Christmas still continues. I got your father’s razor today. Honey, you shouldn’t have done that. What is he shaving with? It was a real blessing, though, to get back on the Schick standard. Thanks so much, both to you and Petty. Incidentally, I have a gift to bring back to him when that day comes. It is a real Commando knife, lovely for slitting throats, with massive grip, dagger point, both sides sharpened to razor thickness, and perfectly balanced for throwing or jabbing. It has its own scabbard, too, with slots through which a belt will fasten. It was given me by old Tom Beasley, the octogenarian sword maker, who forged the Stalingrad sword.
Thank everyone for the lovely gifts again. I’m carrying that knitwear around in my pocket to amuse my haughty friends, but if it turns any colder I expect to start wearing it. I have put the picture of you with the bow in your hair holding Judy into the frame Betty and Allan sent because I like it better that the one in cap and gown. I worship you. Forever, Walter
THE INVASION WAS a preoccupation difficult to escape. Even the gift of a Boy Scout knife became an occasion for Cronkite to look forward to his time “in the field,” i.e., covering the ground war in Europe, “where if all goes well, we will all be before long.”
Hollywood director Preston Sturges’s screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek was both popular and controversial. Its plot centers on a small-town girl who, having had too much to drink at a farewell party for departing soldiers, marries and becomes impregnated by one of them—and can’t quite recall his name. Racy stuff for 1944, as Cronkite’s comment in his January 10, 1944, letter suggested.
Monday, January 10, 1944
Mein Leibling,
It now looks as if my chances of getting your birthday gift to you by the twenty-fifth are practically shot. I figured that if I was able to get it today, what with the improved mail service, I might still have a chance of presenting it to you (with the help of the Army postal service) on time. But I have been stalled off again, and now it seems that I might have to suffer another week’s delay …
Christmas might come to some folks but once a year, but to Cronkite it is beginning to look like a year-round proposition. Today the civilian box with Molo, Betty and Allan, and the Manrings’ presents arrived. The chess set from Molo is a little darb and I’m looking forward to inveigling [Jim] McGlincy into a game … And tell Molo thanks also for the Nestles chocolate which is the most appreciated and handiest single food item. I’m munching one of Betty and Allan’s jumbo Hershey bars right now. No testimonial is needed there. Thanks to you, honey, for the Scout knife which, as you know, I did need and want very badly. I could never face the other boys on the hikes unless I had one. Kidding aside, such a knife is a must in the field, where, if all goes well, we will all be before long. I appreciate the typewriter ribbon from Betty, although, as you see, I haven’t taken the hint yet and replaced this worn one. I don’t know who to thank for the socks, which were unwrapped, but whoever is responsible is a guardian angel. I’m sorry the box arrived too late for me to get the “thank you’s” in my earlier letters, and I hope the fact that I didn’t, did not cause too much anxiety around. The box was mailed November 19, so you can see how much slower is the civilian mail.
After I wrote you yesterday I discovered that “Morgan’s Creek” was playing right up the street at the Metropole Theater in Victoria on a double bill with “Best Foot Forward.” It was the first non West End cinema I had been to, and I was amazed to find that the highest-priced seat was 4/6—ninety cents—as opposed to the 12/6—$2.30—top in Leicester Square. I only had to queue for five or ten minutes and got a pretty good balcony seat for 3/6—seventy cents. That’s for me. I thought “Morgan’s Creek” was a screamingly funny movie, with all the Sturgess touches, but in something of bad taste. It hardly seemed that the subject was the laughing matter they made of it … More, I love you, Walter
BEST FOOT FORWARD, a movie musical featuring Lucille Ball, was based on a 1941 Broadway production of the same name. Its finale is a number called “Buckle Down, Winsocki.”
The German battle cruiser Scharnhorst had preyed on Murmansk-bound Allied convoys from its base in Norway. It was sunk in an ambush by the Royal Navy in Norwegian waters on December 26, 1943.
Cronkite’s unexpected discovery of a decent restaurant with lobster and steak on the menu saved an otherwise forgettable night out, as he reported in his second letter of January 10.
January 10, 1943 [1944]
Betsy, darling:
Continuing where I left off: “Best Foot Forward,” which was supposed to be a pretty good film, wasn’t even a good “B” picture and I almost left in the middle but wanted to hear the “March On, Winooski” finale—which also wasn’t so hot. The Gaumont-British newsreel—“Presenting the truth to the free peoples of the world”—was taken up almost completely with shots of seamen telling their parts in the sinking of the Scharnhorst. You can have no doubt that this is a seafaring nation and that the people’s first love is the sea when you watch them react to naval news. It is now almost two weeks (or is it more?) since the German battleship was defeated but rehashes of the news with more and more personal experience stories each just like the last are still front page despite the tightness of the papers, the sensational developments on the Russian front, and the jet-plane.
It was raining when I left the theater … I stumbled onto “Chez Gaston’s.” It seemed to be a very plain, ordinary French restaurant and practically everything was, as they say here, “off”—meaning “off.” The only thing on the menu that they still had in the kitchen was roast beef. I had that, and “grande hors d’oeuvres” which I assumed to be something special in the way of hors d’oeuvres, but which turned out to be the same tiny hunk of sardine, beets (quaintly referred to in this beknighted land as “beet roots”) and a dab of potato salad. Needless to say, the meal wasn’t so hot, but just as I was finishing who should walk in but John Parris, who covers refugee governments for us. Well, it turns out that in the basement of this restaurant is the refugee Belgian club of which I’d often heard John speak. So he took me down to this lovely, intimate little club over which Gaston presides with its tiny bar at one end, its few tables with checked cloths at the other, and its walls lined with pictures of Belgian pilots in the RAF, many of whom aren’t around any more. I sat there and drooled while John had beautiful lobster neuburg—so much that he had to turn down the steak Gaston offered. Gaston made me a member, and home to bed. I love you, Walter
FROM THE FRONT-PAGE lead story of the New York World-Telegram, January 12, 1944:
AMERICANS BLAST PLANTS WEST OF BERLIN DESPITE FURY OF ENEMY RESISTANCE
By Walter Cronkite
United Press Staff Correspondent
LONDON, Jan. 12—Sixty-four American planes—59 heavy bombers and five fighters—were lost yesterday in one of the biggest sky battles of the war over Germany, in which the U.S. bomber gunners and fighter pilots shot down more than 100 Nazi interceptor planes, it was announced officially tonight …
More than 700 Flying Fortresses and Liberators, escorted by hundreds of Thunderbolts, Lightnings and new-type long-range fighters smashed through an all-out Nazi fighter and flak defense to attack German fighter assembly plants at Oschersleben, Halberstadt and Brunswick, west of Berlin, “with excellent results,” a communiqué said …
This raid proved a significant harbinger of things to come. For the first time the new P-51 Mustang fighters (the “new-type long-range fighters” mentioned but unnamed in Cronkite’s January 12, 1944, dispatch) rendezvoused with bombers to escort them home after a mission over Germany. Eighth Air Force bombers soon intensified their attacks on the German aviation industry, especially during “Big Week,” February 20–25, 1944. These attacks were intended both to disrupt the delivery of new planes to the Luftwaffe and to lure German fighters into dogfights with the new American escort fighters. Despite the attacks, German aircraft production continued to increase until September 1944; on the other hand, the Germans were losin
g 2,000 planes a month in aerial combat in the spring of 1944, and those planes (and more important, their pilots) could not be replaced. Because of Luftwaffe losses that spring, the coming invasion of western Europe would not face serious challenge from the air. On D-Day, the Allies sent more than 12,000 aircraft, including over 5,000 fighters, in the skies over Normandy; the Germans mustered barely 300 planes, most of them quickly shot down. Strategic bombing of German transportation systems and oil supplies also aided the Allies’ ground forces by hampering German counterattacks.
The “big air battle” that Cronkite referred to in his January 14, 1944, letter had taken place three days before, when 529 B-17s and 138 B-24s were dispatched to attack three aviation industry targets in Germany: Oschersleben, Halberstadt, and Brunswick. More than 500 German fighters rose to meet them, and more than 60 U.S. bombers were lost. “DNB” was the official Nazi German news agency, Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro.
Cronkite’s use of “shhh” was meant to avoid censorship; in the context it was used, he seems to be referring to plans being laid for reporters to cover the story of the invasion.
His trouble with “kindergarten color stuff” in his German language lesson is a reference to the color blindness that led to his draft deferment back in 1941.
Friday, Jan. 14, 1944
My darlingest:
This is the first letter since Monday, but believe me, it has been a vicious week. The big air battle broke Tuesday and ever since then, until today, I have been constantly on the go. I handled the story here in London on the desk, directing [Collie] Small and [Doug] Werner in the field, writing their telephoned stories, and typing the whole thing together into our air lead. We hopped all over the yarn, which the Air Force public relations staff stretched into a three-day story for me by not getting out a communiqué until late Wednesday night. I was having dinner Tuesday night at Sandy’s with [Ed] Beattie, Drew Middleton of New York Times, Mrs. Middleton, and Gladwin Hill, my direct competitor on AP, when the office phoned to say that German radio was claiming [censored] American planes, [censored] of them four-motored bombers, shot down. DNB normally exaggerates, but not that much, so suspecting that something was in the wind, I beat it back to the office. I called Collie and Doug, who now spend all their time on the fields, and we began wrapping the thing up. We did all right. The Ministry of Information’s “impact sheet” which is radioed over here daily and shows the play various stories are getting in the New York, Washington and Chicago papers, showed our UP stories in most competitive papers. We collected five congratulatory cables from the New York officials including one from [Hugh] Baillie which said: “Congratulations all participating our terrific airwar eyewitnesser which most interesting, graphic, vivid description monthalong.” Harry Ferguson, [UP] assistant general news manager, cabled: “Congratulations to Cronkite, Small, Werner on airwar eyewitness stuff. It’s very fancy reporting and exclusive so far.” What pleases me most is that we did our job with just half the number of staffers AP turned out on the job. As I started out to say, it took a lot of work. I was at the office Tuesday night until one a.m. Wednesday I was on the job at eight-thirty (two hours earlier than usual and didn’t finish until six-thirty when I had to dash to the Savoy to meet and eat with four other air correspondents (Hill, Fred Graham of NY Times, John Dursten of NY Her-Trib, and Joe Willicombe, INS) and Colonel Bob Parham and Major George Kirksey of the shhh planning our parts of the shhh. We had violent arguments, got a little business done during which we sold Parham, a former Unipresser I once knew in Texas, a bill of goods on the communication set-up we want, and broke up about midnight after which I had a series of telephone talks with the office. I was worn out by yesterday and intended to come home and write you and get to bed early. But other things were in the wind, it turned out. I was invited to go with Beattie to a cocktail party at the MOI (Ministry of Information) to introduce a couple of new censors but I never made that either because the long-awaited announcement that the new Mustang fighter is here was released …
That kept me tied up in the office until seven-thirty when I went down to the Wellington in Fleet street for dinner. I went back to the office later and battled with censorship on the Mustang story, finally getting away about ten o’clock … I collapsed into bed and slept until nine-thirty this morning. I had breakfast (sausage and bacon, cold toast, jam and tea) and dressed leisurely, finally reaching the office about eleven. I was to take N.D. Blow, public relations officer for the Air Ministry, to lunch so I invited him to come along to Gaston’s. We were having a sherry brandy at the bar there when Beattie, Middleton and Henry J. Taylor of Scripps-Howard, a visiting fireman, came down. We all teamed up and were bored by Taylor’s personal experiences for a couple of hours. (By the way, the Times had an editorial page feature about him in one of the editions Betty has recently sent.) Taking him back by the Dorchester later, he said that he had broken one of the keys on his typewriter that morning, and I said, “Not the letter ‘I’, I hope?” Beattie almost exploded and Middleton in his dour, I-can’t-be-too-tolerant way, said: “You can always spell it “Eeye” in the cable copy.” The result was that Blow and I didn’t get to talk business and I’ll have to repeat the luncheon performance again next week.
This afternoon I crowded in my second Berlitz lesson, this time from a different teacher. They change teachers on you as often as possible so you won’t learn to understand just one person’s foreign language. This teacher, Frau Schultz (honest!), wasn’t half the teacher Fraulein Green was, and the lesson was sort of disappointing. Also I am disturbed by the fact that I called for a lesson Monday afternoon but was told it would be impossible that day, and after Berlitz’ solemn promise that I could call any morning and get a lesson that afternoon. Whereas after the first lesson I could say only “the door is green,” I can now say, “the door is not green, it is blue.” Now if I could just tell whether it is green or blue I would be okay. I have, of course, thrown the Berlitz system in to a spin inasmuch as they depend on this kindergarten color stuff—and I never know whether the pencil is brown or green or red. The same goes for das buch, dar schuh, dis feder, die karte, das papier.
There was air action today and I got back to the office in time to do that story. I had dinner at the Wellington again with [Jim] McGlincy and Sam [Hales]. McGlincy is working on the desk tonight, so I came home alone where, for the first time I remembered that I had ordered dinner for tonight. Ah, well, just five shillings down the drain.
I love you, my darling, and think of you constantly. Tell little Miss Judy and all the family hello for me. Forever, Walter
“BETSYMAS EVE” WAS the day before Betsy Cronkite’s birthday. She turned 28 years old in 1944.
Col. Leslie Arnold was part of a team of pilots from the U.S. Army Air Service who in 1924 flew three planes around the world in the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe. It took them nearly six months to complete the journey.
Monday, January 24, 1944
My precious Betsy,
Here it is Betsymas Eve and we are still apart and I am very lonely and unhappy. How much I would like to be with you on your birthday—as well as the other 364 days of every year. Maybe we could go to Keen’s for a chop, and then see a show, and because it is your birthday, we would make it a play instead of a musical (although I might put up a momentary argument for “Oklahoma.”) And if we weren’t in too much of a hurry to get home to let Little Dog in on the celebration, we could stop in Louis and Armand’s for a drink. On second thought, let’s make it “Allen’s” just for old time’s sake? I’d rather do that than have the party the Moorheads suggested. I’d like to be alone, just with you. Would that be all right?
Honey, I was terribly delayed in getting your birthday present, but, as will be apparent when I can explain it to you more fully, it wasn’t my fault. I mailed it today, air mail, and it should be along a week or so after this letter.
Today I spent most of the hours out on an airdrome to which I went shortly after dawn intendi
ng to make a quick, one-day trip to Northern Ireland for a story. But the pilot said that, even if we succeeded getting into the Irish ‘drome, there wouldn’t be a chance of getting off again to return here tonight, and I had to be back for an RAF sortie tomorrow. So I didn’t go. Instead I picked up a couple of small stories at the airfield chatting with a Colonel [Leslie] Arnold, one of the 1924 round-the-world fliers and, more recently, assistant to Captain Eddie Rickenbacker in Eastern Airlines. There was a fellow named Oster there too, who used to be with Delta Airlines in Dallas and knows a lot of airplane people I know, including Beattie. He informed me that Jim Shelby, who I knew when he was Fort Worth passenger agent for Braniff, is now in this theater in charge of Atlantic ferry service priorities. He might come in very handy if I should get a chance for a quick-trip home (something for which I pray without much hope) and I intend to look him up later this week. Also out there is Randolph Dyer, Charles’ youngest brother, who has risen from an enlisted aerial gunner in the Pacific to a first lieutenancy over here, where he is a technical inspector. He said today that he had been accepted for pilot training and hoped to be returning to the States for it within a couple of months. Ah, youth!… I adore you, you know. Walter
Cronkite's War Page 18