So much water has passed under the bridge since then. That wonderful reunion in New York when you hit the apartment at almost the same minute I did after I’d been so disappointed when I didn’t get an answer on my phone call from Staten Island. Those swell weeks in New York and then the Moroccan invasion. I missed you so on those trips … Then back to Norfolk and frantic unsuccessful efforts to telephone you from there that Thanksgiving night, finally reaching you by phone from the Washington railroad station, and your crying because you hadn’t heard a word from me, the first information I had that none of my African stories had got through.
Then there was the whole day and a half I had to wait before you stopped off the plane in New York, and how happy I was. Wonderful days then in New York. But not enough of them …
It suddenly occurs to me that this will reach you perhaps before a long letter I mailed yesterday. So a word of explanation: I’m really going to keep a steady flow of letters to you now, darling. They will be in the form of a diary, and if you keep them we’ll have some kind of record of the war.
The long letter brought us up to Sunday, August 1, 1943. That afternoon I went, under circumstances explained in the longer letter, out to the Earl of Jersey’s. Lady Throckmorton, a Mrs. Keene, a famous Polish artist by the name of Telpowski (approximation) and of course, Lord and Lady Jersey were there. It is a modest house they live in now while the armed services occupy their Isle of Jersey and other properties, but it faces on Richmond Common, there are two dogs, a huge Police and a tiny Sealyham, and it’s very pleasant. Most of the dozens of servants they used to have are now in the Army so Lord and Lady Jersey pop up and down doing their own serving. I was only there a few hours but it was most enjoyable. More about it tomorrow. Tell Judy and all the folks hello … Walter
CRONKITE MADE A passing reference to the Ploesti air raid in his letter of August 4, 1943. That raid had taken place three days earlier, launched from an air base in Libya and targeting oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania, that were vital to the German war effort. The Mediterranean-based Ninth Air Force carried out the attack, supported by three groups of B-24s from the Eighth Air Force. The refineries were heavily defended, and American losses were correspondingly grim: 53 B-24 Liberators and their crews were shot down in the attack.
Most of Cronkite’s August 4 letter, and the follow-up on August 5, concerned lighter matters, including the unceasing social whirl of London’s journalists. Betty Knox, whose imminent hospitalization was the occasion for a memorable Bank Holiday night out, was a reporter for the London Evening Standard. American-born, she had been a vaudeville and British musical hall star in the 1930s. In 1941 she retired from the stage and took up a career in journalism.
Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, Vogue correspondent, covered the fighting in Normandy in 1944 and the liberation of Paris, and photographed Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps in 1945.
The reference to a “certain pair of redheads with whom I’m in love” in the August 5 letter is to redheaded Betsy and reddish-furred Judy, the cocker spaniel.
[No date, August 4, 1943?]
I’m having a little trouble catching up with this diary. It seems that I left off as of Sunday evening. (It is now Wednesday, of course.) I was at Lady Jersey’s, as I recall. Did I mention in that V-mailer yesterday that she is Virginia Cherrill, formerly of the movies, Cary Grant’s first wife, etc.? I don’t think I did, although the fact is in a regular letter now supposedly en route by air mail. Well, we had cold salmon salad for dinner with cold beer, a strictly American habit that I suppose Lady J. has imparted to Lord J. Then we thumbed through the Jerseys’ intriguing volumes of scrap book including a lot of her intimate pictures of Hollywood personalities, mostly C. Grant, of course, and pictures of the Jerseys and Throckmortons on yachts and at clubs and in forests with feet properly planted on dead elephants and tigers and stuff. Lord J. and I talked about animal breeding. You know how much I know about that! And then back home on the subway.
Monday was about as dull as it is possible for a holiday to be when you are away from the one person that would make a holiday fun. (It was the first Monday in August, a so-called Bank Holiday here comparable to our Labor Day, of which there is none in England. That is sort of a commentary on Democracy and Capitalism and Stuff, isn’t it? England has a “Bank Holiday” we have a “Labor Day.”) I broke off the vacation in the morning to do a background piece at the office on the Ploesti oil field raid by the Liberators from the Middle East because I knew some of the participants and quite a bit about the way the thing was planned. I had lunch at the officers’ club and returned home where I spent part of the afternoon cleaning up my part of the flat. As usual I had my dresser cluttered with notes and old newspapers and magazines and pure, unadulterated scrap. Monday night things picked up a little bit. Betty Knox is going to the hospital this week (today, come to think of it) and so was throwing a Dutch Treat party for herself. I met her, [Harrison] Salisbury and [Bill] Dickinson at the King and Keys pub next to the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street, we had a drink there with Jack Tait and Eric Hawkins of the New York Herald-Trib and Doug Werner of our office, and the K.S.D. [Knox-Salisbury-Dickinson] and W.C. [Walter Cronkite] wound our way up to the Savoy Hotel where we were to meet some more people. This adventure of winding our way cost me a shilling, in my own adventuresome, inimitable way. Dickinson was trying to hail a cab in front of the King and Keys and I stepped up and tendered him a shilling saying, ‘You will get us the next one, won’t you?’ He did, and took the shilling! At the Savoy we met Dave Scherman, Life photographer, Lee Miller of Vogue (Vogue’s war correspondent—gad!) and some gal I didn’t know named Kathleen McCaughlan who I found out only the next day is an editorial writer for the London Times and formerly was a Liberal party whip in Parliament and Clement Attlee’s secretary. I’m running out of space again. More tomorrow … Walter
August 5, 1943
Hello, Honey. It’s eleven A.M. of this Thursday morning which until half hour ago had been rainy and now is complete with sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Whatta climate!
I left off yesterday with our little party reaching the Savoy to meet [Dave] Scherman and his small group. Well, we sat at a corner table of the American Bar. [Bill] Dickinson sat at one end of the semi-circular bench and I sat at the other and [Betty] Knox said it looked like a minstrel show, so you can guess where that went. But Dickinson wasn’t nearly the wonderful stooge for corny gags that Sweeney was, and I can promise you that it was no fun playing to an audience that didn’t include a certain pair of redheads with whom I’m in love.
We had one drink at the Savoy waiting for Joe Evans, bureau manager for Newsweek here, and his date and they finally telephoned and said they would meet us at the White Tower, a Greek restaurant off Tottenham Court Road near the Ministry of Information. So the whole gang piled into a couple of taxis and went to the White Tower and sat at a table outside in front of the place where the urchins in that somewhat bombed tenement district could lean over the rail and breathe into your food. I had a veal chop which was delicious and with a couple of drinks only cost four dollars. [Harrison] Salisbury and Dickinson drank muska, a Greek liquor, and ended up tottering on the curb gazing up the street which runs into the White Tower, Dickinson arguing that it was a sad street, and Salisbury arguing that it was a very common street with no ability to stir any emotions at all. It was just turning dark when we left to wander up to Tottenham Court Road and spend a half hour hailing already engaged taxis until we finally snared a couple. Only when we got in the cab did we learn that Dickinson was still carrying a glass of whisky from the White Tower. I should point out that Daddy was sober, as usual—and I’m not kidding. I’ve got a heluva reputation around Fleet Street as a man who holds his liquor, whereas the truth of the matter is that no one seems to notice that I have one drink to everybody else’s two … more on sheet #2 August 5, 1943. Walter
AS CRONKITE’S FAME grew, so did his prospects. On the second sheet of his
letter of August 5, 1943, Cronkite mentions an “offer from CBS news.” Edward R. Murrow, the head of CBS Radio’s office in London, had asked Cronkite if he would consider transferring to Moscow to cover the war on the Russian front for CBS. Murrow offered Cronkite the dazzling salary of $125 a week, nearly double the $67 he was then getting from the United Press. Cronkite expressed interest, but was wooed back when UP bureau chief Harrison Salisbury and UP president Hugh Baillie offered him $82.50 a week to stay in London. Whether he was swayed by the appeal of being one of the highest paid UP foreign correspondents, a preference for wire-service work over radio, or a desire to remain in London, where he hoped Betsy might be able to join him eventually, Cronkite decided to decline the CBS offer. Murrow was astonished, apparently believing that any journalist would jump at the chance to become one of “Murrow’s Boys,” the talented group of young men he had recruited to report the war for CBS. Despite Cronkite’s assurance to Betsy that he and Murrow “departed the best of friends,” Murrow never fully forgave Cronkite for turning him down, even after the two became colleagues at CBS Television in the 1950s. However, in retrospect, Murrow’s promise that “CBS would be around again in the future” certainly had a prophetic ring. Also, during the war Cronkite made several radio broadcasts for CBS, sharing his air-war expertise.
Meanwhile, Cronkite displayed his gift for punditry in the opening paragraph.
August 5, 1943 sheet number two.
[Bob] Vining is a heluva nice guy who used to be one of the top-kick public relations men with American Telephone and Telegraph. He’s got that professional handshaker business down to a T (an ATandT). That’s a Belluva note. Just a phoney. Or maybe I’ve got my wires crossed. The point is, without the puns, that Vining really makes you feel good. He grasps your right elbow with his left hand and pumps, but as he pumps he tells you and anybody else who is around, what a terrific job you are doing, how that last story was a “beautiful thing” etc. etc. etc.
[Joe] Stehlen is a nice guy too but a little ‘browned off’ (RAF for “sore”) because the Air Force says he is too old to fly now, won’t give him a job of the importance for which he thinks his experience qualifies him, and instead is involved in running the speakers’ bureau.
After lunch I had a long chat with Lt. Harry Cody, a former N.Y. stock broker now also in Air Force public relations. Then I got down to more important things. I went to see Ed Murrow to settle the newest CBS offer … I told him that the amount he offered was not enough to lure me away from UP … We parted the best of friends with his saying that CBS would be around again in the future and that meantime he might call on me to do a few shows. From there I went down to Hobson’s, a uniform outfitters in Lexington street, off Piccadilly, to get some fancier War Correspondents patches than the regular issue ones and an extra pocket button to replace the one lost off my uniform coat. Then on down to the office where I told Salisbury I was going to stay with UP … Walter
IN HIS LETTER of August 11, 1943, Cronkite complained of a lack of progress on “the book.” No manuscript has survived, but it seems likely that Cronkite had made a false start on a co-authored account of the air war: In a subsequent letter in February 1944, Cronkite referred to a book that he and Jim McGlincy had begun some time before, by then “molding in the drawer for lack of time to finish it.” Several other war correspondents had already had best-selling books published by this time, including International News Service correspondent Richard Tregaskis’s Guadalcanal Diary, published earlier in 1943, slated to become a Hollywood movie.
After Cronkite announced his intention at the start of August to write a “daily diary,” his letters to Betsy began to take on a more “writerly” tone, as if practicing for the book he intended to compose. The August 11 letter, for example, featured clouds “constipated with rain,” “weather-worn knobs of green land,” “tiny cottages with tiny doors,” etc. Cronkite soon returned to his usual relaxed and intimate tone with his wife, and in a letter to Betsy on New Year’s Day 1944 emphasized that his letters were “to YOU and not diary pages as I crudely suggested last fall.”
Wednesday, August 11, 1943
Darlingest Betsy,
Another day and another dollar or two. This is a gloomy day with the skies unable to make up their minds about the whole thing. They look like they’re constipated with rain, but nothing happens. I know just how they feel. I’m still at the headquarters from which I wrote yesterday, but this evening I’m riding in the courier’s reconnaissance car across half of England to another spot. That will be a miserable trip. If it doesn’t rain it will be gloomy; and if it rains, it will be gloomier. Furthermore it is cold—almost cold enough for a topcoat, which, indeed, some of the guards on outside duty are wearing. I wonder how many degrees over a hundred it is in Kansas City right now …
The English countryside was pretty this morning, the half light under the overhanging clouds. It brought out in sharp relief the rolling hills and weather-worn knobs of green land, spreading trees, stone walls and hedgerows. And sticking up here and there along the horizon the stone steeples of the churches which dot this countryside every few miles so that often four or five of them are visible from a single hilltop. I’ve ridden over so many hundreds of miles of narrow English back roads in the last several months I no longer see most of it with a tourist’s eye but I still marvel at most things: the thatch roofs, the tiny cottages with their tiny doors through which even Eva would have to stoop (and I wonder if the ceilings are any higher inside), the little villages every few miles along any road with their pubs and little stone shops. Right now my trips through are on business only. You see I’m waiting for you before going exploring, so what we find is going to be as new to me as to you. I love you, darling. I had a picture taken today that I’ll send along. Walter
IN HIS LETTER of August 12, 1943, Cronkite referred to raids on the Ruhr that day. On August 12 two separate Eighth Air Force missions attacked Ruhr targets: 183 B-17s bombed synthetic oil installations at Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, and Recklinghausen, while 147 B-17s bombed factories in Bonn. During the two missions, 25 B-17s were shot down.
Cronkite was preparing himself for his upcoming meeting with United Press president Hugh Baillie with a rueful self-mockery.
Thursday, August 12, 1943
My darling wife:
This really should be dated Friday, August 13, for it is now five minutes past one in the morning, I’m as limp as an old towel and I have no voice …
This is likely to be a very fuzzy letter, and I’m so tired, darling, that I’m sure you won’t blame me too much if I cut it short around the middle somewhere. As you have read by now, the Fortresses today went to the Ruhr—and Cronkite went to town. I was up at seven-thirty to begin the daily ride on the merry-go-round, but I think that today I caught the brass ring for three free rides. First, I got an exclusive interview with the general who led the raid. Second, I had an exclusive (until the lousy public relations set-up made a handout out of it) on the fact that Gable had gone today. And third, I had a good exclusive feature yarn on a couple of hero crews. It has taken every minute of the seventeen and one-half hours I put on the job today to cover three ’dromes, one headquarters. I had a good breakfast of powdered eggs prepared with onions and cheese to almost taste like something, no lunch except doughnuts and coffee with returning crew members, and a filling dinner. Each meal I ate in a different spot, the last 100 miles from the first. Altogether I guess I covered some 150 miles today, made nine long distance calls (no little feat in this country today), and called in three 500 to 750 word stories (and dictating those babies, repeating a dozen times each name and hometown address, is herculean).
Furthermore, I had some slight hope of getting back to the Big City on a late train tonight but now find my return delayed at least one day and perhaps more …
Baillie, Pinkley, et retinue have arrived back on the scene, I’m informed, and all of us young-men-getting-ahead are getting our osculatory muscles back in shape. I’m miss
ing your letters while out on this trip. I worship you, darling. Tell Judy I love her too. Walter
“THE FACE” MENTIONED in Cronkite’s August 13, 1943, letter was Clark Gable. “Walter’s word” was Cronkite marriage code for “shit.” Frank Adams was an old Cronkite friend from Austin days, a Navy publicist during the war. The “Deanery” was the apartment building where Cronkite shared a flat with Jim McGlincy, on Deanery Street in the Mayfair section of London.
Friday, August 13, 1943
Darlingest Betsy:
Well, my daily diary thing is working out just swell. I got back to town this afternoon and went first to headquarters to pick up my APO mail and all I found in my box was two letters to you and one to a R.C. Spears of Dallas, Texas, all returned for postage. I’m remailing them along with this letter tomorrow, but it means a delay of at least a day or two. The letter to Spears is about his son who was lost in the Moroccan landing. Spears said he had learned from the managing editor of the New York Times that I was the only reporter at that landing on that particular beach and that perhaps I could give him some information. I was unable to, unfortunately.
My luck of Thursday continued today. I got an exclusive interview with Gable this morning to round out the blanket coverage of yesterday’s show. Larry Winship, managing editor of the Boston Globe who is one of the visiting firemen brought over here by the British Ministry of Information to see how well the British are getting along (and, incidentally, prepare us for abrogation of any war debts by showing how much reverse lease-lend there is), was tagging along on my heels but I don’t believe he sent a story. We went to Gable’s barracks and lounged around for an hour just swapping yarns with The Face and John Lee Mahan, top Hollywood scripter who is working with him on this training film he’s shooting. It turns out Gable permitted the interview because he believes I’ve been fairer to him in previous stories than some other press service and newspaper people, and also he and Mahan were impressed by a little remark I dropped at the trumped up interview they had with him for the massed British press some weeks ago. At that time, it seems, I said: “What is all this Walter’s word.” I made the remark to Bill Smith, pro up at Gable’s base, who promptly told The Face. That is what he had thought of the whole proceedings …
Cronkite's War Page 12