Why don’t you gather up in your arms a lot of good-ole fashioned gumption and go down and plop it on [Pete] Wellington’s desk. The argument is terrific, I think. Look, all he has to do is certify you to Washington as a Kansas City Star employee who they want to send to London as a war correspondent …
Let me know if you decide to do it, honey, and I’ll put on the pressure through this end. I think I should see Wallenstein if the thing is going to be tried, and I should write a letter to Wellington putting the cards on the table—that is, that primarily we are using him mostly to get you over here, but that incidentally it was going to be damned advantageous to him because your sole function was going to be digging up women’s and Kansas City angles, with which you were darned familiar because after all you had just come from Kansas City, while Wallenstein is tangled up, as they know, in a dozen different enterprises besides the Kansas City Star.
There is another advantage to this system. And that is that if you hold war correspondent’s credentials and are really doing a job for the Star, if I should be sent into Europe in the wake of the second fronters, you probably could follow in short order—at least with more certainty than you could if you were with the Red Cross.
I’ve got to rush now, honey … I love you, you know, and miss you terribly. Tell little Judy and all the family howdy for me. Forever, Walter
IT WAS NOT even Halloween, and Cronkite was already dreading another Christmas spent away from Betsy and Judy, as his letter of October 24, 1943, revealed. That hardly made him unusual. The Irving Berlin song “White Christmas,” first performed on a radio broadcast Christmas Day 1941 by Bing Crosby, returned to the top of the Billboard charts whenever Christmas rolled around during the war years, joined in December 1943 with another chart-topper by Crosby, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Also of note in the October 24 letter: another Clark Gable (aka “The Man With The Ears”) sighting reported by Cronkite.
Sunday, Oct. 24, 1943 picture enclosed
My darlingest one:
Christmas comes but once a year—and this year it has come in October. I got back from another trip Wednesday to find one package awaiting me at the APO. Thursday I got Betty’s package at the office. Friday I got another package at the APO. I have taken off the outer wrappings of them all in case they had been damaged or contained perishables, but I haven’t peeked in any. I couldn’t help reading a couple of the cards, though, and they brought with a flash like a block-buster how terribly, terribly lonely this Christmas is going to be. I spent just an hour sitting in my big chair with the packages on my lap and gazing through the opposite wall remembering our first Christmas together and all the subsequent ones—Judy and her fir-tree allergy, and getting locked out with all our presents inside.
The most horrible thing about this one, aside of course from being so far away from you, is that I feel so cheap about the presents I’m sending you. A couple of little trinkets is all, unless I get some sudden flash of genius and can uncover something of value. Everything is so terribly shoddy here, honey. The prices are so high and the coupon values so impossible. I think you will like what I am sending—but it seems so meager. You know how I used to like to get you a lot of things so you’d have lots of packages to open. And this year—nothing very much. It is heartbreaking. But we’ll make it up next Christmas and all the Christmases to come.
I’m taking all my packages and dumping them in my big zippered parachute bag (U.S. Aviator’s Bag, Kit, Mark II) to be opened Christmas day. I’m going to open them Christmas day regardless of doing as the Romans do. You know about those fool Romans—Boxing Day and all that. The only thing that worries me is the fruit cake. (I peeked on that one because I was sure it was edible and, hence, perhaps perishable.) Will it keep until Christmas? It doesn’t have a “Don’t Open Until” tag on it and the advice I get around here is to “dig in” but I strongly suspect that is because of a lot of avaricious people like [Jim] McGlincy and [Bill] Dickinson and [Ed] Beattie. Come to think of it, I’m pretending to be an awfully strong-minded guy, asking you if I should wait to open it. It looks so delicious, and so American, and so Kansas City—a lot of things that I miss an awfully lot. Thanks a thousand-fold, darling.
Thank God there are no Christmas trees available here. I’m afraid McGlincy and I would break down and get one, and that would make the holiday as terrible as anything can be imagined. I’m hoping for a very, very busy day in the office or on assignment. It seems the only way.
I’ve had a pretty good week, spending three nights with Jack [Fritsche]. Monday I went up to his section of the woods, but didn’t get to his base proper until Tuesday … There was a heluva storm that night, seemingly threatening to blow away the Nissen huts or at least drown them in the downpour. Jack and I sloshed through the air base mud, the rain and the wind to get back to his quarters, and I damned near ruined my pinks and shoes, but the beer helped alleviate any suffering accrued therein. Jack didn’t have an extra bunk in his room, of course, so I slept in the neighboring officers’ quarters next door …
Wednesday I talked Jack into taking a couple of days leave and accompanying me to London. He had been down a couple of times previously but on each occasion I was out of town. It is a three-hour train ride from his base to London, but, of course, the train took four hours. We got here late in the afternoon with your husband still decked out in one layer of pinks and three layers of mud. The bath I took and the clean clothes (civvies) I donned were plenty welcome. McGlincy was in bed with a cold, I found, so Jack and I shared a couple of drinks with him while I dressed and he and Jack got along famously. I was sorry Jim couldn’t accompany us … We went down to Sandy’s to eat. I treated Jack to one of those steaks I’ve described, and he was properly impressed. The Man With The Ears [Clark Gable] came in later with Elizabeth Allen, the British movie star he’s been squiring around and joined us for a quick drink—but he apparently had other things on his mind. He whispered a small scoop into my ear, and I assume that the world was pleased to learn the next morning that He was on the way home …
Oh, incidentally, I had a heluva experience Tuesday on my way from our base over to Jack’s. I ordered transportation from the motor pool and got a command car and GI driver. It was raining pitchforks and the country road was slick as glass. But this driver, I thought, handled the car magnificently. He did slide into ditches a couple of times, and he barely missed a couple of oncoming trucks and lorries, but considering the condition of the road—well, he did all right.
Then he turns to me and says: “You know, this is quite a thrill for me to drive YOU, sir.” And I swell up with pride and think, “well, the old Cronkite name is getting around a bit, after all.” Then he adds, “Yessir, this is quite a thrill. I’ve never driven a car before.”
And sure enough, he hadn’t. Some mistake in the motor pool. It is mistakes like that that lose wars—and correspondents, worse thought.
And now lots of business: First of all, you should be getting an extra check for $150 from the UP or Look magazine any day now. I don’t know what it is for, frankly. All I know is that a cable arrived in the accounting department last week that New York accounts had $150 from Look for me and where should they send it, London or Kansas City. I advised them Kansas City. I assume that either they sold them a batch of my stories from which to make a piece, or else it may be some re-sale rights on the African stories. Or, horrors, maybe it is some mistake. At any rate, at present standing New York seems to be sending you some extra dough. And that brings up another point: Honey, please don’t skimp to build up that bank balance. I feel that perhaps you are, but I don’t want it that way. I want you to be as comfortable and happy as is possible under the circumstances, and whatever sum it takes to do that you certainly should feel free to use …
Walter
IN HIS LETTER of October 31, 1943, Cronkite referred to a song called “Paper Doll,” which was the biggest hit of the popular Mills Brothers, a jazz-pop quartet of four African-Amer
ican brothers. Originally written in 1915, the song held the number-one slot on the Billboard singles chart for 15 weeks, selling over ten million records. One of the song’s lyrics, “I’ll tell you boys, it’s tough to be alone,” must have resonated with Cronkite.
In the closing lines of the letter, Cronkite mentioned that he had obtained an exclusive interview with “General Kepner of fighter command.” The story ran three weeks later in American newspapers. On November 19, the New York World-Telegram printed a dispatch from Cronkite that began:
LONDON, Nov. 19—Maj. Gen. William E. Kepner, chief of the Eighth Air Force fighter command, said today that the German air force had been defeated “at every turn” and the Nazis no longer were capable of building enough fighters to stop the Allied bombing offensive.
The Eighth Bomber Command suffered heavy losses in the summer and fall of 1943 in its daily “precision bombing” attacks on German targets, most disastrously in two raids on the ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt. In the first raid, on August 17, which hit nearby Regensburg as well, the Americans lost 147 of the 376 bombers dispatched; in the second raid, October 14, 291 bombers were sent out and 60 of those failed to return. Despite these losses, as Cronkite reported in November, the air war over Europe was finally beginning to tip to the Allies’ advantage. Germany was losing experienced fighter pilots and aircraft at an alarming and irreplaceable rate. German air strategists decided to pull much of their fighter force out of northern France and back to Germany, which proved a major advantage to Allied invasion forces the following spring. Harry Ferguson, in this letter, was a veteran UP sportswriter and an assistant general news manager for the wire service.
Sunday, October 31, 1943
I’ve just written a V-mailer to Dad with a very clever introduction. I said: “The calendar says that this is Halloween. So I thought I’d come around and ring your doorbell.” Could I ring yours too, honey. As a matter of fact, I’d like a trick or treat from you. I’d like to rattle your windows, and stick a pin in your doorbell.
(The air raid sirens just went off—in fact, are still going. What an unearthly sound that is. They went last night and the planes didn’t even get into the outskirts. Everybody just sits them out nowadays because things so seldom happen. I’m knocking on wood, and going on writing. If the guns begin going I’ll probably leave you for a second to stick my head out the window. I’m with air raids like I used to be with fires—remember?)
I made two short trips out of town this week, but I returned from both of them within the same day, so I’ve to all intents and purposes been in town all week, a phenomena which I hope grows commonplace. I’ve been working my head off in the office and running around town to the Air Ministry and other news sources, but it is welcome relief to be able to sleep in your own bed every night. Three nights I worked this week and the other three I took off.
On two of the nights off I went to the movies, the first I’ve seen in almost a month. One of them was “Stage Door Canteen” which I saw with Bill Dickinson. It was a good entertainment but certainly not a great movie. One nostalgic touch, which was almost too much to stand, was the frequent playing of “Goodnight, Sweetheart,” as the Canteen closed for the night. It reminded me of the wonderful dances we’ve had together in our seven years. The other was the Fred Astaire-Joan Leslie thing, the title of which I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. It was the usual good, light Astaire with one terrific number—“Set ’em Up, Joe” or something like that. I hope you see it. The third night off I attended an American Correspondents’ Association cocktail party for Irving Berlin. Berlin played the piano and everybody sang old Berlin numbers. They are still terrific numbers, but Berlin plays a piano with ten chords learned in ten easy lessons, and his singing matches his playing …
Speaking of good numbers, have you heard the Mills Brothers recording of “Paper Doll?” It, for my money, will go down with the old popular classics such as “Melancholy Baby,” “My Gal Sal,” and the rest. It is wonderful. The bar downstairs has had it about two days and already the grooves are wearing out. If I had a record-player I think I’d have it on all day long.
I’ve just returned to the letter after standing in the blacked-out window of my bedroom watching the raid. They put up a heluva barrage tonight but the shells were bursting above the overcast and the show was spoiled. The guns nearby fired, jarring my eye teeth. I could hear the plane and watch the searchlights tracking it, apparently through the clouds. Then when the searchlights apparently had it almost directly overhead the guns went. The flashes of the guns made every detail of the buildings around stand out, including the men standing on the Dorchester roof. If the plane dropped anything I couldn’t distinguish the bomb burst from the shell fire. Then these guns nearby quit and the next battery on up the road took up the fire, and so it went clear across London. And when the guns miles away were firing, their flash still lit the skyline. You can hear the whistle of the shells going up, and then the toy-like bursts far overhead. Just now the “all clear” went and in a few hours Berlin Radio will be on the air with an account of the flattening of London. Those liars. Why, even the busses keep on running, people keep on hailing cabs, and the bicycling night-workers peddle their way on homeward …
Incidentally, Bill Dickinson probably will be in Kansas City for the Christmas season. He is getting home leave after two years over here and, of course, is heading straight for Independence (Mo.) to be with his two children. They live there with his parents. His father is a rather prominent lawyer in Jackson County. Bill’s wife, you may remember, jumped out of a New York hotel window the winter before Bill came overseas. He is a very nice guy and is looking forward to taking you to dinner. “Betsy and I are going to the Muehlebach,” he keeps rubbing in. I know you’ll like him. I hope he’ll tell you all the censorable things I can’t tell you about where I live, where I travel to, how far I walk to headquarters and the officers’ mess, and about Fabulous McGlincy and the London gang. I’m almost as enthusiastic about his meeting with you and telling you all those things as if I were going to be there myself. And, of course, not the least of my enthusiasm is that when he gets back here he’ll confirm for all these skeptics how lovely and wonderful you really are. They still think I got that picture of you from a package of cigarettes …
Jim and I may be launched as columnists. We dreamed up the idea of writing a combined weekly military-political-gossip column under a joint Pearson-Allen sort of by-line. We wrote our first one yesterday and submitted it to [Virgil] Pinkley. He snatched at it and wrote a fancy cable to [Earl] Johnson in New York telling him to put all possible promotion steam under it. After that kick-off, though, our story got all balled up in transmission and was delayed so late on the Saturday night wire in New York that I’m afraid it probably didn’t have a chance for much play this week. Next week we hope to get it in a day early, which should help. We probably will run into stiff censorship problems with it, however, and whether we can make it go or not I don’t know.
I got a congratulatory cable this week from Harry Ferguson, acting foreign editor, on an interview (exclusive) with General [William E.] Kepner of fighter command.
It is twelve o’clock, honey, and I’m after my beauty sleep. Please know that I miss you every minute and am terribly lonely for you and that slightly fluffier red-head. Forever and ever, your adoring husband, Walter
FOLLOWING THE DEATH of New York Times correspondent Bob Post on the February Wilhelmshaven raid, Air Force publicists lost enthusiasm for the idea of sending war correspondents on combat missions, at least when anyone was likely to be shooting at them. Cronkite’s ride on an air patrol hunting for U-boats in the North Atlantic, a flight that he recounted in his letter of November 16, 1943, was his first time in an airplane since Wilhelmshaven. In A Reporter’s Life, Cronkite described the flight as “the most miserable twenty-four hours I ever spent … It was cold; the sandwiches were soggy and the coffee frigid. We dropped bombs on one suspected submarine that turned out to be a whale.
”
The reference to “my old ship” was to the battleship U.S.S. Arkansas, on which Cronkite had sailed in late summer 1942 accompanying a convoy to Scotland, and which, still on convoy duty, was in port in Northern Ireland in November 1943.
The photo that Betsy sent to Cronkite carried the inscription “Just call me Irium.” “Irium,” according to Pepsodent advertisements, was the mystery ingredient in the toothpaste that whitened teeth.
Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1943
I have gone sixteen days without writing you and apart from feeling guilty that always makes me feel so far away from you … But these last sixteen days, except perhaps for the first two of them, it has been impossible for me to write. Two days after I last wrote, I was rung up by the Air Ministry and informed that my long-standing request for a Coastal Command trip had been approved and that I should report in Belfast two days later. (That isn’t revealing any secrets since my dispatch is permitted a “North Ireland” date line). There I was met by an RAF flight lieutenant who drove me on to the base where I stayed for five days in the miserable huts that the RAF furnishes their men. It was cold and muddy and horrible. I made my trip—[blacked out by censor] one below zero over the North Atlantic in a Sunderland Flying Boat. We didn’t see a thing and my story is so dull that I’m going to send it back by mail instead of by cable. But it added that much more to my store of air knowledge, anyway. Then I stayed in Ireland, as per instructions from [Virgil] Pinkley, and toured the American Army, Air Force, and Navy installations, enjoying myself immensely during the weekend I spent at the Navy base. My old ship, the one on which I was with Ribby and Sam Read, was in and I spent a night aboard her chewing the fat until three in the morning with the few of the old hands who are still there. The next day the exec and gunnery officer from her—both of them old-timers who I knew—and I started to fly from Ireland back to London but were grounded by bad weather in Scotland. We were drenched to the skin by the time we finally got a bus to get us into Glasgow. We were too late there to get a first-class sleeper berth so we got third-class accommodations (and those by the skin of our teeth) for the all-night ride to London. Third-class is really that. Four berths in two pairs of uppers and lowers in the same compartment with no linens and, actually no bed. The berths are just mohair seats like a normal compartment seat. They give you a blanket and a pillow and you are supposed to sleep in your clothes. But not Cronkite. I undressed when everybody else was sleeping in their clothes expecting momentary torpedoing in the middle of the Atlantic, and I’ll be damned if I was going to sleep in my clothes for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. Well, anyway, the net result is that I got back here Friday morning … I’m up tonight, sitting in front of my little electric heater, pounding this out …
Cronkite's War Page 14