Cronkite's War

by Walter Cronkite, IV

  The thing that saved the day has been your picture which was waiting for me when I got back. It is wonderful, Darling. It looks just like the Betsy that I had to leave on the Hoboken pier … Also I loved the Kodak pictures of you and Judy and Petty and Molo. Honey, I know it is hard to get films but do send me as many pictures as you can like that. They are worth so much … And I had half a dozen more packages. I’ve been opening all of them—that is, the outer wrapping—to determine whether or not there are edibles therein which require immediate eating, or whether they are intended as birthday gifts. My first intention was to save even the birthday gifts for Christmas, but you all have been so lavish that I opened a couple of them … More tomorrow … Walter

  Betsy Cronkite inscribed the front and back of this photograph and sent it to her husband in the fall of 1943.

  CRONKITE’S FAVORITE OF his wartime dispatches went out on the wire under the title “Nine Weeping Boys” and appeared in some American newspapers on Armistice Day. It appeared on page 12 of the Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun on November 11, 1943, under a different headline:

  YANK FLIERS DON’T CRY

  Epic Story of Americans Back from an Air Raid

  (Editors’ Note: Correspondents who cover the air war say they write only of heroes. There are dead heroes and those who come back to fight again. Walter Cronkite of the United Press has lived with the airmen, trained with the Eighth Air Force and been out over Wilhelmshaven. He has told many times the story of those who went down in flak and flames; he tells here the story of those who come back.)

  By Walter Cronkite

  United Press Staff Correspondent

  A BOMBER BASE IN ENGLAND, Nov. 11 (UP)—On an RAF airdrome somewhere on the south coast the sun was shining. There was the smell of falling leaves in the air that wafted through the open windows of the buildings. Back home weather.

  Out on the edge of the field a Fortress squatted, a little apart from the perky Spitfires and Typhoons. She was sitting at a cockeyed angle.

  Her right tire was wrapped in strips around the hub. Where her nose had been was shattered Plexiglas. The underslung radio antenna hung in frayed ends.

  The ball turret hung limply on one side: the other side was accordion-pleated up into the fuselage. Sunlight penciled through cannon holes in the wings and tail.

  Inside the ship, the wreckage followed the pattern cut outside by Nazi gunners. But inside there was blood. There was the blood of the ball turret man there in the waist where they’d hoisted him up and given him first aid. There was the blood of the tail gunner outside his cramped compartment where they’d dragged him out.

  And in the nose was the blood of the pilot. Down to the nose he had crawled because he couldn’t fly with one good arm—and the other had been shattered when German “ack-ack” burst alongside his window. He’d crawled there because he must have known he was dying and he wanted to be with his navigator, his school days pal.

  Lieut. Harold Christensen was that pilot, a nice lad from Eagle Grove, Ia. He had a nice crew too, but I’m not giving their names because fighting men don’t want to have it reported that they have emotions. But I have to tell you that every one of those three officers and six enlisted men was blubbering like a baby when they lifted Chris down from the nose and took him to the hospital, where he died a few hours later.

  The crew lugged away its personal equipment and left the big ship standing forlornly with the wounds she’d earned over Schweinfurt. None of them had gone back since. Some day they have to go back to the plane, but not yet.

  Now they were up at the Officer’s club in their dirty, stained OD’s, slumped in chairs and trying to read with eyes that stung. One or two tried to play pool but gave it up. They’d offered their blood for Chris but now that was over.

  The RAF boys knew what they were going through. They’d been all through it and they knew it wasn’t any use saying anything.

  Maybe that’s it. Maybe there isn’t any use my saying anything about it now—but I can’t help remembering it over all the recollections of blood, noise and battle—that forlorn old Fortress and those nine weeping boys.

  Irving Berlin’s musical This Is the Army opened on Broadway in the fall of 1942 with a military cast, and was later released as a Hollywood feature film starring Ronald Reagan. Berlin took a touring company of the show on the road, which opened in London at the Palladium Theatre, the production that Cronkite was sorry to miss, as he reported in his November 20, 1943, letter to Betsy.

  As in the previous letter, the reference to “my old ship” was to the battleship U.S.S. Arkansas.

  November 20, 1943

  … This week I’ve covered two press conferences, done a little “master minding” of the air coverage, written about two stories—and that has been my week’s effort … “This is the Army”—the stage version with Berlin and cast—is playing here and I’m dying to see it, but I guess I’ll miss it after all since there are no seats for this weekend and I must get out of town early next week. Besides this is a slightly lean week financially inasmuch as Commander Sergeant and a couple of the boys from “my” old ship popped into town yesterday morning and I took them to lunch to the tune of a neat eight bucks—which, as up to now, I haven’t thought of a way to get onto the expense account … Walter

  DIXIE TIGHE, WHOM Cronkite reports having dinner with in his letter of November 21, 1943, was an International News correspondent “famed for her blunt language and flamboyant life style,” according to Nancy Caldwell Sorel’s history of women correspondents in World War II, The Women Who Wrote the War. Phil Ault, Bill Disher, and Johnny Parris were United Press correspondents in London. Drew Middleton was the New York Times military correspondent in London.

  1:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 21, 1943

  My precious wife:

  This is the England I’d read about. The fog has been so thick the last two days that most transportation is paralyzed. Cabs and busses run during the brightest hours of the day, but by four in the afternoon they have stopped—“grounded.” Last night the fog was so thick that my powerful Army flashlight barely penetrated to the sidewalk, and certainly not far enough for me to determine where I was, or what block I was crossing. I went up to Dixie Tighe’s flat for a real Bourbon cocktail about six and opened my big trap to invite her to dinner, knowing damned well there weren’t any taxis on the streets and suspecting strongly that none of the places around Mayfair, which are very snooty, would have any tables left on Saturday night. So I confidently called one of the most expensive, le Coq d’Or, only to have the damned fools tell me that they could arrange a table for eight o’clock. Well, we groped our way the three blocks around to there and had a very good, not too expensive (at that) meal. I had hors d’oeuvres, raviolis, and apple pie which, of course, they didn’t call apple pie but which fancy name I couldn’t possibly remember. Le Coq d’Or, which I thought for months was “The Cocked Door,” is very nice with tapestry and old wooden walls and great iron chandeliers. It has a huge spit filling one wall which in my previous two trips there I’d never seen in operation and which I assumed had been inactive since the war. So I showed off last night by telling the head waiter: “I can’t wait until that spit is working again.” To which he answers, “Oh, sir, it operates four or five nights a week.” Steady-customer Cronkite, they call me. I managed to get Dixie home through the fog and then proceeded to get myself lost a couple of times trying to get home from there, a distance of some eight blocks through Berkley Square …

  I worked yesterday afternoon at the office without accomplishing very much … I seem to fool the management, however. Jim [McGlincy] tells me today that he was talking to [Virgil] Pinkley last night and Pinkley remarked on what a hard worker I was. Ah, well.

  I have told you, haven’t I, the amazing fact that I am one of the highest paid workers in the office? It is a slightly frightening fact since I don’t consider $82.50 a week a particularly high wage, although we could certainly live well in Kansas City on it—not countin
g income tax deductions. With the living allowance here boosting the figure to around $105 a week, we could live fairly well even in London if you could only come here and join me. We’d have to pay a good $100 a month for something decent in which to live, and entertaining would be rather expensive, but we’d manage and it would be fun. Several of the boys here have married girls on this side, and they are all swell people although I’ve never been invited into any of their homes. Ned Russell recently married a lovely White Russian girl who has lived here ever since her family fled the Bolsheviks twenty-five years ago. Phil Ault is married to a Norwegian refugee who I haven’t met but who is described as very nice. Bill Disher is married to a daughter of a refugee Czechoslovakian Minister of Treasury. Johnny Parris is almost married to a girl whose husband is with the British Eighth Army somewhere in Italy and who she plans to divorce, as I get it, when the time is ripe. She is not on my list of the better types like Madames Russell, Ault and Disher, however. I think the line-up is for Russell and Parris to be in the Paris bureau after the war. Disher, I suppose, will go to Prague if we reopen a bureau there since he will be right in with the Czech government. I don’t know what the plan is for Ault. Drew Middleton of The New York Times also has married an English girl and I suppose they would be part of any set in which we circulated, although Drew is the most conceited ass I know at present, not counting the millions of such in the officers’ ranks of the Army.

  Jim and I are having apartment trouble. First of all, the electric heaters we have in each room and our reading lamps are all on the same power circuit. Wednesday it started playing tricks, blowing fuses and burning wires every couple of hours … For two days we huddled around the grate in which we kept a coal fire going. We managed to toast our faces and freeze our fannies. Now an electrician is coming in Monday to rewire the basement, or some such rot, so that we can have the electric fires again. The other problem is that of continuing thefts. Most recent disappearance has been my officers’ cap which is irreplaceable since British caps are of much inferior workmanship. Also my Schick razor, for which I’ve amassed a nice collection of blades, has disappeared. That cannot be replaced either, but I thought perhaps you could rush me one from there … I’d appreciate it, honey, if you could airmail one to me as soon as possible, inasmuch as I’m now shaving with an old-fashioned Star-type razor that isn’t any too kind to the old puss, plus the fact that I can only get two inferior blades a week for it, whereas I have all these Schick blades piled up …

  I’m reading a pretty good book by Sholem Asch. It is called “The Calf of Paper” and is about the Jews between wars in Germany. Incidentally, Asch’s son, a writer in his own right, is a sergeant with the Air Force public relations office here. He talks with a terrible lithp.

  I ran into Josephine Sippy, a former airline hostess from St. Louis now in the Red Cross, in the PX last week and she had with her Adele Astaire, who also is working with the Red Cross here. What a screwball she is. Strictly Billie Burke, chattering on and on and making very little sense, switching conversational topics so rapidly she sounds like Alec Templeton doing his radio tuning stunt …

  Which reminds me that Ronnie, the queer bartender downstairs, looked particularly glamorous the other afternoon and I heard some girl ask him what he had done to himself. “Well, please don’t utter a word of this,” he said, very confidentially, “but I’ve got on false eyelashes.” He batted his eyes in a dainty flutter, and sure enough he did. Decadent civilization department.

  The office just called and I’ve got to run down there …

  Honey, it is now Monday morning. I didn’t get a chance to finish this at the office yesterday and intended to do it when I got home but Collie Small and I were too weak-willed to pass up the Bob Hope version of “Let’s Face It.” It was very funny, but it kept bringing back memories of Danny Kaye singing to you to the exclusion of all the rest of the audience. That cad—but I can’t blame him. I worship you, darling. I’ll write more tonight. I worship you, Walter

  JIM MCGLINCY’S PENCHANT for heavy drinking, previously treated as a kind of running gag in Cronkite’s letters, now presented a practical problem, as Cronkite reported to Betsy.

  [Tuesday], Nov. 23, 1943

  My darlingest wife:

  I’ve just gotten home to find that all hell (namely, McGlincy) has broken loose and we are evicted from our lovely flat as of Saturday. Well, that isn’t quite right, in that I was given the choice of staying on, but I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d like to have share the place with me, and, secondly, I’ve been wanting to move, perhaps into a place by myself, for some time. It seems that last week when McGlincy was sober and in the bar downstairs some drunken Navy commander kept trying to pick a fight with him and Jim kept backing away. Well, tonight was Jim’s night off and he managed to get himself pickled downstairs. Yep, you’re right. The Navy guy comes wandering in. This time he’s sober, but Jim doesn’t give him a chance. He just walks the length of the bar, spins the guy off his stool, says, “So you want to fight, eh?” and pokes him a terrific wallop that handily removes two front teeth. The management took an exceedingly dim view of the proceeding, and since Jim has created other such scenes down there in the past, asked him to kindly move by noon tomorrow. I missed all the fun, being across the street at the Dorchester for the cocktail party about which I wrote you. I then went to Sandy’s for dinner with Bill Dickinson, and thus came in long after the excitement. I argued the management out of kicking Jim out until Saturday, and said that I might as well go along—something I don’t think they had figured on, since this flat is comparatively inexpensive and handy. Where in the devil I’ll be moving I don’t know, I’ve got Bill Dickinson and Sam Hales alerted already since they live in large blocks of flats and might be able to wangle something through their agents. If I’d known this blowoff was coming I could have had Dickinson’s flat. He’ll be leaving for home in a few days, but Collie Small already has spoken for it … I’d like to find something out in Chelsea, London’s Greenwich Village, but that takes more time than I have. I just have to get out of town a couple of days this week, and that is going to cut down the search time considerably. Things are in a mite of a mess, I’d say … I love you, Betsy. Walter

  IN HIS NOVEMBER 25, 1943, letter Cronkite again confessed to boredom with the air-war story and expressed his wish to begin a new assignment. He also reported that he and McGlincy had moved into what he thought would be temporary lodgings at 78 Buckingham Gate. In fact, he would remain in that building (although changing flats in January) until July 1944.

  Thursday, Nov. 25, 1943

  My darling wife:

  This, according to the calendar, is Thanksgiving. You’d never know it here … I’m up country again on what was to have been the first leg of that extended trip I planned, although the situation has changed so that I’m going to have to return to London today, and probably won’t get out of there again until next Monday. It is now eight-thirty and I’m a little shocked to find myself up so early. I have done this uncivilized thing because the train I plan to catch back to town takes more than three hours and leaves here just before lunchtime. It has no diner and, without breakfast inside, I’m afraid the trip would be a little too Robinson Crusoe for me. I have to get back for three reasons (1) an afternoon conference with Mr. [N. D.] Blow at the Air Ministry (he’s the public relations officer, honest!), (2) get out the weekly column with [Jim] McGlincy, which has to be radioed today, and (3) get packed for the moving, about which I told you in the airmailer sent Monday. Jim and I haven’t found a place to live yet and temporarily are going to have to go into St. James’ Court, a hotel development in Buckingham Gate right behind the palace … I’m still going to look for a place by myself but I don’t have much hope … I’m up with [Collie] Small now, at the division headquarters where he hangs out. He’s quite a lad and I’m glad to have him working with me on this air stuff, which, incidentally, I wish to hell I could get off of for just a little while. I’m afraid I’m just
a bit “browned off,” as the RAF says, with the assignment. Things bore me instead of interesting me. Maybe that would be remedied if I could get you over here. I’ve been getting more and more lonely for you as the days go by. I didn’t think that was possible, my loneliness was so great at the very first. Thanksgiving is going to be like any other day, apparently. They are planning a turkey dinner and a dance here tonight, but, of course, I’ll be back in London. I’ll miss lunch altogether, work through to dinner, and probably eat at Sandy’s. Golly, how I’d like to be looking forward to a dinner with Molo and the family … I love you. Walter