law; and “Allan” was Allan Maxwell, Betsy’s brother.
Even the most carefree letters Cronkite sent to Betsy carried reminders of the war raging around him. At night he would sometimes go up on the rooftop above the United Press offices, where he would watch the not-too-distant glow of fires set by German bombs—dangerous duty even if he made light of his “glamorous” appearance in his “trenchcoat and World War type helmet.”
January 25, 1943
Our nephoo [Bob Manring] was down this week-end and we had a strictly dull time but were so damned glad to be with someone else of the Maxwell clan that I think we both enjoyed it immensely … I had to work Sat. from 3 to 11:00 and Sun. from 5 to 1, and I was unable to get anybody to relieve me of any of those hours—even for a nephoo. However, it didn’t work out so badly. Bob arrived at 7:00 Sat. night and I took an hour off for dinner during which we went around to the Wellington Inn on Fleet Street and had a very good twenty cent meal for one dollar and a quarter—and which Bob properly annotated by informing me that his principal beef was that he couldn’t get enough food, which, calling on my powerful memory, I readily understood. Even I, who was never much of an eater, you know, complain similarly.
Well, on with the tale. Things got quiet around the office about nine-thirty and I managed to slip away. I found Bob where I told him we would meet—the American Bar at the Park Lane Hotel. (Every pub now has an American Bar. It is getting to be something of a laugh.) He was sober, I was sober, and we remained that way all evening. We had a couple of drinks before the bar closed at eleven, then retired to the lounge where guests only may drink after hours and had a couple more during which some air corps gents whom I had met previously intruded on our reminiscing. Such intrusion probably was a good idea at that point. We were about to cry on each others’ shoulders about the sad fate that kept us separated from home and all that means. We told each other time and time again how much we love Virginia and Betsy. And you’d be surprised how many times the Maxwell Thanksgiving—Xmas—Birthday table entered into the conversation …
We turned in about 2 o’clock, but at 9 Bob was up bouncing around, dressed and ready to go sightseeing. He hadn’t been down here before except for a couple of very, very busy days when he first landed. So [Sam] Hales and I managed to drag ourselves up and we actually got a fairly early start—a fact far contrary to those sightseeing trips that you and I always intended to take in N.Y. We had breakfast downstairs on account it is on the bill with your room rent and there is nothing you can do about it. Breakfast has always been a rather horrible institution, I thought, and these ersatz affairs you get around here are doing nothing to change this belief.
Yesterday was a wonderful warm day and midday the sun came out for a few minutes to brighten up the whole picture. During the morning there was the kind of fog that you have heard of persons becoming lost in. It was of the Scottish moors type, you know—rolling in great banks that blotted out everything including the nephew standing next to you. We opened the window in our room in the morning and it rolled into the room. Fantastic and wonderful, it was. We found our way through the fog to the Army Finance Office where Bob had to pick up some sort of delinquent paycheck, then to the Army Post Exchange for our weekly ration of 1 can of orange juice, 1 can of tomato juice, 1 box each of vanilla wafers, chocolate cookies (very much unlike the wonderful ones my wife makes) and cheese niblets, can of tobacco (or 5 packs of cigarettes American brand or 3 cigars), one bar of soap, 1 pack pipe cleaners, etc. Then we went to the officers’ club, which is the best place to eat in town. For 80 cents each you get a fair lunch and for the same price a fair dinner. There is a bar downstairs with fireplace and it is really a rather comfortable spot. Its use is restricted to American officers, under which category, of course, those of us who are accredited newspapermen come.
After lunch we set out and for 4 hours we walked. We walked by Buckingham Palace, which is just across a two-block wide park from the Park Lane, down by the barracks for the Coldstream Guards and other of the King’s Own Regiments, through the wonderful park with a lagoon and a thousand species of wild birds including gulls and ducks and pelicans and cranes, down through Admiralty Arch out onto Trafalgar Square, thence down Whitehall street past Scotland Yard and the little alleyway entrance to Downing Street which is blocked off but down which you could see dingy Number 10 with an armed guard outside.
And then we turned sharp left and passed the Houses of Parliament just as Big Ben was rattling off 3 o’clock. We wandered across Westminster Bridge into Lambeth, past a hospital which bombed and gutted and still seems to manage to carry on. Then we took a bus back to Trafalgar and down the Strand past Aldwich Circle (at the Aldwych Theater, by the way, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” British version, is playing) and all 6 bustling blocks of it, and up Ludgate Hill by St. Pauls, through the blocks of yawning cellars over which once stood buildings, down past Threadneedle St. and the Bank of England, to Aldgate where we got off the bus. We walked over to the Tower of London and gazed for an hour at it from the outside—at its amazing battlements and the one tiny corner where a German bomb did what thousands of arrows and rock catapults and battering rams never could do. We were there at the wrong time for the tour, and so had to content ourselves with gazing
from without and chatting briefly with the Beefeater at the gate—you know, the men in the pictures with the hats that look almost as funny as those in Harzfelds window and the red coats and knee pants. They are still there (and most of them look like they had endured the Battle of Hastings) but nowadays are supplemented by Tommies complete with steel helmets and rifles.
Then past a tavern founded in 1500 and which a plaque proudly proclaims that “Queen Elizabeth Honoured”—probably by revoking their license and beheading the bartender for staying open after hours. It looks just as crummy as any other pub. Down Cheapside, the much blitzed market district, we wandered, to Billingsgate, the fish market which smells like it, and The Monument, a Wren structure in Pudding Lane which was erected in 1671 to commemorate the Great Fire whose farthest limit it marks. “It is a fluted Doric column 200’ in height. A fine view of London may be obtained from the top gallery, to reach which 312 steps have to be climbed. Admission 3d.” That’s according to the pre-Blitz guide book. The Monument is now much bepocked with shell fragments and is closed, for which I am glad, considering those 312 steps. And then to the office with only one other incident which I still can’t explain. We passed a shattered London alley back among some buildings. All the buildings are gone now but the fire-scorched sign on the crumbling archway still identifies it as “Rose Lane.” And here is the mysterious part: A powerful scent of roses, there in the midst of the Hitler-created debris, almost bowls one over as you pass “Rose Lane” … If that is at all reminiscent of Woolcott, then let us pause this moment in honor of that terrific character. Barrymore, Woolcott—the old masters of repartee seem to be dropping by the wayside, and I can’t seem to think offhand who might replace them. Unless it’s Rudy Vallee. Or me.
I mentioned earlier these air corps guys with whom Bob and I became entangled Saturday night. I met them the previous Wednesday night, which was my night off. We had a few drinks at the bar and then wandered over to the luxurious flat of 1 of the navy public relation boys here. I made the mistake of telling these guys that I thought I had perfect balance and if it weren’t for the old color-blindness would make a terrific flyer. To prove which I had to pull that little stunt of holding one leg straight out in front and kneeling on the other—you know. I did the stunt with great aplomb. But I’m still limping, and this is Monday …
This is your birthday and that doesn’t help matters a bit. I sent you a cable Saturday which was, of course, a couple of days early but I wanted to take no chances of no-delivery as long as I couldn’t send a present. What I would like most of all to send you, however, would be myself …
I’m losing a little weight, but it all seems to be at my waistline, and that won’t do me any harm. I’m getting too much sleep, which is the night worker’s occupational hazard (the bars closing at 11 o’clock, the hour I get off, are contributing to that). I’m having trouble with the laundry which has a button-mangler equal to none elsewhere in the world. It not only mangles; it grabs hold of the button and tears it out by the roots including an inch-square patch of shirt …
Incidentally, when you read of these London air raids, don’t worry about the kid. Out of 7 or 8 million persons, the percentage killed or injured is mighty small and you actually feel rather isolated from the whole thing. The bombs haven’t yet dropped close enough in my neighborhood to make me even realize there was danger afoot, although I must admit that the explosions and the terrific pounding of the anti-aircraft guns, particularly at night when the explosions light the sky, make an impressive show. I have been the “United Press rooftop observer” quoted in most of our dispatches. My rooftop observation post is a tower atop the News of the World (the UP) Bldg, and it is a wonderful vantage point. I look pretty damned glamorous, too, in my trenchcoat and World War type helmet …
IN JANUARY 1943, as Cronkite was settling into life in London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt were meeting in Casablanca in North Africa, along with their top military advisers. There they announced that the only acceptable outcome of the war was the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan. They also laid plans for a coordinated Allied air assault against Germany. Cronkite’s assignment to the European air-war beat could not have come at a better time.
In January, 47,325 U.S. Army Air Forces personnel were stationed in Britain. By the following December, that number had mushroomed to 286,264. In a December 1943 United Press dispatch, Cronkite charted the expansion of the wire service’s coverage of the air war since his arrival. “Throughout last winter,” he wrote, “when the American air effort was as a molehill to its present mountain, I was able to cover the story alone.” That meant, among other things, that as the lone UP reporter covering the air war, he spent a lot of time traveling to and from the newly established American air bases. Bad weather that winter meant that on many days the bombers didn’t fly. But when a mission was scheduled, Cronkite and reporters from other wire services and newspapers would receive a coded telephone call from Army Air Forces public relations, along the lines of “We’re going to have a poker game tonight.” They would then know to take an early morning train out to one or another of the American bases scattered throughout the English countryside.
Cronkite often traveled to the Molesworth air base in Cambridgeshire, home to the 303rd Bombardment Group, which had arrived in September 1942 and flown its first mission on November 17 over St. Nazaire. (The men of the 303rd would fly a total of 364 missions by war’s end.) The unit became known as the “Hell’s Angels,” named for one of the B-17s in the group that was the first in the Eighth Air Force to complete 25 bombing missions over Europe.
At bases like Molesworth, the reporters would wait for the bombers to return and then interview the aircrews about how the day’s mission had gone. They wrote their dispatches at the base, always careful to note the hometowns and ages of the crew members they quoted. As Cronkite told Don Carleton in an interview for the oral history Conversations with Cronkite, “The first thing you ever asked anybody was ‘Where are you from?’ That was the very first order of business. The UP was wild for a hometown story. And then almost every day you’d write the lead story and get some of the stuff that belonged, the description of the target, the description of the fighter opposition, the flak, and all that sort of thing, but then you would immediately get off to the sidebar stories. There was always a feature story or two of the mission.”
The writing was done under the watchful eyes of military censors to ensure that the reports met the standards of military security (which is why the names and locations of air bases were never mentioned). The reporters would then carry (or later on, when security concerns slightly eased, read over the telephone) the censored dispatches to their London offices, where they would be cabled to wire service and newspaper offices in the United States.
The U.S. Army Air Forces’ Eighth Bomber Command (the Eighth Air Force also had fighter and air-support commands) had been flying daylight bombing assaults against targets in occupied Europe since August 1942. The American bombing fleet consisted of B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators, both heavily armed four-engine bombers, capable of reaching targets deep in German territory. What the Eighth Air Force lacked in 1942 and for much of 1943 were fighter planes capable of escorting the bombers for more than a few hundred miles. That didn’t matter so much when the bombers were sent out to hit targets along the French or Dutch coast. But in January 1943, just after Cronkite arrived in London, Americans made their first strikes against the German homeland, flying beyond the range of American fighters. American air strategists believed that by having the bombers fly in tight formations, the gunners aboard the B-17s and B-24s could ward off German fighter attacks. “This proved to be wishful thinking,” Cronkite wrote in A Reporter’s Life. “To fly in the Eighth Air Force in those days,” his colleague Harrison Salisbury wrote, likewise long after the war, “was to hold a ticket to a funeral. Your own.”
Cronkite and his colleagues we
re not as blunt in their reports during the war. Dark notes would occasionally creep into their dispatches, but the overall emphasis of American reporting was one of steady progress leading to ultimate victory. Cronkite’s first bylined dispatch from England, which ran in the New York World-Telegram on January 27, under the headline “Beautiful Bombing, U.S. Flyers Boast,” reflected that optimistic view:
A FLYING FORTRESS STATION SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, Jan. 27.—American crew members of the bombers that carried the aerial war to German soil today said tonight “it’s a cinch over Germany.” There were few fighters and only light antiaircraft fire, they added.
They believed they had smashed their objectives in Wilhelmshaven, which, coincidentally, was the first target in Germany raided by the Royal Air Force in 1939 …
The honor of being the first American bomber over Germany went to the “Banshee.” The Banshee’s pilot was First Lt. Edward J. Hennessy, 23, of Chicago.
“We didn’t see a thing except some flak,” Hennessy said. “I guess we just surprised the hell out of them. They sure weren’t expecting Americans over there in daytime.”
In Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, Donald L. Miller wrote of the first Wilhelmshaven raid, “The Germans were caught off guard and there was little opposition, but clouds obscured the target and bomb damage was minimal.” Yet even the minimal opposition, as Cronkite reported, shot down three American planes. As Cronkite would personally observe the next time the Americans hit Wilhelmshaven, the Germans would be better prepared.
That mission was described in his February 6, 1943, letter to Betsy. Cronkite excitedly announced a new opportunity that he and several fellow reporters were offered—the chance to go along on a bombing mission over Germany. Cronkite’s invitation to join this select group of reporters, which included Gladwin Hill of the Associated Press, William Wade of the International News Service, Robert Post of the New York Times, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, Paul Manning of CBS Radio, Andy Rooney of the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, and Denton Scott of the Army magazine Yank, marked a turning point in Cronkite’s journalistic fortunes. A wit in Air Force public relations dubbed them the “Writing Sixty-Ninth,” after a famous doughboy outfit from the First World War, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth.
Cronkite's War Page 6