Cronkite's War
Page 32
CRONKITE: Mr. President, the only hot war we’ve got running at the moment is of course the one in Vietnam, and we have our difficulties here, quite obviously.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the [South Vietnamese] Government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it—the people of Vietnam—against the Communists. We are prepared to continue to assist them, but I don’t think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort, and, in my opinion, in the last 2 months the Government has gotten out of touch with the people.
The repressions against the Buddhists, we felt, were very unwise. Now all we can do is to make it very clear that we don’t think this is the way to win. It is my hope that this will become increasingly obvious to the Government, that they will take steps to try to bring back popular support for this very essential struggle.
Less than three months later, both Kennedy and Diem were dead, one of a lone assassin’s bullet, the other of a military coup covertly encouraged by the United States. Cronkite made several trips to Vietnam as a reporter over the next few years, interviewing generals and ordinary GIs and flying on missions over enemy territory in bombers, just as he had in World War II, and also in that new weapon of aerial warfare, the helicopter. Initially a supporter of the war, Cronkite listened to the doubts expressed by younger CBS colleagues reporting from the field. By 1965 he had developed serious misgivings about the wisdom and morality of America’s war in Vietnam, viewing the events, characteristically, through the prism of his memories of World War II. It “seems to this observer,” he wrote in his memoir,
that in those early post–World War II years we had squandered one of the greatest reservoirs of good-will any nation ever had. We let the admiration and hopes of the world’s people and their leaders drain away through the huge cracks in our idealism. All in the name of self-interest and military expediency.
Cronkite’s doubts came to a head in January and February 1968. The Communists’ Tet Offensive, launched on January 30, 1968, with near-simultaneous assaults on hundreds of South Vietnam’s cities and towns, including the capital city of Saigon, dispelled years of optimistic predictions by U.S. military spokesmen that the “light at the end of the tunnel” was in view in the Vietnam War. The offensive dragged on for four bloody weeks before subsiding, and Cronkite went to Vietnam for a firsthand look. While there, he had a conversation with Gen. Creighton B. Abrams, who was second in command of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam (and who would shortly replace the commanding general, William Westmoreland). Cronkite had last met Abrams during the Battle of the Bulge, when Abrams was a young officer commanding a tank battalion, the tip of General Patton’s Third Army as it rushed to the relief of Bastogne in December 1944. Cronkite found Abrams “remarkably candid in admitting that the Tet attack had come as a surprise and the serious extent of the damage, in casualties, material and morale.” General Westmoreland, in contrast, was proclaiming Tet an American victory—and asking for an additional 206,000 servicemen, to join the half million or so already in Vietnam, to finish the job. Cronkite was unpersuaded.
On his return he broadcast a CBS special report on the Tet Offensive on February 27, 1968, titled Report From Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?, that closed with the most famous editorial comments in American broadcast journalism:
To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past … It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
Cronkite’s public image, based as it was not only on his nightly screen presence as news anchorman but also on his association with popular memories of the “good war” of 1941–45, provided him with the moral authority to deliver such unvarnished criticisms of the war his country was fighting in Vietnam. Few other public figures in that time and place would have been able to do the same without provoking a furious counterreaction. “That’s it,” President Lyndon Johnson’s aides reported him as saying after he heard Cronkite’s remarks. “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.” A little less than a month later, on March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he was suspending most bombing missions against North Vietnam, that he would seek to open peace negotiations with the Communists, and that he would not seek reelection. The war ground on for another seven years, but under another President, who kept promising that his goal was to wind down the war, and without any resumption of public faith in ultimate and unconditional victory.
Walter Cronkite remained anchorman of the CBS Evening News until his retirement in 1981. He returned to the CBS Evening News in June 1984 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day, and he offered commentary on National Public Radio in June 2004 to mark its 60th anniversary. He also continued to narrate specials on the war for the Public Broadcasting System and other networks. In 1996 he published A Reporter’s Life, providing new insights and information about his wartime experiences, as well as his subsequent career.
Walter Cronkite reporting from South Vietnam on the Tet Offensive, February 1968
Betsy Cronkite died on March 15, 2005. Her death fell two weeks before the anniversary of the day, 60 years earlier in March 1945, when a young United Press correspondent returned home on leave from Europe and was reunited with his wife after 28 months of separation. Cronkite outlived the woman he addressed in his wartime letters as “Darlingest wife,” and to whom he was married for six decades, by a little over four years. He passed away on July 17, 2009.
—MAURICE ISSERMAN
AFTERWORD
After the happy couple was finally reunited in Europe, my grandfather was able to fulfill his promise to show Betsy all the places he had written about in his letters. From Belgium, where he worked to restore the United Press offices in the Lowlands, they took trips through the battle-scarred countryside to Paris, just as they had dreamed about for the past two and a half years. She was eventually credentialed as a foreign correspondent, and she helped him cover the Nuremberg trials. Then they headed to Moscow for UP. What they had hoped would be a three-month adventure turned into a two-year slog. While he constantly battled Soviet censorship, she worked at the American embassy so that they could have access to better rations. At least the monotony and the cold were broken up by frequent parties, including several with novelist John Steinbeck.
After they came home to have their first child (my aunt Nancy always wished they had waited, so she could have “Moscow” on her passport instead of “Kansas City”), they made their way to Washington, D.C. He joined CBS not as a “Murrow Boy” but as a journalist doing a little bit of everything in the early days of television.
His career was long and tremendously successful. And the same could be said of his marriage to Betsy. They raised two daughters in D.C. as he shuttled back and forth to New York. They moved to New York for good in 1957 and had their third and final child: my father, Chip. Now they were back in the city where they had said goodbye to each other in December of 1942, down at the old Maritime Building. I wonder if they ever returned to that building and had a drink for old times’ sake. They must have thought back to the dangerous ocean passages during the war when, later in life, they took cruises, even though the ships were fancier and my grandfather was often mobbed by fans. Now when he had to go off on assignment, they had to be parted for only a few days instead of years.
Gifted in his profession, my grandfather established many of the standards in the then brand-new field of television news, mostly by hewing to the old-fashioned wire service rules he had mastered in the Midwest and Europe: Be fast, be accurate, be hard-hitting, be objective. He was also blessed in his family
and personal life, building on the strong relationships he had formed in World War II. Andy Rooney remained a lifelong best friend, and Jim McGlincy remained a friend in need.
As a boy, I revered my grandfather, and now as a young journalist, I aspire to follow in his footsteps. When he was my age, the Germans had just invaded Poland, the United States was two years from entering the war, and my grandparents weren’t even married yet. As I look around at my colleagues at CBS News, where I now work, I hope to learn from them as they had learned from him. One of the veterans around here, Steven Besner, director of Face the Nation, said that he came to CBS in 1964. By that time, my grandfather had been working here for almost 15 years.
Everywhere I see the high standards for television news that he set during his years as anchor. Early on he recognized the importance of the medium, and he helped television journalism grow. My grandfather brought the no-nonsense, straight-news mentality of the United Press to his broadcasts. He even disliked people referring to the Evening News as “the show,” always insisting on the term “the broadcast.”
Walter Cronkite IV takes a driving lesson from his grandfather on Martha’s Vineyard, 2004.
Nothing was as sacred to him as the importance of objective journalism in a democracy. He refused to register for a political party and tried to never insert his opinions into his broadcasts. Although he famously voiced his concerns about the Vietnam War in 1968, saying that he believed the U.S. authorities were misleading the American people and that the war was locked in a stalemate, for the rest of his life he agonized about whether that had been the right thing to do.
Part of the reason is that my grandfather remained an ardent patriot throughout his life. Every single morning during those summers on Martha’s Vineyard, even when he was in his nineties, he would hobble out to haul up a huge American flag on the tall flagpole in front of his house. (Of course, given his competitive spirit, he aimed to have the tallest flagpole with the biggest flag in the neighborhood.) At dusk he would hobble back out and take down the flag. He taught us grandchildren how to fold it properly. A mini-scandal erupted in the household when we found out that when the grandchildren weren’t visiting, he would simply put it away neatly at night rather than go through the full triangular fold.
It can’t be overestimated how important Betsy was in his life. She kept him real, true to his roots and his best instincts. She kept him grounded and never allowed him to float away on the ego bubble that his television celebrity threatened to inflate. He was lucky to have found a partner who always made sure that he focused his efforts on being the best that he could in his career, not on shallow show business values. When my grandfather’s celebrity forced him to travel by private limo, my grandmother made a point of always traveling in New York by public bus—and made sure everyone knew it. Even when she was an old lady, her purse always jingled with bus tokens.
Betsy Cronkite with her young grandson Walter on Martha’s Vineyard
Ironically, the ties that bound them in their 60 happy years together after World War II were forged during those lonely years of separation. Throughout all his letters to Betsy runs the theme of desperately wanting what he could not have, and when they finally came together, he was determined never to let her go again. So from those years of deprivation and terrible loss, Walter and Betsy Cronkite found renewed life once again—standing side by side.
The letters to Betsy collected in this book show not only the importance of WWII to the figure he became but also the importance of this loving and enduring marriage.
—WALTER CRONKITE IV
TIME LINE FOR
WALTER CRONKITE
1916–2009
1916 Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr., is born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on November 4.
1932 Wins journalism competition in high school and writes for and delivers the Houston Post during summer break.
1933 Attends the University of Texas at Austin while juggling jobs with the Houston Press and the Scripps-Howard News Service.
1935 Drops out of college to pursue journalism full time.
1935–37 Works as a news and sports radio announcer in Kansas City and Oklahoma City; a United Press correspondent in Austin, Kansas City, and El Paso; and a public relations executive for Braniff Airways.
1936 Meets and begins courtship of Betsy Maxwell while working at Kansas City, Missouri, radio station KCMO.
1939 Joins the United Press news service.
1940 Marries Betsy Maxwell on March 30.
1942 Accredited as a war correspondent.
1942 Covers the battle of the North Atlantic and the invasion of North Africa. Leaves New York and wife Betsy Cronkite in early December, en route by convoy to United Kingdom.
1943 Covers air war from London and flies on a bombing mission over Germany.
1944 Flies in a bomber over Normandy on D-Day, is caught in a buzz bomb attack in London, lands in a glider with 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden, and covers the Battle of the Bulge.
1945–46 Covers the Allied victory in western Europe and the Nuremberg trials. Betsy Cronkite finally joins him in Europe.
1946–48 Is head of the United Press bureau in Moscow.
1950 Becomes a CBS News correspondent.
1962–81 Is anchor and managing editor of The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite.
2005 Betsy Cronkite dies on March 15, at age 89.
2009 Walter Cronkite dies on July 17, at age 92.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to the following for their invaluable assistance:
Tom Brokaw, for sharing his thoughts on Walter Cronkite’s wartime reporting.
Chip Cronkite and Deborah Rush Cronkite, for sharing photos and memories of Chip’s father and mother, Walter and Betsy Cronkite.
Don Carleton, executive director, along with the staff of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, for stewardship of the Walter Cronkite Papers and assistance to visiting researchers.
Linda Mason, Senior Vice President, Standards and Special Projects, CBS News, who graciously opened the CBS archives and who also allowed a certain CBS News associate producer to work on an outside project.
Doug Brinkley, author of Cronkite, for his insight and encouragement on this project.
Tim Gay, author of Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany With Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A. J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle (2012), for generously sharing the fruits of his research.
Reid Larson, research librarian at Hamilton College, for assistance on many matters, including tracking down Walter Cronkite’s wartime dispatches for the United Press.
Patrick Reynolds, Dean of Faculty at Hamilton College, for providing financial assistance for rights acquisition.
Carl Mehler, Director of Maps at National Geographic, for creating the map for this book.
Lisa Thomas, our hardworking editor at National Geographic.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baillie, Hugh. High Tension: The Recollections of Hugh Baillie. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959.
Beattie, Edward William. Diary of a Kriegie. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1946.
Brinkley, Douglas. Cronkite. New York: Harper, 2012.
Calder, Angus. The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945. New York: Pantheon, 1969.
Cronkite, Walter. A Reporter’s Life. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1996.
Cronkite, Walter, and Don Carleton. Conversations With Cronkite. Austin: Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, 2010.
Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.
Eisenhower, John S. D. The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.
Gay, Timothy M. Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany With Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A. J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle. New York: New American Library, 2012.
Harnett, Richard M., and Billy G. Ferguson. Unipress: United Press International, Covering the 20th Century. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 2003.
Longmate, Norman. The G.I.’s: The Americans in Britain, 1942–1945. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
———. How We Lived Then: A History of Every Day Life During the Second World War. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1971.
Middleton, Drew. Our Share of the Night: A Personal Narrative of the War Years. New York: Viking Press, 1946.
Reynolds, David. Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945. New York: Random House, 1995.
Riess, Curt, ed. They Were There: The Story of World War II and How It Came About, by America’s Foremost Correspondents. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944.
Rooney, Andy. My War. New York: Public Affairs, 2002.
Salisbury, Harrison. A Journey for Our Times: A Memoir. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1984.
Severeid, Eric. Not So Wild a Dream. New York: Atheneum, 1976.
Snyder, Louis L., ed. Masterpieces of War Reporting: The Great Moments of World War II. New York: Julian Messner, 1962.
Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. The Women Who Wrote the War. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999.