After first traveling to Paris to help coordinate coverage of the unfolding story, Cronkite headed for the front on Christmas Eve. He made his base a hotel in Luxembourg City, where he returned every night to file his dispatches. General Patton’s Third Army had wheeled northward, and Cronkite reported on its race to relieve the defenders of Bastogne. An Army driver took him close to the front lines—close enough to come under fire. His days were full of dangerous and potentially fatal encounters; his nights included “a bottle of champagne, a hot bath and a warm bed,” indulgences for which, he later reported, he felt fortunate rather than guilty.
From page 13 of the Dunkirk (New York) Evening Observer, December 23, 1944:
CIVILIANS CHEER AGAIN AS COLUMNS MOVE UP TO FRONT
By Walter Cronkite
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, December 23—(UP)—In these tiny villages along the Franco-Belgian border, where the war came and went so quickly only four months ago, little knots of civilians gathered again at the crossroads … Today they were cheering again and giving little waves and smiles of assurance as the trucks roared by, going now into combat to keep the war from coming back to their worn stone door steps and to these wooden-shoed, bereted and worried civilians …
Half-tracks and tanks set up a terrible clatter as they ground over the cobblestones in the narrow streets of these ancient villages and filled every house with the stench of heated engines and overheated oil …
It takes more than a uniform and a cheery wave to get by American military police road patrols. My pocket is becoming worn from reaching for credentials.
There was even one rumor that the Germans had gone so far as to give [their] disguised troops packages of American cigarets.
One MP, mindful of the recent cigaret shortage, said:
“If we got any guys in American uniforms with American cigarets, we’ll know they’re spies. That’s one slipup old Rundstedt has made.”
From the front page of the (Reno) Nevada State Journal, December 27, 1944:
HALF OF GERMANS’ VEHICLES SMASHED
By Walter Cronkite
United Press War Correspondent
NINTH U.S. AIRFORCE ADVANCED HEADQUARTERS, Dec. 26. (UP)—More than half of the tanks, armored vehicles and motor transport with which the Germans roared back into Belgium 11 days ago have been destroyed by Ninth Airforce fighter-bombers alone in 36 hours of perfect weather …
Tonight 1500 square miles of territory overrun by Field Marsh Karl von Rundstedt’s counter-offensive were littered with burned out hulks of armor which were his reserves on which he had counted to turn the tide of battle.
The area was rapidly taking on the same graveyard appearance of Normandy in the days before the race for the German borders began …
In his letter of December 27, 1944, Cronkite marked their third Christmas spent apart. As had been the case when he wrote to her after Operation Market Garden, Cronkite provided few details of the Battle of the Bulge, still raging a few score miles away. Instead he told her about the peaceful holiday he had spent in his comfortable hotel in Luxembourg. His companions that Christmas were a glittering crew of American journalists. Ernest Hemingway was, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Martha Gellhorn was a veteran foreign correspondent and, since 1940, Hemingway’s wife. (They would divorce in 1945.) Leland Stowe was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American foreign correspondent. Gordon and Betty Gaskill were American journalists; Gordon had landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Desaree Boss cannot be identified.
On December 26, the day before he wrote to Betsy, elements of General Patton’s Fourth Armored Division broke through German lines to relieve the siege of Bastogne. Cronkite was at a forward command post south of the city the next morning when news came of the breakthrough. Just then Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the commander of the 101st Airborne, showed up, having rushed back from Washington, where he had gone for meetings before the battle began. After consulting with the local commander and checking his map, he climbed back into his jeep. Cronkite was standing nearby. The two men had known each other from Operation Market Garden, and Taylor decided to do the correspondent a favor. “Cronkite,” he said, “I’m going to Bastogne. Do you want to come?”
Cronkite, whose “bitterest disappointment” four months earlier had been the cancellation of the airborne assault on Paris he had been assigned to cover, had seen a lot of war in the meantime in Holland and in Belgium. He had survived enemy bombs, cannon fire, and mortar shells. He had seen German tanks rumbling down roads right in front of him. And his priorities, as a result, had shifted. He recalled General Taylor’s offer in A Reporter’s Life:
“The story would have been great—first correspondent into Bastogne.” But, as he explained to Taylor, he had no way to get a story out of Bastogne, so there was no point in his going. He could be more effective reporting on the battle from where he was. “That’s the excuse I gave to Taylor, and tried to explain to myself. But I knew the truth—and I suspect he did: Taylor’s drive to Bastogne could well have been a suicide mission. A lot of glory, perhaps, for a career officer; simply a sad footnote for a war correspondent.”
A slightly different version of this encounter appears in John S. D. Eisenhower’s The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge. Eisenhower, the son of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. According to his version, Taylor’s offer of a seat in his jeep was tendered not just to Cronkite but to three other correspondents as well: Joseph Driscoll of the New York Herald Tribune, Norman Clark of the London News Chronicle, and Cornelius Ryan of the London Daily Telegraph (later famed as the author of The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far). In Eisenhower’s account, “Cornelius Ryan spoke for the group: ‘No volunteers today, General.’ … None of them expected to see the General alive again.”
Either way, instead of being the first correspondent in Bastogne, Cronkite got to write a letter to Betsy.
Wednesday, December 27, 1944
My darlingest:
Well, my best resolutions about writing collapsed as once again it became a war of movement for me. With the German breakthrough I was ordered back to war corresponding, at least temporarily, and since last Wednesday I have been on the go. Wednesday I got a hurry-up call to go to Paris and, must admit, looked forward rather gleefully to spending the Christmas holiday there. But the original intention for me to help out down there on our busy continental desk collapsed almost before I arrived and Sunday, Christmas Eve to some, I was on my way to the front. I have been here four days now working like a dog but not doing particularly well at it. I’m just a little bitter in that I feel that my presence in this particular sector is unnecessary since both Collie Small and Bob Richards are here, but tomorrow I’m moving on to another area where the hunting may be better. Both Small and Richards can write my sort of stuff better than I can—and that ain’t good for the old morale. Incidentally, Collie I’m afraid won’t be with us much longer. He has developed faster than any man I ever know in the last four months. Satevepost [Saturday Evening Post] is really ga-ga over him. He has sold them a couple more stories and now they are about to put him on the staff. And if he doesn’t take that he is going with NBC for two or three times what UP pays. Lucky lad.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to write a Christmas day letter to you. It was an awfully lonely Christmas—the worst ever, I think. I must admit that the surroundings weren’t too unpleasant, but the fact that I was alone again without you made it almost unbearable. I was in Luxembourg Christmas day and that little principality is just as lovely as the postcards. It was a perfectly clean, sunlit day and driving through the mountains with the old-world villages perched on their sides, all covered like a picture postcard in the snow, was lovely. Christmas night I was back here at these particular digs for a big turkey dinner in a very nice, modern, warm hotel. Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Leland Stowe, Desaree Boss, Gordon and Betty Gaskill, Collie and a few others were here. We had some eggnog and everyone but old hard-working Cronkite, who had a fistful of mediocre stories
to do, got pretty well pied. I had a few drinks and filed my last story about midnight after which I was so tired I just collapsed into bed.
There is some pretty good news to report from my short stay in Paris—but I must emphasize I’m not putting too much hope in it until it all goes through. The idea is that [Virgil] Pinkley has finally been sold on the fact that those of us with more than two years service abroad certainly need home leave. He is trying to work out with New York a rotation scheme whereby sometime between February and April, [Sam] Hales, Cronkite, [Bob] Musel, [Jim] McGlincy and [Doug] Werner will get home for a few weeks. It, however, depends on his ability to get reinforcements from New York, which may be very, very difficult. Hales probably will be first to go since it seems that Eleanor is in bad shape again. (Keep that one under your hat—I don’t know whether I’m supposed to know it or not.) I’ll of course let you know just as soon as I hear anymore.
Notes in passing: Christmas day I thought more than once about Etta shedding a tear that Christmas day in 1941. And when we asked her what the matter was she said: “Because this may be our last Christmas together in a long time.” I love you, darling. Walter
WESTERN UNION LONDON VIA COMMERCIAL 23= [DATE STAMPED] DEC 27
BETSY CRONKITE=
3920 AGNES (KANSASCITYMO)=
DARLINGEST MERRY XMAS YOU JUDY ALL FAMILY STOP MAY THIS BE LAST LONELY ONE LIFELONG STOP LOVE FOREVER=
WALTER CRONKITE.
Bill Shadel was one of the “Murrow Boys” with CBS Radio. He reported on the D-Day landings and later, with Murrow, on the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp. After the war he served as a television anchorman for ABC News.
Friday, Jan. 3, 1944 [1945]
My darling wife:
I have just returned from a long, terribly cold, horribly tiring trip from Brussels but I want to get a note off to you. If these lids get too heavy and these arm muscles just cease to function I may have to mail it off before I finish the page.
I went to Brussels to get my warm field clothes. I think I told you that I left there to spend Christmas week-end in Paris with only my dress clothes and, since being rushed out of Paris to the break-through front, have been covering the war in them. I finally managed to wangle a jeep for the Brussels trip, and now I have my long underwear, boots, gloves and fur-lined leather flying clothes which will do a little to alleviate the zero weather here. Good old Sally Stronoch, the aged secretary in London, a couple of months ago finally got around to send part of my luggage over to Brussels. I cursed her roundly at the time because I thought she had sent the wrong pieces—they included miscellaneous items like the flying clothes for which it seemed I would have no earthly use for. And now I’m singing her praises. Hallelujah! I’m now about the most warmly dressed correspondent among the scribblers here who doll themselves up in the damndest assortment in an attempt to keep warm on these long open jeep rides to the front.
I took Lt. Frisbee, a censor, up with me as a driving companion. We had to go up by way of Longwy, Sedan, Charleville and Charletan because the German bulge has the direct road from Luxembourg out. It takes about seven hours and that isn’t any fun on these mountainous, often fog-bound icy roads, particularly in an open jeep into which the freezing wind and sleet bite like a million needles. But it is beautiful. Some day, in mid-winter, we must take that drive (in a heated car). Beautiful mountains, trees budding with ice drops, villages clinging precariously on side of hills. A veritable fairyland, to coin a phrase.
A wonderful thing happened to me the other day on the front. I’ve taken this frozen drive up to a village outside Bastogne with a driver and Bill Shadel of CBS. We’re standing there huddling against a wrecked building when a Piper Cub artillery observation plane putts over and this seedy GI next to me says “Hey, I wouldn’t do that for nuthin’. That’s dangerous.” I think this is a good story so get a couple more quotes from the GI, then his name and address, and finally ask, “What sort of outfit is this you’re with in this town—infantry, armored or what?” “Oh, me,” he says, “I’m with psychological warfare—public relations. I’m a driver. Wherever you correspondents want to go, I’ll drive you there.” He was just our driver, that was all. Give everybody my love, honey, keeping plenty for yourself.
IN A REPORTER’S LIFE, Cronkite told another, similar story about interviewing a GI who turned out to be his driver:
On one of the early days after I joined the Third Army press camp we were caught briefly in a firefight in a Belgian hamlet south of Bastogne. We piled out of the jeep and I ducked into a doorway. There was a GI there, and every once in a while he’d lean out and take a potshot with his carbine at the Germans down the block.
Ever the reporter, I shouted: “What’s your name? What’s your hometown?”
He shouted the answers back over his shoulder, keeping a wary eye out the door.
“And what’s your unit?” I asked.
Now he turned and gave me a long look.
“Hell, Mr. Cronkite,” he said, “I’m your driver.”
It could have been two different drivers, two different days in villages outside Bastogne. Or memory could be up to its old tricks.
From page 5 of the Daily Courier of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, January 5, 1945:
BASTOGNE LIKENED TO NAZI GETTYSBURG
By Robert Musel and Walter Cronkite
ADVANCED NINTH AIR FORCE HEADQUARTERS, Jan 5.—Bastogne may well prove to be a Germany “Gettysburg”—representing the high tide of the enemy’s ability to wage offensive war in the period between D-day and the end of hostilities.
But whatever fate awaits the Nazi war machine, it is now obvious that Marshal Karl Von Rundstedt’s brilliantly-conceived breakthrough into Belgium gained time—and time was one objective at least … But every German attack henceforth should be weaker unless the Germans have undisclosed reserves—and that seemed improbable …
From the front page of the Hayward (California) Review, January 19, 1945:
SHAEF REVEALS ARDENNES COST U.S. 55,421
By Walter Cronkite
PARIS, (UP)—Supreme Allied headquarters today placed the cost of the German Ardennes offensive at 55,421 Allied casualties but said 17 German divisions had been smashed or battled battered and that the Nazis had failed “seriously” to affect Allied plans and preparations for future operations.
The official Allied report on the German counteroffensive said that the operation was conceived by Adolf Hitler and Field Marshal Karl Von Rundstedt, “both of whom are equally responsible for its failure.”
The attack, said SHAEF, cost the Germans 120,000 men of whom 80,000 were killed or wounded and 40,000 taken prisoner …
Cronkite had been thrilled to visit Paris for the first time. But the city in the winter of 1944–45 was shorn of its appeal by the fuel shortage: Even the cancan dancers “had goose-pimples.”
Herb Caen, an Army Air Force officer during the war, would return to the San Francisco Chronicle and resume his column, which over the years turned him into one of the city’s best-known and beloved citizens. His friend Cronkite was a featured guest at San Francisco’s Herb Caen Day celebration in 1996, attended by 75,000 people. Caen died the following year.
January 26, 1945
Yesterday was your birthday and I spent most of the day wishing I could be dancing it away with you at some fancy spot somewhere …
I unintentionally spent a week in Paris. I flew down in a Piper Cub from Luxembourg Tuesday afternoon to check on some business intending to come back either Wednesday morning or Thursday. But, as it always seems to do in those cases, the weather closed in. Brucker, my pilot, and I made one stab at getting away Friday but the wind was so high it just whipped our Cub into tight spirals and we gave up. When I got back to Le Bourget that afternoon Boyd Lewis suggested I sit in at SHAEF and help him for a couple of days … I did that until Sunday and the weather was still closed in. I finally gave up the plane and took a jeep from Paris back here to Luxembourg. When I got back he
re you could have chopped me up and put me in cocktails. Now I’m planning to leave here today or early tomorrow and return to Brussels where I expect to remain until ordered to a front for temporary duty.
I didn’t have much fun in Paris this trip. To save fuel they have closed all the night clubs and none of the theaters or restaurants are heated. I had dinner one night with [Jim] McGlincy and lunch one afternoon with him in the Escargot which seems to be mentioned in most of the guide books. One evening Collie Small, Lt. Herb Caen (who used to be a columnist on the San Francisco Chronicle), Sam and I went to the Casino de Paris which was the original home grounds of Mistinguette, Chevalier, De Lys, and many others, but right now it stinks. Sitting there huddled in our overcoats we almost froze to death. And all the girls had goose-pimples. You really couldn’t blame them. More later … Walter
No LETTERS SURVIVE from Cronkite to Betsy for February. An American and British counteroffensive in January rolled back German advances in Belgium, and Cronkite covered the attacks by Ninth Air Force fighters that decimated the retreating Germans. By the start of February the line between the Allies and the Nazis had been restored to the positions of mid-December 1944. On March 7, U.S. soldiers captured the last remaining bridge across the Rhine River, at Remagen, Germany, and rushed soldiers across. On March 23, the British crossed the Rhine north of the Ruhr, fulfilling the long-delayed offensive planned for Operation Market Garden. The Red Army was closing in on Berlin from the east, only a few score miles from the city. By the end of March 1945, everyone knew that the Thousand Year Reich that Hitler had established in March 1933 would not live out its 13th year.
Cronkite's War Page 29