Wednesday: the phone rang this morning at eight and by eight-fifteen, an all-time record for me, you will admit, I was in a cab en route to Kings Cross station for a sortie up to a fighter station. I got that story, which is as yet unprintable or even unmentionable and is just on a “hold for release” basis, and got back here at 10:30 PM again with only 1 meal under the old belly—the noon lunch at the fighter station which was done in elegant fashion to the accompaniment of beer.
Thursday: tonight we of the Writing 69th are scheduled to have dinner with Eaker and I’m particularly anxious to get my story whipped into shape so Jock can take it out early to the general and he will have a chance to make corrections and return it to me before I leave there tonight. This involves another horrible day of conferences, writing 2 versions into cablese and then dictating in plain English to Jock … The dinner this time was just the newspapermen, Ordway, Whitney, Parton, and the general. The newsmen were Gladwin Hill, AP, William Wade, INS, Homer Bigart, Herald-Trib, Ray Daniell, Times, Stanley Richardson, NBC, and Ed Murrow, CBS. As usual, there we were at the fountain-head of all the information all of us wanted to know, and what did we talk about? Newspapering, of course, and all the usual boners we’d all heard a million times. But it amused the general and Ordway, so I suppose we accomplished something. And we did have a good meal and some more of that Bourbon.
Friday and Saturday: Those lump together under the heading, “See Monday and Wednesday” …
Today I finally caught up on a little sleep, arising about 11. Sam [Hales] and I had lunch together at the officers club (chili—made from spam—and spaghetti which wasn’t bad …) then went by the PX to pick up our weekly rations, and then over to Hyde Park to listen to the orators, this being another lovely sunny day. We returned here about 3 o’clock and he stayed another half hour or so chatting and thus delaying my getting to this letter. My ration at the PX this week was 1 box of Zu-Zus, vanilla wafers, and cheese niblets, 1 big tootsie roll, 1 box of candied jellies, 2 (British) chocolate bars, 2 pkg gum, 1 schick razor clip (20 blades), 1 bar lifebuoy soap, 2 penny boxes matches, 1 carton cigarettes and 4 cigars. Total cost was nine shillings—$1.80—not bad at half the price.
Sam and I had forgotten to take our musette bags so we had all our rations stuck into a single bag which was bulging out the top a little like Santa Claus’s typical sack. With that under my arm, we wandered over to the orators, many of whom pick on Anglo-American imperialism for their Sunday harangue. I was certain that they’d spot me in uniform with this sack of rationed goodies and point me out as a typical example of the worst from their text. So Sam and I tried to pass the sack back and forth, but I always seemed to be left holding it. Fortunately none of the speakers spotted it …
Coming down on the train last night I sat in the 3rd class carriage and opposite a not-so-pretty-as-Judy-but-nice cocker. We exchanged a few words and I told the pup about my doggie a long way away and the pup seemed to understand and we had a good time. The owner exchanged a few words with me and that was that. Except that when the owner and cocker started to get off, the owner said: “Come on, Judy, here’s where we get off.” I damned near cried …
So now my space is up for the moment. I hope this schedule slackens so I can write daily this week. Meanwhile please keep the letters coming to me. Despite this whirl of activity I’m terribly lonely for you and Judy and our things … Walter.
A GAP EXISTS in the surviving letters from mid-March to early May. Nothing in the letters from May indicates any reason why Cronkite would have stopped writing in the interim, so probably the missing letters either never arrived or were misplaced after Betsy received them. A number of bylined Cronkite dispatches appeared in the meantime, including one in which he reported on the introduction of the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, which made its combat debut over Europe in March 1943—probably the “hold for release” story he mentioned to Betsy in his letter of March 14. The Thunderbolt, Cronkite wrote in a dispatch that ran in the New York World-Telegram on April 15, “may alter the whole picture of aerial warfare in this theater” because it was capable of accompanying the bombers into Germany. This view was overly optimistic. Most Allied bombing missions into Germany continued to fly unescorted, with the results an appalling attrition rate. By May 1943, after ten months of bombing, the Eighth Air Force had lost 188 heavy bombers and 2,000 crew members. Heavier losses were to come. According to Donald L. Miller, author of Masters of the Air, America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Germany, “Approximately seventy-three percent of the combat fliers who had arrived in England in the summer and fall of 1942 failed to complete their tour of duty [of 25 missions]. Fifty-seven percent were killed or missing in action, and another 16 percent had been either seriously wounded, killed in crashes in England, or permanently grounded by a serious physical or mental disability.”
Cronkite’s eulogy for B-17 pilot Don Stockton was reprinted in 1944.
Cronkite and other air-war correspondents knew all too well that the young men they interviewed for their stories were not likely to survive many missions. When Harrison Salisbury arrived in London, Cronkite gave him some advice. “ ‘Don’t make friends with the kids,’ Walter had told me. ‘Don’t get to know them too well. It’s just too much when they are lost, and most of them, you know, will be.’ ” Cronkite himself was particularly affected by the death of 21-year-old pilot Donald E. Stockton, killed on a bombing mission over Kiel in May 1943. Stockton had piloted a B-17 named Bad Check in the February Wilhelmshaven raid, but his bomber had turned back with mechanical difficulties before reaching the target. The flight to Kiel was his 25th and intended-to-be-final bombing mission.
Cronkite’s May 9, 1943, letter to Betsy opened with his comment on the May 3 crash of an American Liberator bomber over Iceland that killed Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews, the highest ranking American military officer to die in the war to that point. Morrow Krum, who also died in the crash, was an Army public relations officer.
May 9, 1943
Hello, my darlingest,
Here I am just back from another trip made in lousy weather and generally unhappy circumstances. This has been a horrible week all the way around. You read in the papers, of course, that Morrow Krum was killed in the plane with General [Frank Maxwell] Andrews. The deaths of Andrews and [Lt. Col. Fred A.] Chapman and [Brig. Gen. Charles M.] Barth were a blow to all of us and, undoubtedly, to the war effort—but Morrow’s death was that of one who had become a very close friend and one very much needed in court when problems arose among the war correspondents. Strong men wept openly around headquarters Tuesday when it was learned he was on that plane. It came only a couple weeks after he got his full colonelcy and while headquarters still was filled with predictions that he might even get a star on his shoulder before the peace.
Then Wednesday I made a trip to a fighter base and found to my horror that my best friend up there had failed to return from the last sweep. He was “Pappy” Lutz from Fulton, Missouri—one of the nicest guys I’ve met in a heluva long time. Pappy bailed out, his chute didn’t fully open, and Deacon Hively and Vic France who circled him down saw him hit the water, disappear, and reappear a minute later. But he didn’t answer their waves and just floated there. Air-sea rescue never found him.
This is all a little gloomy, I guess, but it has been a gloomy week and this is a gloomy Mother’s Day. I suppose all this is just a tiny foretaste of what is to come when we, some day, praise the Lord, move across the channel.
I have really had the blues this week. I haven’t had a good story in weeks and the present period of inactivity is boring on my nerves. The air force assignment keeps me going fifteen and sixteen hours a day on lousy trains and lousier trucks and isn’t very productive after all that work. It is pretty discouraging. Added to all that I got scooped this week, along with Glad Hill of AP, thank goodness, by Earl Poorbaugh of INS who stumbled onto the fact that [Clark] Gable had made an unscheduled operational flight in a Fortress.
Most of all I’ve had the blues because it is so long since I’ve been with you and Judy and there isn’t any silver lining yet in that cloud. It was helped considerably this week, though, by your short letter of March 24 with the three pictures of Judy, two of which included you. They are wonderful shorts, darling. A couple of dog experts already have seen them and, what we already knew, have pronounced Judy the most beautiful cocker they’ve ever seen—and that from Brittishcocker specialists. They were absolutely amazed at her features, and they had seen nothing to equal it. One even asked if there were any chance of her coming over soon and gave me his card because he said he wanted to be sure to have a look at her if she ever came to England. It is true: you absolutely do not see long ears and flowing features like that over here. Of course, you don’t see anything like Judy anywhere except when you see Judy. She looked so sweet and so intelligent. In fact she looked just a little angry—as if she knew Daddy was going to see the picture and she wanted to show her displeasure at his absence. I love you, honey, and I’ll write more later. Forever, Walter
THE AIR WAR was glamorous, at least to those who read about it on the home front, and those in charge of the Eighth Air Force made sure to enhance that glamour for their own purposes. They were thinking about not only the war but also the postwar future of the Army Air Forces. As Harrison Salisbury recalled in his war memoir: “The Eighth Air Force was a high octane outfit. It was run by ambitious men and backed by an ambitious command in Washington. It had set up a large public relations staff—men from newspapers, publicity firms, advertising agencies—and made use of Hollywood celebrities … The important thing, as the Eighth Air Force saw it in 1943, was to establish a presence, to prove a doctrine, to stake out a position in public consciousness.” Hollywood star Clark Gable, who enlisted in the Army Air Force in August 1942, was recruited by Gen. Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold merely to make a training film for aerial gunners, but he wound up flying a number of dangerous combat missions. Although Cronkite speaks of attempts by public relations officers to shield Gable from unwanted attention by reporters, Eighth Air Force brass welcomed the publicity he brought. They worried, however, about the consequences of his being shot down, and were relieved to transfer him back to the States to complete his film. Field Marshall Hermann Göring, who also appreciated public relations, offered his fliers a substantial reward if they brought Gable down, which they were never able to collect. For young Midwesterner Walter Cronkite, encounters with a Hollywood icon like Gable (and the chance to write home to his wife about them) were probably heady stuff, notwithstanding his casual recounting of their conversations. Gable pops up repeatedly in Cronkite’s letters home over the next few months.
May 18, 1943
Just back again from another trip. I went out early last week to cover what we figured was going to be a stepped-up air offensive against Naziland and have just returned to town for a change of clothing, a quick conference with [Harrison] Salisbury and a letter to you after picking up my mail …
I’m having a heluva time these days with Clark Gable. I think I told you that I had a clear beat with an exclusive on his arrival in this area and that finally even the public relations office was calling me to find out where he was. Well, since then pandemonium has broken loose. The poor guy when he talked to me that first day said he was rather sorry I’d stumbled into him because he wanted to be just another officer and do his part in the war effort and he knew that a lot of reporters around all the time were going to hinder him in that ambition. When the pub relations men heard that they clamped down the screws and now nobody gets near the guy—except by accident. So I spend half my time now trying to create an accident for myself and prevent one for the AP or INS …
AS THE NEXT two letters to Betsy (May 22 and May 26, 1943) suggest, Cronkite had reached a turning point in his career with the United Press. Since the Wilhelmshaven raid, he had emerged as one of the stars of the London bureau. With the expansion of the air war, Cronkite found himself increasingly tied to the London offices. While he still did some traveling to air bases in the countryside, more often he sent out others to do the day-to-day work of interviewing aircrews returning from missions over Europe, while he wrote the “experter” accounts that presented the big picture of the air war to American readers.
Other journalists were taking notice of Cronkite’s abilities, including Edward R. Murrow of CBS Radio, who invited him to make a guest appearance as a commentator on the network. Not every print journalist proved adept in meeting the requirements of the new medium of broadcast journalism. But Murrow was a good talent spotter.
May 22, 1943
It seems so long since I’ve been able to sit down and write you a full-size letter to tell you all the things I’ve been doing and thinking. I thought that perhaps this was the day and it yet might turn out to be. But at the moment I’m grasping time for this V-mailer and then shall supplement it with a regular air mailer letter later if possible.
I know that you have gathered that I have been busier than the proverbial bee for the last week and a half. It is gratifying to watch the air force really swing into action and start plastering the enemy—but it is damned tiring on this almost-round-the-clock basis. I’ve been on the go constantly for almost two weeks. I mean that my musette bag has been packed and I’ve been on the air force shuttle from base to base to headquarters to base to base to headquarters ad infinitum. The job has now reached the stage that [Harrison] Salisbury and I knew it would eventually when one man no longer is adequate to handle it. So in the midst of all this activity we’ve tried to put into effect our long-drawn plans whereby I remain at headquarters to coordinate the whole story while others go out into the field under my direction … Also I have other problems—things to sandwich in among all this work. Ed Murrow last week tossed into my lap a twelve-minute spot whereupon he wanted me to broadcast a story of the air force to the National Association of Book Publishers convention. I worked like hell on the script for that one. (It would have been a lovely plug for my favorite author.) Then, at the last minute, the broadcast was cancelled. It wouldn’t have netted any money but would have been valuable. Then the Blue Network spot, also fruitless, came along and took up considerable time. It originated here at 4:50 A.M., of course. Thanks to your cable, I assume we made it okay. I was so glad to hear that Molo is better, and hope you aren’t just trying to relieve my worries. I’m anxious now for another letter saying that she is up and around again …
BY THE END of May 1943, the fifth month since Cronkite’s arrival in London, the Allies had won two important victories. The first took place in North Africa, where enemy resistance ended on May 13. The green American army that had gone to war against the Germans in November 1942 had now proven its mettle. And on May 26, German navy commander Karl Dönitz withdrew his U-boats from the North Atlantic, where they had been suffering irreplaceable losses. The moment was approaching when the Allies would carry the war back to the European continent.
In his letter dated May 26, 1943, Cronkite mentioned receiving a copy of Military News, featuring a picture of its editor, “Mrs. Krinkit,” i.e., Betsy Cronkite, who in 1943–44 worked for the Hallmark greeting card company, editing a newsletter for Hallmark employees in the military. The now rarely heard slang term “darb,” common from the 1920s through the 1950s, which Cronkite used to describe a picture of his wife, suggests an item of superior quality.
May 26, 1943
I would like so much to have you here. Because of the apparent possibility that I might be bouncing on off to war fronts where it is impossible to take you, I had almost abandoned the idea, at least temporarily … It looks as if, for a while, at least, I’m not going to be travelling so continuously. Air force activity is now stepped up to the extent that I’m going to be here at headquarters most of the time with others out in the field. But it seems that I told you all this in the last V-mailer. I’m writing this at press headquarters of the air force …
I’ve become more convinced than
ever that you will be joining me here before I ever return there, and we might be here for some years. (BY “here” I mean Europe, not necessarily England.) …
I have seen a few movies lately at air bases. I saw “Yankee Doodle Dandy” again and liked it as much as the first time, perhaps because it is now rich in memories of you and Jackson Heights …
I see Sam [Hales] a little more frequently now that I’m getting into town more often. He is covering the Latin American embassies now and the other afternoon he and [Harrison] Salisbury and I went to the Argentine cocktail party. I was invited because one of the attachés is dying to make a bomber trip and he wanted to hear my story. I carried on a long conversation with the air attaché and neither one of us understood a single one of the other’s words. Mighty interesting …
Did I tell you in a v-mail that your first copy of Military News finally arrived last week? It was swell, darling, particularly the picture on page two of the Mrs. Krinkit or whatever her name is—the gal who is editing same. What a darb! And to think she should have a brain too. Halls certainly digs them up, doesn’t it? It was good. I’ve been wondering if since you have been working there you still get the old kick out of thumbing through the greeting cards, each and every one, in every downtown store including the, horrors, five and ten. Do you, or is the old kick gone now that you are so close to the trees or the forest or whatever it is?…
Cronkite's War Page 10