Cronkite's War

by Walter Cronkite, IV

  Because of the nature of the job I probably would have to spend a few occasional nights—that is evenings—at work, but the rest of the time would be ours and we would have a good time I am sure. Foreign corresponding on the proper plane involves a lot of protocol and there would be a certain number of cocktail parties and dinners which would have be reciprocated, a process calculated to strain the budget and the imagination. The imagination would be strained in figuring out how to get it on the expense account.

  About clothes: I think it is a little premature to get down to that minute a plan of campaign, but generally a safe rule would be to cram in all the clothing you possibly could under whatever baggage allowance you were forced to work. And, above all, don’t bring any old clothes. Bring them as new as you possibly can, because they may have to last for a long time … Typewriter—yes, bring one along, but not an old one. If we can afford it when that stage is reached, try to get a new, substantial portable. I now have this Hermes, which is a lovely little job for emergency use to be carted around on airplanes when weight is a problem, but which is like owning a Stutz in Arkansas—nobody has any spare parts. All of this, of course, is predicated on your coming over before the end of the business. If you don’t come until later, then we will have to change signals, because undoubtedly the situation will alter somewhat. I love you, honey. Send some fruit juice.

  IN JULY AND AUGUST 1944, Cronkite continued to file dispatches on the air war. Allied bombers were pounding German cities and industry, focusing much of their efforts against German oil depots and refineries. That continued to be an important story—because the German war machine would grind to a halt when its supplies of oil and gasoline ran out. But Americans back home were anxiously following developments on the beaches and among the hedgerows of Normandy, and the air war was increasingly consigned to the inside pages of newspapers. A top-level advisory group sent Gen. Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold a secret report in August 1944, noting, ominously from the perspective of the Air Force brass: “The hot pilot is being supplanted in national esteem by G.I. Joe.” From Cronkite’s perspective, being the “youthful dean of the air-war writers” was no longer a particularly desirable post within the United Press hierarchy.

  Cronkite must have chosen his words carefully in his letter of August 15, 1944, because he wrote it on the eve of what would have been his first assignment covering ground combat, an attempt by American airborne troops to liberate Paris. The airborne veterans of Normandy, the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, were going to jump into Rambouillet Forest and seize the French capital from its German occupiers. As he recalled in A Reporter’s Life, Cronkite was going to jump as well.

  Troops from the 101st Airborne looking for survivors of a glider crash following Operation Market Garden, September 17, 1944

  However, two factors suggest that Cronkite’s memory may have again proved mistaken. First, while he was familiar with parachutes from his flights on U.S. bombers, most recently on June 6, there is no evidence that he had ever actually jumped from a plane. Parachuting under fire behind enemy lines would be a difficult initiation, and neither the military nor the United Press was eager to add to the list of dead correspondents. The second, and more compelling piece of evidence, is found in this August 15, 1944, letter to Betsy: “We are going to be working with a swell bunch of Americans. Catenhauser, incidentally, is one of their tribe.” To circumvent military censorship, Cronkite sometimes used coded references that he knew Betsy would understand. As he had told her in a letter on Monday, May 15, 1944, Robert W. Catenhauser was a glider pilot—which suggests that the reference to Catenhauser’s “tribe” signaled to Betsy that Cronkite would be making a glider landing.

  Although Cronkite wasn’t sure of Catenhauser’s fate when he wrote the August 15 letter, the glider pilot had indeed survived the Normandy invasion, and lived to age 96.

  Whatever the means, Cronkite was eager to accompany the airborne troops on their mission. He was clearly relieved at the prospect of being freed from his desk job in London, especially when he might gain one of the war’s great scoops.

  The acronym SHAEF stood for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters.

  Tuesday, August 15, 1944

  My darlingest wife:

  I’m not writing this from my usual post. I am writing tonight from an airbase somewhere in England. Soon I will be leaving on an assignment that is back down the old groove, something of the type of February, 1943, that you will remember. Well, not exactly like that, so don’t try to gather too much from that feeble bit of information. By the time you get this letter, you probably will know all about it. At any rate, I hope so.

  What I want to say, though, darling, is that there is considerable danger involved in this job. I don’t feel that I am unnecessarily worrying you by reporting that, inasmuch as it will all be over before you ever get this note. You will not have heard from me when the first news breaks, but I hope you are able to read and hear something by me. Bill Boni is the only other American newspaperman who will be on the story. He is with the AP. Our stories will be pooled—will go to all newspapers and press services, at least for the first several days. It is not inconceivable that if all goes well, he and I might share the biggest story out of France yet. It is a great chance—one that I willingly took, indeed jumped at, when [Virgil] Pinkley offered it. As you perhaps have been able to read between the lines of my too frequent letters, I have been in terrible doldrums since D-day, with everyone else in action and my sitting by on the SHAEF desk. Now, at last, I am getting into the show and with a splurge that may prove bigger than any correspondent has had since the original landing.

  We are going to be working with a swell bunch of Americans. Catenhauser, incidentally, is one of their tribe, but I haven’t run across him yet and don’t know that I will. (In fact, I don’t know that Catenhauser came out of the original landing okay.) Boni and I came down here to headquarters this afternoon and since then have been loaded down with equipment and drinks, none of which they permit us to pay for. That, incidentally, is okay with me since I suddenly realized I did not have any English money along and was equipped only with two hundred dollars worth of travelers checks.

  I don’t know how long I will be away from England. The assignment could last from a week to a month or longer, and after that I might be in such a favorable position compared to other correspondents that the office will choose to leave me with this outfit. There is no certainty about that, however, and the last thing Pinkley told me late yesterday was that his prime interest still was to get me into Amsterdam and get things rolling there. So I assume that as soon as this initial story is over, I’ll be returning here to go on to Amsterdam.

  I’ll write again, honey, just as soon as I can. I hope you will have made some progress by then in getting over. Meantime, darling, remember that I love you, very, very much. And tell Judy I love her too. Forever, Walter

  By THE TIME Betsy received Cronkite’s letter of August 15, she had already been forewarned to ignore its contents.

  WESTERN UNION LONDON VIA COMMERCIAL [TIME STAMPED] AUG 21

  BETSY CRONKITE=

  3920 AGNES KASCITYMO=

  … IGNORE AUGST FIFTEEN VMAILER STOP DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT CANCELLED STOP LOVE=

  WALTER CRONKITE.=

  Cronkite’s next letter to Betsy, sent on August 20, 1944, was among his gloomiest. The rapid advance of Allied armies across France in late July and early August made the planned airborne operation to capture Paris unnecessary, and it was abandoned, to Cronkite’s great disappointment. Paris would instead be liberated by the combined efforts of Allied ground forces and the French resistance movement on August 25, 1944.

  With the belief that the war would be over by Christmas, American and British airborne leaders were anxious to support the advance. In August new airborne missions were repeatedly scheduled and just as regularly canceled, and Cronkite despaired of ever getting into combat. As he told Betsy
in a letter later that year, “I was beginning to look a little foolish around the office. Four times I dashed in, picked up expense money, left last instructions with various people, and dashed out to the wars in my battle clothes only to return a few days later with the whole thing called off.”

  One of the missions involved a plan to land a Polish airborne division outside Brussels. That one he was not so sorry to see canceled, as he recalled in A Reporter’s Life: “The Free Poles were a wild bunch. They were tough and mean and impatient to get back at the Germans—and the Russians, for that matter. Few of them spoke English, and we were going to land among not only German soldiers but French- and Flemish-speaking Belgians. The chances were good that I would be shot by someone in this Babelian hell.”

  When Cronkite finally landed on the Continent in mid-September, he found himself in the land of his paternal ancestors, Holland.

  Louis Gerteis was a former United Press correspondent who went to work for the Office of War Information’s foreign news bureau at the start of the war. From the context of the letter, he was clearly an acquaintance of both Cronkite and Betsy—and perhaps not the snappiest of dressers.

  August 20, 1944

  Darlingest:

  I have just returned to town after one of the bitterest disappointments of my life. I wrote you Tuesday night telling you that I was about to go on a big assignment. Well, I was. I probably would have been the first American correspondent in Paris, although I might have had to share the honor with Bill Boni of AP. Unfortunately I still can’t give you all the details. But I can say that we waited five days for our little show to come off, knowing each day that our chances of going were growing slimmer. Then, finally, Saturday they definitely cancelled the whole plan. So here I am back at the same old stand in the same old slough of despond which has been growing deeper and blacker ever since D Day left me standing on the platform holding the sack.

  Things are really in terrible shape now. This assignment had sort of snapped me out of my doldrums, and with its collapse all my hopes collapsed too. I can’t seem to get back into the groove. I don’t feel that I have done a really useful thing for the UP in weeks, and I’m afraid [Virgil] Pinkley feels that way too. I’ve been trying to find a little release with social activity but don’t feel any better for that. This expensive flat to elude buzz bombs as best one can has added another burden which is oppressive. In a few days I shall have to draft another month’s rent of some $130 from our bank account and that is too damned depressing for words. Part of my unhappiness stems also from the clothing situation. I had sort of thought a couple of months ago that I might draft enough money to get a couple of decent suits, a pair of shoes or so, and other accessories, but now with the other heavy drain on the bank account I can’t do that. And frankly I look like hell. I’m down to something like 155 pounds. My blue tweed (Bonds—$22.50) fits me like a hand-me-down. My three-year-old Rothschild brown job looks like I had worn it every day of those three years and the cuffs are even frayed. I’m still wearing those Wellington-last Bostonians although the tops have cracked now and before long I suppose my corns will be showing. In short, I feel that I look like Louis Gerteis only not so fat. My teeth have gone to hell but I just can’t seem to get around to doing anything about them. You aren’t here and the prospect of home leave seems definitely to have flown out the window in which poverty has crawled. Nuts!

  I’m sorry to unload this on you, honey, but—well, there it is. I don’t know whether you have made any headway or not regarding coming over. As I said earlier, home leave seems definitely out. Things are simply moving too fast and our manpower situation is too acute for anyone’s release. Unless some miracle occurs, I doubt now that I shall be seeing the States again for many, many months perhaps stretching beyond a year. That is plenty gloomy. I want to see you and Mom and the grandfolks and Judy and bright lights and rest. Maybe I won’t mail this. If I do, forgive me. I love you, honey, Walter

  CRONKITE NEED NOT have worried about sitting out the remainder of the war behind a desk in London. His letter of September 15, 1944, was written two days before the start of the largest airborne operation in the history of warfare—the off-and-on “assignment” he mentions in his opening lines. Operation Market Garden, the brainchild of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, was a combined air (“Market”) and ground (“Garden”) attack intended to open up a back route into Germany by seizing a line of bridges on the north-south highway running across eastern Holland, bypassing the Nazis’ vaunted Siegfried defensive line, then pushing across the Rhine River into the heartland of industrial Germany.

  Even on the eve of a combat assignment, Cronkite continued to fret about the lack of progress in arranging for Betsy to join him. And about the state of his wardrobe.

  September 15, 1944

  My darling: I accidentally addressed this to 4007 Kenwood—absent-minded me!

  I’m back here again for another hiatus. That “assignment” I keep mentioning is an off and on again proposition. I get back Wednesday from the latest alert and am leaving again tomorrow morning on another. My morale isn’t being helped any by these continual periods of expectant buoyancy followed almost immediately by complete deflation. Well, perhaps things will go as scheduled this time.

  When I got back your cable was waiting for me. The office could not have communicated it to me because I was at a secret address and sealed in from any contact with the outside world. I called [Marcel] Wallenstein’s office just as soon as I got it and learned that he is on the continent somewhere and will not be returning here for some time. I don’t think I will be anywhere in the neighborhood where he is at the moment, and it would be hopeless to try to take up the matter by mail now. I’m completely at a loss to understand exactly what is happening back there …

  What the situation is going to be about getting you over simply as a civilian traveler I haven’t the foggiest idea either. It simply is impossible to foresee the various governments’ policies on this one, and I suppose we will just have to wait and hope. Your fear that you might arrive here just in time to tell me good-bye as I leave for a visit in the States is, of course, honey, preposterous. No such thing could possibly occur. As a matter of fact, the way things look now, I don’t see much chance of home leave for many, many months. Another year under conditions similar to this would not surprise me. Already the confusion of peace is spreading over Europe and it is going to get worse before it gets better. All the world at war was a comparatively easy one to figure out. With half the world at peace and the other half still at war it is going to be tougher …

  Give my love to all the family and to that little red-haid. Love and hugs, Walter

  OPERATION MARKET GARDEN played havoc with Cronkite’s correspondence, but when news of the Allied airborne invasion of Holland hit American newspapers on the morning of September 17, Betsy must have known that her husband had found the new great war story he had aspired to cover since the previous spring. For nearly three weeks, from September 15 through October 3, Cronkite was unable to send her a letter, so she had to find out about his whereabouts (and survival) from his dispatches from the war’s latest front line in eastern Holland. The September 17 airborne assault (the “Market” portion of Operation Market Garden) was undertaken by the U.S. 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, the British First Airborne Division, and the Polish Brigade. The 101st Airborne made a parachute and glider landing north of Eindhoven, its immediate objective the seizure of bridges across the Son and Veghel Rivers northwest of the city. Unlike those in Normandy on D-Day, the landings this time took place in daylight and went fairly smoothly, with most parachutists and gliders landing at or near their drop zones.

  Cronkite was assigned to a glider with about 14 other men. Their Waco glider put down in a potato patch, a soft landing, although bumpy enough that the soldiers’ helmets flew off and rolled on the floor. Cronkite grabbed what he thought was his helmet and headed for the unit’s predetermined rendezvous point—a nearby drainage di
tch. He was surprised when a soldier called him “Lieutenant” and asked if he was sure of his directions. “I shouted back I wasn’t a lieutenant,” Cronkite recalled in A Reporter’s Life. “I was a war correspondent. With a full GI vocabulary of unrepeatable words he advised me, rather strongly, that I was wearing a helmet with an officer’s big white stripe down its back.”

  The rest of the first day went well for the 101st. The paratroopers met only light resistance and seized four out of the five bridges they had been assigned to take. The failure to capture the fifth bridge, blown up by the Germans, would, however, slow the Allied ground advance.

  During the bombing of Eindhoven, for which he provided a dramatic account in his September 21 UP dispatch, Cronkite was separated from his companion, CBS reporter Bill Downs. He feared the worst, until he later bumped into Downs in the bar of the Hotel Metropole in Brussels. A few days later, back in Holland, he and Downs found themselves separated from the American soldiers they had been accompanying, and then caught in a hail of mortar and small-arms fire. Huddling together for shelter in a ditch, Downs yelled over the din of the firing, “Hey, just remember, Cronkite, these are the good old days.” On another occasion, at nighttime, Cronkite was riding in a jeep with a GI driver when five German tanks came rolling toward them. They pulled off the road, fearing the worst, but when the tanks rolled by, a German soldier, apparently assuming they were all in the same army, called out a friendly greeting. (Or, at least, that’s one way Cronkite told the story; in another version, the Germans drove right by them, oblivious to their presence.) If Cronkite felt he had missed the real war up until then, Holland cured him of any lingering regrets.