1948. Berliners Celebrate Christmas as the Airlift Continues

Bill Downs and Larry LeSueur Reporting from Berlin

A group of children with gifts from the Berlin airlift, 1948 (Photo by Hank Walker for Life magazine – source)

Bill Downs was the CBS Berlin correspondent throughout the blockade in 1948 and 1949. During that time he received visits from CBS colleagues and fellow Murrow Boys who also made reports, including Edward R. Murrow and Larry LeSueur (then the UN correspondent), whose Berlin Christmas reports are also featured below.

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 19, 1948

Bisected Berlin has become so used to tension and crisis that every time there is a short period of quiet, rumors begin circulating as if to fill the vacuum.

The past few days we have been hearing whispers of a projected putsch by the Communist-led East Berlin government in which these unfounded reports say armed East sector police would march into the blockaded West sectors and take over. A number of dates have been mentioned. One rumor said the putsch would come on Christmas. Another said it would be made the first week in January when the newly elected West Berlin city assembly holds its first meeting.

So persistent were these rumors that one nervous Western sector newspaper published them as news, evoking a denial from British authorities who said there was nothing to the reports.

However, the spirit of Christmas gradually is overshadowing the spirit of crisis in this blockaded city. With the military units, clubs, and organizations staging scores of parties for German children all over the city, it is a common sight to see lines of starry-eyed kids on the street excitedly carrying toys and dolls, bundles of clothing, their mouths full of candy saved from the American rations for the occasion.

Despite the blockade, hundreds of smuggled Christmas trees have found their way into Western Berlin. There is a shortage of decorations, and sometimes when passing a church you can hear the shrill voices of children practicing carols—somehow they seem to blend nicely with the drone of the airlift planes providing a bass obbligato.

The Germans always have been sentimental over Christmas. Perhaps this season those on both sides of the invisible barrier will call a temporary, unofficial truce for the rest of the week and allow Berlin to have peace for a few days.

However, there has been no relaxation of the blockade. More East-sector police have been stationed at streets connecting the two parts of the city.

Down in Stuttgart, however, there is proof that the Christmas spirit is solidly established. American and German officials held special tree lighting ceremonies in front of the Stuttgart Opera House. For the first time since the end of the war, no policemen are being stationed at the tree to prevent the light bulbs from being stolen.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 22, 1948

It's going to be a light Christmas here in the red-white-and-blue sector of Berlin. I said light, not white, because no snow has yet fallen to cloak the ruins of this shattered city.

At the first meeting last night of the Allied three-power Kommandatura—reconstituted without the Russians—the Americans, British, and French decided to give their sectors of Berlin a Christmas present. There'll be light all day on December 25th, instead of just for two hours in the cellars and patched-up ruins of this cheerless northern city, where even the sun shines for only a few hours a day.

Two hundred extra tons of coal will be burned for electricity on Christmas Day to illuminate the sparsely decorated Christmas trees and the Berliners' Christmas dinner of canned meat and dried potatoes. This gift of light to the loyal Berlin population represents hundreds of bags of coal flown in by the hardworking boys of the airlift. And also, every Berlin household in the Western sector will get a pint of kerosene for their lamps.

It's a funny thing about the Christmas tree situation here. There aren't enough trees in the Western sector for all the Berliners who want them. And naturally we couldn't allow space on the airlift for inedible trees. But no German family would be without one at this time.

Well aware of this, the Russians imported 350,000 Christmas trees into their sector, and lo and behold, those little trees are appearing for street corner sale in this Western sector now. The Germans are smuggling them in from the East by subway and trolley car. The Russians are so displeased that today they've announced spot checks of all subway passengers carrying food parcels or trees across the line.

Coming from Paris to Berlin as I just have is literally like going from one world to another. I never realized how far along the road to recovery France is, or what it really means for any country to be defeated and occupied.

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Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 24, 1948

Nature gave beleaguered Berlin a Christmas present today. The day dawned bright and clear, and the airlift boys are really laying it in. The heavy rumble of the aircraft fills the Berlin skies, and for the first time in weeks the shabby residents on both sides of this wrecked city can actually see the cloud-free airplanes streaming in with their heavy loads of food and fuel.

Nor is America forgetting its young citizens who make the great Berlin airlift possible—a feat which has raised American prestige sky-high all over Europe. Vice President-elect Alben Barkley is expected in Berlin tonight. Secretary of War Royall and Air Secretary Symington will also spend Christmas with the American airmen. Vice President-elect Barkley is bringing the airmen a special Christmas message from President Truman.

General Clay, after delivering a Christmas message of hope for Western Germany, has just flown up to the big air base at the other end of the line to Wiesbaden. He'll escort these dignitaries back to Berlin on the air corridor over Russian-occupied territory. And on Sunday night, over many of these CBS stations, General Clay will broadcast an exclusive interview on the past and the future of American policy in Germany.

The impersonal snow which covered the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin alike yesterday has melted under the watery sunlight, and the gray-faced, undernourished Berliners are trudging through the ruins on their traditional Christmas Eve holiday. But the repercussions of Soviet anti-religious policy were heard here in Berlin today. Soviet authorities have announced that ten thousand German steelworkers in the Russian zone have "voluntarily" renounced the Christmas holidays to work on the two-year plan. Berliners are quipping that these workers are 98 per cent behind Marshall Sokolovsky—that is ninety per cent Marshall and eight percent behind Sokolovsky.

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Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 25, 1948

Santa Claus and his reindeer haven't got a thing on the young men of the Berlin airlift. In fact, I think the young men are working a bit harder today than old Saint Nick himself. He knocked off work last night, but all day long the lead-gray skies of Berlin have been filled with the rumble of airplane engines. You can't see the big four motored planes through the overcast, but they're streaming in, heavily-laden, into Tempelhof right now, on the most ticklish kind of blind landings.

The boys have the airlift have been grabbing their Christmas dinner on the run. This afternoon I watched them gnawing on drumsticks and gulping hot coffee while their planes were unloaded. and now that darkness has fallen over Berlin, they're still keeping them flying. Their Christmas decorations are the red, green, and yellow flares that mark the flying strips of Berlin.

I was so used to reading about that Berlin airlift in the headlines that it wasn't until I came here I realized that it's not done by push-buttons. It's just like the war, it's all very human. They're pretty young, these men of the airlift, and most of them are separated from their families in America—and they're thinking about them today, but there are no holidays for the airlift. Two million people in Western Berlin must be kept warm and fed every day, and Christmas is no exception.

It's touching, for as soon as you climb aboard an airlift plane, the pilot does what has become inevitable for Americans far from home. He reaches for his wallet and proudly shows you a picture of his wife and family, and you do the same. Sometimes the heaters don't work in the planes, and it's not warm at six thousand feet over Russian-occupied Germany. But their morale is excellent and their discipline is perfect. One and all they love to fly. The only thing that bores them is sitting on the ground waiting for the planes to be loaded and unloaded.

Yet they're only human after all, and they're glad that America has not forgotten them on this day; that big brass have come to share Christmas with them in beleaguered Berlin.

There are more top American fighters in Berlin this evening than on any day since the war ended. Vice President-elect Alben Barkley, Secretary of War Kenneth Royall, Secretary of Air Stuart Symington, and Ambassador to Moscow Bedell Smith—they had Christmas dinner with General Clay a few hours ago. And perhaps best of all, there's a corps of Rockettes and a group of top American radio entertainers.

They'll do a show in Berlin's old movie house, the Titania-Palast, while the airlift rumbles on like a railroad in the sky.

This is Larry LeSueur wishing you a Merry Christmas from Berlin.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 27, 1948

The year-end holiday season is prompting some Berliners to take stock of this uneasy world, and this morning there is a typical comment in the British-licensed newspaper, The Telegraph, which pretty well reflects the worldwide confusion over the Berlin crisis.

The Telegraph says: "The outlook for 1949 is not very gay, but it is not hopeless. Never was the danger of war more imminent than it is now, but never was the outbreak of war less probable."

I pass along this comment to you because maybe you can find its meaning.

However, less confused is America's military governor here. General Lucius Clay last night was interviewed by my colleague, CBS UN reporter Larry LeSueur. What the general had to say is the top news in Germany today and worth summarizing.

General Clay believes that the worst is over for this winter's airlift; that there will be adequate food but that extremely cold weather will cause some suffering among blockaded Berliners. "However, I am convinced," Clay said, "that the people of Berlin have learned from experience under one totalitarian government to withstand almost any hardship rather than accept another totalitarian regime."

Clay revealed that the governments of America, France, and Britain are in substantial agreement on the duties of a Military Security Board to operate in Germany to prevent this nation from ever again becoming a military power. He opposed the creation of a German police force which might be converted into an army, and said that only time will tell whether our democratization program will succeed in killing the military spirit which has so dominated Germany in the past.

The European Recovery Program and the currency reform has had an amazing effect on German recovery, the military governor said, increasing production by fifty per cent. "But there still is a long road ahead to German self-sufficiency. German recovery still lags far behind general Western European recovery."

And about the future, General Clay had this to say to CBS:

"I think any expectation that a stable, peaceful world can result from a general peace settlement is oversimplification of the problem. While a general peace settlement has not been agreed in the broad sense of the word, we are at peace now; or, at least, we are not engaged in war." And he added, "We do not need to be plunged into war."

The American military governor said that the conditions of stability, both economic and political, which make for a long peace, are returning to Europe. "When the freedom-loving democratic countries of Western Europe are on their feet economically and able to protect their freedom, then we may expect a long peace."

About the future of Germany itself, Clay said that the future is bright for progress both politically and economically. Increasing ERP aid will stimulate production; the establishment of a Western German government will generate healthy political activity.

The statement is a significant summary of the success of American occupation policy. It also is another significant CBS News exclusive.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 29, 1948

When Germany was defeated three and a half years ago, the victorious Allied powers agreed upon one thing: that never again would this nation be allowed to become strong enough to build a war machine that twice in a generation brought war to the world.

At this time there was talk of pastoralizing Germany, making her an agricultural nation; destroying all industry that might be converted to war production.

The Ruhr agreement announced yesterday shows how far this thinking has changed, with a recognizing of the important part the highly developed German heavy industry must play in the reconstruction of Western Europe.

The setting up of an international Ruhr authority changes the policy of the victors from a negative restriction to a police of positive production for peace. There will be an international policing of the Ruhr to assure that it doesn't again trend toward war production, but generally speaking the approach is one that will attempt to tie in Ruhr production with the European Recovery Plan, which eventually will relieve the American taxpayer of part of the burden now being carried under the Marshall Plan.

German reaction to the new Ruhr authority this morning is bitterly critical. Every political party, all of which appeal to the nationalism of the Germans, made statements condemning the international control of the Ruhr. Political leaders complain that the six-power agreement is "serious injury of German sovereignty," although there is at present no German government existent to claim any kind of sovereignty.

The Communists for the first time are joining the so-called Western German parties in condemning the Ruhr authority. They charge that the six-power agreement means a surrender to monopoly capitalism and American imperialism.

Probably the most important immediate effect the new Ruhr agreement will have on Western Europe will be to further emphasize the political and economic division between East and West.

The agreement makes it clear, if only by inference, that the vital coal and steel production from the Ruhr will only go to those nations "cooperating" in European recovery. This will exclude the Iron Curtain countries and further alienate the Soviet Union.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 30, 1948

Christmas is over in Berlin. The holiday quiet that has marked the past week of relationships between the Eastern and Western parts of the city is drawing to an end, and the old East-West fireworks are popping again.

East Berlin police are attempting to tighten their control of goods traffic between the Soviet sector and the blockaded parts of the city, but they are having a tough time.

Sector guards are now armed and have been issued thirty rounds of ammunition. Elevated and subway guards now try to stop all passengers carrying bags and luggage. But the passengers are retaliating when they can. In one subway station yesterday, an inspector was dragged inside the train, beaten by the passengers and then kicked off at the next stop.

Stoppage of food into Western Berlin appears to be the main target of the new clampdown, although in one instance a woman was relieved of five briquettes of coal she was taking home in her handbag—proving that, as in America, one can find almost anything in a lady's pocketbook. Soviet soldiers have joined German police in some inspection points.

Wilhelm Pieck, General Secretary of the Berlin Communists and President of the so-called People's Council of East Berlin, gave a New Year's interview to the official Communist party newspaper in which he denied reports that the Communists would set up a separate East German government in 1949. He made the old charges that it was the Western Powers who split Germany and Berlin. He added that a new two-year plan for the Soviet zone would begin on January 1st.

Intelligence reports of a revival of the Polish underground—which fought so successfully against the Germans—have been received in Berlin today. These reports say that anticommunist Poles last Friday derailed the Berlin-Moscow express southeast of Warsaw. A number of people were killed—one report says eighteen—and others injured. A news blackout has stopped any direct news of the incident.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

1957. Senator Richard B. Russell Rejects Criticism of South on Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Act of 1957

"Lyndon B. Johnson (left) and Richard Russell (right) in 1963. The two Democrats were on opposing sides in the argument around the 1957 Civil Rights Act" (source)

Transcript of "Capitol Cloakroom" entered into the Congressional Record on July 10, 1957 (PDF):

CAPITOL CLOAKROOM

(Broadcast over the CBS Radio Network, July 8, 1957, 9:30 to 10 p. m.—guest: The Honorable Richard B. Russell, United States Senate, Democrat, of Georgia—CBS news correspondents: Griffin Bancroft, Bill Downs, Paul Niven—producer: Michael Marlow)

GRIFFIN BANCROFT: Senator Russell, will there be a real showdown on civil rights?

BILL DOWNS: Senator, would this bill really punish the South?

PAUL NIVEN: Senator, would the South accept a compromise on civil rights?

BANCROFT: Senator Russell, welcome to "Capitol Cloakroom." One of the real veterans here, you have been in the United States Senate now for more than 24 years.

And right now you are the leader of the southern Senators in this current battle over civil rights. So let's start with that.

Do you think this time there will be a real showdown on civil rights?

SENATOR RUSSELL: Well, there is, of course, a very decided disposition to press this bill which is titled a civil-rights bill to a conclusion in this session of the Congress. Now we have a very attractive habit here of labeling bills, sometimes, when they don't always live up to their label.

But if you are referring to the bill that is now being discussed on the floor of the Senate, it is apparent that a very determined effort will be made to force a legislative conclusion on that measure.

BANCROFT: Well, we want to ask you what might happen on that, but first, you say whether this should properly be called a civil-rights bill.

RUSSELL: Well, in some of its aspects it is more of a force bill aimed at the customs and laws of the South that were upheld for a hundred years than it is a civil-rights bill.

It has been presented to the public generally as being a bill to assure the right to vote. But as a matter of fact that is the mildest of all the provisions of the bill.

DOWNS: Well, Senator, there was a coalition of so-called liberal Republicans and liberal northern Democrats that got this bill to the floor in the first place.

What happens to the conservative coalition among southerners and conservative Republicans under these circumstances?

RUSSELL: Well, I don't know just exactly what that term "coalition" implies. At times it seems to be used as a term of condemnation or derision.

In times past when some of the southern Democrats have voted with the Republicans not to move quite as fast in some areas as some of our Democratic Presidents would have had us to move, that's been called a coalition between southern Democrats—Mr. Reuther and his crowd always said Dixiecrats without regard to how loyal we had been to the Democratic Party—and the reactionary Republicans.

We do have a most unusual coalition this time in that the Republican leadership has joined hands with some of our very liberal friends, such as Senator Douglas and Senator Humphrey and others to force this bill to a conclusion.

But, then, politics makes strange bedfellows. In this case we undoubtedly have a game where the South is a mere pawn on the political checkerboard. The minority groups have apparently convinced the leadership of both parties that the party that is willing to wage the furthest punitive expedition into the South will win the Presidency in 1960.

NIVEN: Senator, some Republicans have charged and northern Democrats have denied that there was a deal in the voting over the procedure of the civil-rights bill and the Hells Canyon bill.

RUSSELL: Yes; I saw that in the press. If there is anything to that, I have no knowledge of it. I saw the article.

I happen to be one of the five Democrats who changed his vote on Hells Canyon. I did it because of the tax amortization feature which made it very apparent that the Federal Government was going to pay for the dam in any event. If we were going to pay for it, I thought we ought to have title to it.

NIVEN: But you did not offer and were not offered any kind of deal?

RUSSELL: No; there was no deal in any sense I know of. I hope, however, such a thing as appreciation still exists even in the Senate of the United States where any citizen. Senator finds that he can out of his heart do so to vote to make this bill a tolerable bill or a reasonable bill and not a force bill, that they will vote for amendments.

I hope that the purpose of this charge was not to frighten the true liberals in the Senate who will support, for example a jury-trial amendment.

We have a very anomalous situation when so-called liberals are trying to abolish the right of trial by jury, as is being done in this bill.

BANCROFT: Well, Senator Russell, if there was a deal made, you apparently lost it anyway, because the bill went on the calendar over your objections. 

RUSSELL: Yes; and very frankly, when I saw the coalition that was there—that I called the Knowland-Douglas-Humphrey axis—I had very little hopes of getting a majority vote. I did make a fight because I believe in orderly procedure in the Senate, by just such charges as that, that the whole and I did not think that the procedure that was followed was orderly, and we are paying If it is not a civil-rights bill, what is it? the penalty for it right now.

We put the bill on the calendar and it comes out later that there's been an error in the print of the bill that was sent over that they are undertaking to correct today.

When you get away from established precedents in the Senate, when you try to take shortcuts for temporary advantage, it nearly always brings a great deal of trouble.

BANCROFT: Well, now, coming back just one moment to this bill, President Eisenhower, who claims that this is a moderate bill and who says at least his principle desire is to protect voting rights has expressed some surprise at your statement, I believe, about how far you think this bill could go.

And there was some talk that you might have a conference with the President to talk about this. Is there any conference now set for you at the White House?

RUSSELL: Well, now you ought to go back to what you were talking about—

BANCROFT: All right.

RUSSELL: Before you get down to that.

President Eisenhower also stated that he had gotten out the bill and tried to read it and had found some of its provisions very confusing.

BANCROFT: That is right.

RUSSELL: An I may say that he has a great deal of company, because it is a very adroitly and cunningly drafted bill.

I have no comment to make on the other because I am of the old school, came up here at a time when Senators didn't go out and make an announcement they were trying to get down to the White House or were invited to the White House.

I would only say that I earnestly hope that I may have an opportunity to discuss this bill with President Eisenhower, either personally or with any legal adviser that he wants there, to show him that the right-to- vote provision in this bill is the least momentous of all its provisions.

DOWNS: Well, Senator, you said that in the case of jury trial, in demanding a jury trial in voting rights cases, for example, that this bill should contain that provision. 

RUSSELL: Yes.

DOWNS: Isn't it true, sir, that in the South, and hasn't it been proved in the South, that when you have an all-white jury voting on the rights of a Negro voter, that he doesn't have much of a chance of winning?

RUSSELL: Well, that's one of the common slanders that's been repeated against the South without a word of evidence to substantiate it. You have got any number of criminal statutes on your books now where it is made a violation of criminal law, punishable by imprisonment and fine, to interfere with the voting rights of any citizen.

Now the South is entitled to have at least threat in the bill. some proof brought forward of this charge that is repeatedly bandied that every southern white man is so irresponsible that he would forswear himself or perjure himself in a case involving a Negro citizen.

I practiced law for many years before I came into the Senate, and I did not find that to be true. And we were at least entitled, before a whole great section of this country was indicted as everyone of us being perjurers, we were at least entitled to have the Attorney General come out and say, "Here, I tried to get an indictment in this case before a grand jury for a violation of a right to vote, and I didn't get an indictment," or if "I did get an indictment," that the jury "didn't do justice."

They haven't done that; they have just gone on this wave of public sentiment, this anti-Southern feeling that has been built up by just such charges as that, that the whole white South would just forswear themselves. 

As a matter of fact, there is no great problem about the Negro voting in the South today. In my own State, and that's the only one I have personal knowledge of, there's no limitation or prohibition on the right of qualified Negroes to vote. Why in the city of Atlanta they elected a Negro over one white man to one of the most responsible of all the city positions, a member of the board of trustees for the schools. He was reelected within the past few months by white votes. And the Negroes vote there, they vote generally over the State. And this is just part of this campaign to make it appear that throughout the entire South that Negroes are denied the right to vote. It is certainly not the truth.

NIVEN: Senator, isn't there a good deal of social and economic pressure against Negroes to restrain them from voting? 

RUSSELL: I have heard that that was true in some areas. I was giving you what I know of my own knowledge in my own State. And there may be, I don't say there aren't, isolated instances where Negroes are denied the right to vote—in every State of this Union you've got wards and communities and counties where you have got so-called courthouse gangs, and they deny some white people as well as some Negroes the right to vote if they don't belong to that gang.

But we have got criminal statutes to punish that, and why doesn't the Attorney General invoke them before coming in here and making a blanket indictment of the South, "The white man in the South is so venomous against the Negro that he won't do justice." For that is not true.

The relations between the races in the South have been gravely disturbed in the last 2 or 3 years; but until that time there had never been any place in all the history of human civilization where two races so equal in number had started out with the disparity that there was between them—one coming out of slavery—and had made the progress over the period of 80 years that has been made in the South.

The white South should be commended for what they have done. They have taxed themselves even in the desolation of destruction following the Civil War to create schools. And for a hundred years, under the protection of the law, they have paid taxes and bonded themselves to build separate but equal schools for the white and colored people.

And that's the purpose of this bill, to forcibly commingle the white and Negro children of the South in the schools. This voting business is all a smokescreen for that vicious provision of the bill—and not only in the schools, but in all our places of public entertainment.

NIVEN: Well, Senator, you and other southern Democratic Senators are now emphasizing the segregation—this integration threat in the bill.

The bill was debated for about a week in the House and the southerners there did not place great emphasis on this, they seemed to debate the bill on its open merits.

RUSSELL: Well, I of course don't know what took place over there. They perhaps were taken in by this campaign that it was just a voting bill. I haven't read the debate in the House. I did read the bill here. I spent the better part of 3 days with about 40 law books running down this cunningly contrived bill. And I leave it up to you and your personal attorneys, right now, to take the remarks that I made in the Senate last Tuesday on this bill and take this bill and if he doesn't come up and tell you that it can be used as a force bill to bring the whole might of the United States Government to bear to integrate the schools of the South, why you'd better get you another lawyer.

It's very clear, when you run it down.

BANCROFT: Senator Russell, it seems to me you go a little further than that. You say that not only can it do that, but that that was the intention of those who sponsored the bill.

RUSSELL: Undoubtedly. This section, this part—

BANCROFT: Well then, whom do you—

RUSSELL: I don't know who drafted this bill.

BANCROFT: Accuse of doing this? Do you think Attorney General Brownell—

RUSSELL: I don't know whether—

BANCROFT: Deliberately brought in a bill that goes—

RUSSELL: Mr. Brownell knew what was in this bill or not. I am confident that he didn't draft it. But I would certainly like to meet the man who did draft it because it is a masterpiece of obscuring the purpose.

BANCROFT: If this is a deliberate plot, who do you think was—

RUSSELL: I don't know who is responsible for it. But I assert unhesitatingly that this part 3 of the bill was drawn for the express purpose of obscuring a vast grant of power to destroy any system of separation of the races in the South.

And I will say that after the people of the South have known no other way of life, no other social order for a hundred years, this is a monstrous proposal to come in and to ask for any such grant of power as that over night.

This condition wasn't changed by an act of Congress, where it was debated, people had an opportunity to see what was said and discuss it themselves—it came through a decision of the Supreme Court, based on a book by the Swedish Socialist who said that our Constitution is a plot against the common people of the United States. And it came overnight—like that—with no preparation.

BANCROFT: This is the Supreme Court school segregation decision you are talking about?

RUSSELL: Yes, this bill proposes to enforce judicial law, a law that has been written by the courts rather than legislative law, a law that's been written by the Congress, that's what it does.

DOWNS: Senator, you also expressed I think last week the fear or prediction that American troops could be used.

RUSSELL: Why this bill is tied in with one of your old reconstruction statutes that was passed by Sumner and Stephens when they set out, as they said themselves, to put black heels on white necks in the South. The criminal counterpart of this civil statute was stricken down by the Supreme Court declaring that it was passed by an impassioned Congress at a time when the Southern States were being treated as conquered provinces.

And yet that is the law that it skillfully ties into without being apparent on its face. Why didn't they write out in this bill what they propose to do where we could read it, instead of saying "section 1895," and then having that section refer to section 1993, where it requires a lawyer who is a jigsaw puzzle expert to put it all together to see exactly what it does?

But you will see that the real lawyers of this Senate will not refute one iota of what I said when they have studied this bill, and I care not which side of it they're on. They may say "We don't intend to do it," but they won't say it can't be done.

"Supporters campaign at the 1952 Democratic National Convention for the presidential nomination of Richard B. Russell Jr." (source)

NIVEN: Senator, can you imagine Federal troops actually being sent into the South?

RUSSELL:  I certainly can. I certainly can. When they can make such a political pawn out of the South, as has been done now, and where they can—when men are seeking political preferment, they make all kinds of commitments, and I can very readily see that Federal troops could be sent into the South to enforce—why we have had troops and tanks at two schoolhouses in the South already, without this law.

DOWNS: That was National Guard troops.

RUSSELL: Yes, that's true. But you're just as dead if you're shot by a tank bullet from a National Guard man as if you were shot by a regular or a marine.

DOWNS: Senator Russell, in answer to my question you said that you do believe, then, that this bill is really designed to punish the South?

RUSSELL: I have no question about it. Now I don't know why they take such an admonitory attitude toward the South, as if we were a group of wild and uncivilized people. Some of them feel that they are doing a very meritorious thing. to resort to any means to force the South to conform to what the rest of the Nation thinks is the proper social order for the South.

Well, this is a great Nation of ours—

NIVEN: Senator, I want—

RUSSELL: If a man wants to move from one State to another, if the southern people want their children in integrated schools, it's mighty easy to move to a State where they have them; they are not more than 300 miles away from anywhere in the South. If any other person preferred for his child to go to school with children of his own race, why, he might move to the South. Then he'd be safe for the time being, until this bill passes and is enforced.

DOWNS: Don't you believe, sir, that the social order in the South has changed and is changing?

RUSSELL: Oh, of course, it has, and is. But it has happened through a process of evolution, and this proposes to enforce a revolution on the South and to drive men. There's a great deal of difference between leading and in driving or letting people themselves lead and drive.

We have made great progress in the South. Why, in the voting, not in my time have there been any restrictions on Negroes in general elections in the South, but we did have a law for a long time that they couldn't vote in the Democratic primaries. Now that's all been done away with, and they do vote; there's no longer a white primary. We have moved forward very rapidly when you consider the full impact of it.

It's all well and good for a man that lives in a State where it is 98 percent white and 2 percent Negro to say, "Why, where is this problem? There's nothing to it." Let him go to a State where they are nearly equal in numbers, where the races in communities are about equal in numbers, and then undertake to enforce overnight such a bill as this.

NIVEN: Senator, the colored leaders reply that, despite this evolution and this progress, large numbers of them are still denied a right which they have been guaranteed by the Constitution for 90 years.

RUSSELL: You mean the right to be in integrated schools?

NIVEN: The right to vote.

RUSSELL: Well, the Supreme Court said that for 90 years they had been denied right that they were entitled to be in integrated schools. The Constitution hadn't changed; the complexion of the Court has changed.

And I deny that statement as to voting. At least, as far as the greater portion of the South is concerned, there is there is no real limitation or restriction on the right of qualified Negroes to vote.

DOWNS: Well, the qualifications, sir—

RUSSELL: You can come to my State when they are having an election and see them; they are lined up there for blocks to go and vote, and their votes are counted just like anyone else.

NIVEN: Well, Senator, would you concede that qualification has been interpreted differently for white and colored persons?

RUSSELL: I have heard that, but I don't concede it—no; I don't concede it, generally, in my State; no. There may be areas where it has been, small communities, it is probably true.

NIVEN: Well, why don't Negroes vote in larger numbers, then?

RUSSELL: Well, they vote in—we have practically 225,000 registered in Georgia, and they vote. Perhaps in some of the elections they have a higher percentage voting than white people.

Oh, you pillory the South by giving the figures voting in a general election and saying only 45 percent of the people voted. But as a matter of fact we have had the one-party system in the South, and our people vote in the primaries. And you compare the vote in the primaries, when we really settle our election, and it's not too much behind the rest of the country. But we don't vote in the general election because everything has been settled in the primary.

But that's the figures they always give you, just 45 percent here in the general election.

NIVEN: But the percentage of Negro voting is not anywhere near as high as the percentage of whites voting: is it?

RUSSELL: No; because there are a great many more white people in my State than there are Negroes. We have about 2,300,000 white people and about 1,200,000 Negroes.

NIVEN: Isn't that a proportionate basis?

RUSSELL: Well, that may be slightly true. I concede that, because they haven't been voting long. They haven't been voting too long. We only abolished the poll tax in Georgia about 10, 11 years ago.

But where can the Attorney General come in and say, "In Georgia they violated the criminal law by denying this man, Bill Jones, the right to vote"? And he should do it and prove, "I tried to indict and I tried to convict before a jury," before you come in and indict the whole State of Georgia and say we have deprived the Negro of his right to vote illegally.

NIVEN: Sir, is it your case that until recently there were impediments in the way of the Negro voting?

RUSSELL: Of course there were in voting in the primary. I explained that a while ago. They could vote in the general election, but it didn't mean anything because the man who was nominated in the primary was going to win the general election. That may be a mistake, we may have—should have been a two-party State. I sometimes think that we would have fared much better if we had been.

BANCROFT: Senator Russell, I wonder if I could explore a moment what's apt to happen here on the floor of the Senate.

You are leading this strategy. And the motion made today, of course, is a motion to take up the bill.

RUSSELL: Yes.

BANCROFT: Which, if it prevails, would of course be followed by the discussion and the motion to pass or to act on the bill and amendments. There has been some talk that you might not filibuster or unduly prolong and defeat a vote on the motion to take up. How about that?

RUSSELL: Well, Mr. Bancroft, I intend to act as each circumstance presents itself and as this matter unfolds in such a way that I think will cause us to be able to get our maximum strength for the amendments to this bill that will see that it is a right-to-vote bill instead of a punitive bill against the South.

BANCROFT: Well, now, on that, Senator Russell, an amendment cannot be offered or acted upon—

RUSSELL: Oh, no.

BANCROFT: Until after this motion to take up the bill acted on.

RUSSELL: We are now debating this bill strictly on its merits. There is no part of this discussion that consists of reading long papers, the ordinary earmark of a filibuster.

BANCROFT: Well, I'm trying to find out if and when—

RUSSELL: I'm not prepared to say just when we'll let the bill be made the unfinished business. We want to discuss it. We have found that there are a number of Senators who have been busy with other matters and didn't really understand the full impact of this bill.

I want the situation in the Senate to jell a little where we can see just where we are going with these different amendments.

BANCROFT: Well, then, after it has jelled a little, then presumably you will allow a vote to take place on the motion to take up?

RUSSELL: Oh, I think the Senate will vote on amendments to this bill.

BANCROFT: On the motion to take up, first? And—

RUSSELL: I think the Senate will vote on amendments to this bill.

BANCROFT: Then to vote on amendments?

RUSSELL: Well, I'm not prepared to say just when, but I'm very confident that it will.

DOWNS: Senator, you indicated strongly that this is a political measure—

RUSSELL: Yes; I feel that strongly.

DOWNS: Being presented by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, and then—

RUSSELL: I feel this—

DOWNS: Also you said perhaps it would be a good thing if the South did have a two-party system.

Do you think that your opposition to the bill, Democratic opposition to the bill might strengthen the Republican Party in the South?

RUSSELL: No; not when the Republican Party is furnishing more votes for this particular bill than the Democratic Party is in the Senate. I don't think that it would. I was talking about we would have been in a better bargaining position if we had not all been tied up in what's called the Southern Democratic Group.

As it is now, the minority groups outside the South, though they are relatively small in numbers compared to the voting strength of the white South, they can go to the political leaders there and convince them that these elections depend on their action in these doubtful States.

And by having had strictly a one-party political system in the South, I think we have denied ourselves a similar bargaining power.

But the Republicans, of course, are going at it in a very poor way to improve their position by putting more votes behind this force bill than the Democratic side of the aisle, here in the Senate.

DOWNS: Well, what do you think the general outcome, say, in next year's elections will be as a result of this debate?

RUSSELL: Well, I couldn't say—my crystal ball is not that good. I can't pass on what it will do.

I don't believe that the great mass of the American people favor extreme measures—we are all in favor of civil rights, everybody is in favor of civil rights.

The question is, where do my rights end and where do yours intervene? That's the question that's involved here, wholly aside from this voting proposition and this separation of the races. And they put a tag on it and call it civil rights.

But if this bill were explained to the American people, there is no doubt in my mind that an appeal from the politicians to the people would be sustained and that the American people would vote down this bill in a referendum, because it is a very unfair piece of legislation.

NIVEN: Senator, can you project any kind of compromise on this bill that would be acceptable to you?

RUSSELL: Well, I would have to see it. I would have to see it. I am perfectly willing to entertain any ideas that any responsible leader of those that are pressing this bill might care to discuss. I do resent this whole theory of the bill that the South needs a guardian in the person of the Attorney General.

Now if there is any one State where the Negro is denied the right to vote, you have got clauses in the Constitution guaranteeing a republican form of government. Apply that without coming in here and abolishing the right of jury trial and tying it into the force bills of reconstruction so you will have the power to bring the Armed Forces of the United States to bear on the southern people.

We—the country as a whole doesn't realize what we have gone through with in this whole period. We have been a very poor people. It was from 1940, 80 years after 1880, until the tax values of my State got back to where they were, prior to the great fratricidal war.

And we have taxed ourselves, taxed our poverty heavier proportionately than any other section of the country to try to carry on this separate but equal system of education. And you can get your statistics and you will see that the tax according to wealth has been heavier in the Southern States than anywhere else for education.

We don't like to be threatened with this kind of force legislation.

NIVEN: You may recall that a national poll a couple of years ago found that 55 percent of Southern whites expected that integration in public schools would eventually take place. Would you agree with that?

RUSSELL: I didn't see it, but I am not in a position to challenge your statement because I don't know. I didn't understand your question.

NIVEN: Apart from your preferences in the matter, do you feel that school integration is inevitable in the long run?

RUSSELL: Well, forever is a long time. In the foreseeable future I don't see any integration of the schools in my State, particularly with this force legislation, because you can badger and arrest and bait people until they get in a frame of mind to close down the schools before they will do it.

BANCROFT: Senator Russell, you said that amendments, in your opinion, amendments to this bill would be voted on, and I—

RUSSELL: Yes.

BANCROFT: Presume you think some would be accepted?

RUSSELL: Well, I would certainly devoutly hope so. If it is not amended it will be the worst piece of legislation ever considered.

BANCROFT: Now I presume one would be the jury trial amendment, for example, the one that was defeated in the House?

RUSSELL: Yes, and the one to strike part 3 of this bill, the force provision. It is not related to the right to vote.

BANCROFT: In other words, Senator,that would leave in it simply the provision for a civil-rights commission and a new division in the Department of Justice?

RUSSELL: Yes. Of course, that's a rather unusual provision.

BANCROFT: Would you accept that much of the bill?

RUSSELL: No; I wouldn't be prepared to vote for a bill that was such a reflection on the people of Georgia as I deem this one.

BANCROFT: In other words, no matter how many amendments are adopted you still won't vote for this bill?

RUSSELL: Oh, I didn't say that, now. You just narrowed it down. You just narrowed it down to—in the first place, this bill is wrong in policy. Here you have got a proposal that you are going to establish an entirely new division in the Department of Justice to take up all these cases, whether a man wants it done or not, and do it at Government expense.

Now the National Colored People Association and their kindred organizations have had no difficulty at all in getting up money to bring all these lawsuits.

You are starting a new system there, and the next thing you are going to do is to have some system where labor will be able to have a division in the Department of Justice to enforce their rights on employers at the expense of the Government, or vice versa, and in other fields. I don't approve of that.

I could not support such a measure. I think it is wrong in policy where a man is able to hire a lawyer, to say because it is a certain kind of case that the Attorney General can proceed at the taxpayers' expense whether the man involved wants him to or not. I don't approve of that general philosophy.

BANCROFT: Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have, and Senator Russell, we want to thank you very, very much for being with us on Capitol Cloakroom, and we will watch with interest to see what happens down there on the floor of the Senate.

Thank you, sir.

1945. The Uprising in French Indochina

The Buildup to War

"Free French 6th Commando C.L.I. in Saigon are saluted by surrendered Japanese in November 1945" (source)

In this excerpt from the book One Last Look Around (1947, pp. 200-211), foreign correspondent Clark Lee recounts his experience in French-occupied Vietnam in late September 1945. At that time, Lee, Bill Downs, and James McGlincy were part of an airborne correspondent corps touring East and Southeast Asia toward the end of World War II.

ONE LAST LOOK AROUND

They told us what was happening. "The Annamites are revolting. They are willing to die rather than be colonists of France again. British Gurkha troops are opposing the Annamites and the Japs, who were supposed to be disarmed, are helping the British. It's a stinking mess."

The picture in Indo-China was this: Some 23,000,000 of Indo-China's 28,000,000 native inhabitants are Annamites and nearly all of them wanted to end France's eighty-year rule over their homeland, a territory as big as France itself and rich in coal and rice and other agricultural products. They had risen in arms once before in 1929, but the French machine-gunned and bombed them into submission. Now, the Japs had apparently given them their big chance for freedom from a regime whose colonial record was shameful. For instance, after eighty years in the colony, the French had permitted only five per cent of the people to learn to read and write.

Trouble came into Indo-China in 1940 when the Japs shot and bullied their way into the north, ostensibly for the purpose of closing off one of China's last supply routes through the Indo-Chinese port of Haiphong, from which a railroad heads into Chinese Hunnan. A year later, Vichy opened the door to Saigon and the south for the Japs, ignoring the obvious fact that they wanted Saigon as a springboard for their attacks on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and for their occupation of Siam. Economic agreements were reached between Tokyo and Vichy for the exchange of Indo-China's rice and metals for Japanese manufactured products. Instead of the 5,000 tons of rice they were getting, the French supplied Tokyo 1,000,000 tons annually to feed the Japanese troops who were shortly to besiege our starving forces in Bataan.

The Vichyites, headed by colonial governor Admiral Jean de Coux, threw in their lot wholeheartedly with Japan and its Axis partners. That their own homeland was in Nazi chains meant nothing to these French Colonials. Their first concern was the preservation of their own interests and for three years—all during Pearl Harbor, Tarawa, Saipan, even the liberation of France—the Japanese occupation forces and the colonial French lived in perfect harmony, collaborating enthusiastically and doing business to their mutual profit.

With the collapse of Vichy, Admiral De Coux took over complete control in Indo-China with the support of the French Fascist, Pétainists, businessmen, and government officials, and the Banque de l'Indo-Chine clique—plus, of course, the Japs. Some Frenchmen and Annamites wanted to resist the Japs and made a brief stab at organizing the underground. They were ruthlessly suppressed by De Coux. Some were exiled to the penal colony of Poulo Condore, where conditions were so bad that they even horrified the Japs. Two Tokyo newspapermen who visited the island described finding 1,500 political prisoners who "were subjected by the French to all conceivable atrocities . . . who stood mute and expressionless like dumb animals."

"Occupation of the Tonkin Palace, Hanoi, on 19 August 1945" (source)

A few French escaped to Allied territory, but not many of them could make the long trek to India or China through the Japanese lines. Not trusting the French Colonials, the United States made no serious effort to get arms to the few resistance leaders.

Major Verger told me, "There was no underground worthy of the name. A very few of the French assisted American aviators to escape after they were shot down, escorting them to the coast where they were picked up by submarines. There was one captain who had a secret radio set and supplied important intelligence information for our planes. Outside of that, I regret to say that my fellow countrymen did nothing to resist the Japanese or assist our forces. There was an army revolt in 1941 against admitting the Japanese to the colony without a struggle, but it was suppressed and the survivors either fled to China, were imprisoned, or abandoned their activities.

The French-Japanese honeymoon ended on March 9, 1945, when the Japanese suddenly surrounded the homes of De Coux and of the French officers and quickly disarmed the 6,000 French troops in southern Indo-China. Simultaneously the French in the north surrendered, and the French men and women were interned.

Then the Japs played their trump card. Knowing that Tokyo would surrender shortly and that the end for them was not far off, they permitted the Annamites to form their own government to replace the French regime. A coalition government of Communists and Nationalists was set up with branches in Hanoi and Saigon, and was promised complete independence by the Japanese. When Tokyo surrendered, the Japanese gave the Annamites some arms and told them to carry on with their government and defend their independence. Meantime, all during the war, the United States and the provisional government of France had been sparring about the future of Indo-China. Roosevelt fought the churlish De Gaulle and the stubborn Churchill for a new status for all Asiatic colonies. For Indo-China he wanted an international trusteeship to pave the way for total freedom. But as soon as he was dead, Truman and Byrnes forgot his desires and concentrated on the "get tough with Russia" game to the oblivion of such trifling matter as freedom for a hundred million Asiatic peoples. During their wartime discussions, the French indicated their willingness to grant freedom "within the Indo-Chinese federation and French union, plus recognition of democratic liberties for all and education in native and French culture." But De Gaulle and other officials made it clear that France renounced none of her Far Eastern possessions.

The situation was further complicated int the north by Chinese claims to the Tonkin area, which blocks Yunnan province's only convenient doorway to the outside world. Some 400,000 lived there and most of them looked to Chungking for guidance. With the end of the war, Chinese troops moved down from Yunnan into Tonkin and by Allied agreement occupied all of Indo-China north of the 16th parallel. But when the French tried to move their own armed forces into the area in March 1946, again by Chinese-French agreement, Chinese forces around the port of Haiphong fired on their landing craft and warships. After finally getting ashore, the French found that the Chinese had not ousted the Annamite officials but had strengthened their position.

When we reached Saigon in October, 1945, the Annamites were still occupying the government buildings from which they had officially functioned since August 17th, when the Japanese installed them in complete power. They called their government the Viet Nam Republic, substituting that pre-colonial name for Indo-China, a French importation.

"Now," said Colonel [A. Peter] Dewey on our first night in Saigon, "the British troops are driving them out. The Annamites are determined people and it is taking a lot of shooting."

The British commander, General D. D. Gracey, a self-proclaimed Tory and believer in Empire, was willing to use whatever means necessary to restore white supremacy and try to rebuild the shattered self-confidence of the French. In negotiations with the Viet Nam prior to the landing of British troops, the British assured the Annamites that Gracey's mission was to disarm the Japanese and restore order. The Annamites were foolish enough to believe that story. Instead of carrying out the promise, Gracey returned the Japanese troops to their posts, allowed them to keep their arms, and used them to attack the Annamites who were likewise using Japanese arms when they had any at all beyond sticks, clubs, and spears. Thus, as was to be the case in the Dutch East Indies, the British used their former enemies, the Japanese, to shoot down other Asiatics. If the Japanese were planning a comeback in later years in their "Asia for Asiatics" campaign, they could not have asked for better propaganda ammunition.

Gracey's defense was: "What do you want? Do you think we will surrender European supremacy to the first group of outlaws that point guns at us?" In other words, the words not only of Gracey, but of his superior officers and the London Labour government, defend the Imperial system and the hell with these outlaws who believe in the Four Freedoms.

"British General Douglas Gracey (right) relinquishes command in Vietnam to French General Jacques Leclerc" (source)

The French who saw us at first in Saigon cheered enthusiastically for the arrival of "les soldats Américains." They said openly, "Now we can put these Annamite beggars back in their places." They were crestfallen when we told them we weren't troops, but correspondents, and that no American forces were coming to the colony.

Actually, the American "forces" consisted of Colonel Dewey and his mission, plus a group of eight Air Transport Command personnel headed by Major Frank Rhoades. Dewey jumped from a transport plane into Saigon right after V-J Day and quickly got the 136 American war prisoners out of their camps and headed home. Then, instead of leaving, he got mixed up in a game that was too fast for him. "I am remaining to protect American property," he explained. What property? He had hung out the American flag from the offices of Standard Oil, Texaco, and Singer Sewing Machine. Also, he had intervened dramatically a few days before when Annamites had prepared to storm the Continental Hotel and threatened to kill the French people sheltered there. Dewey had bluffed the Annamites into believing the hotel was American property, exhibiting a "bill of sale" made over to him by the Corsican manager, and had waved the American flag to turn back the would-be attackers. Tragically enough, it was the lack of an American flag on his jeep that caused his death.

The British were more concerned in talking to us about the A.T.C. mission than about Dewey's. The A.T.C. men were under orders to set up a base on a line from Shanghai to Singapore, a "temporary line to operate for a limited time." The British found that hard to swallow. "I understand," General Gracey told us, "that the A.T.C. is establishing a line to carry letters. Who the letters are from or what necessity there is for carrying them, I do not know." It was the suspicion of the British and French that far from being temporary the American base was to be used by future American globe-girdling airlines. Since then, the Civil Aeronautics Bureau in Washington has licensed American routes to Indo-China and Siam.

If our arrival was a disappointment to the French, it was even more so to the Annamites. Like all of the people of Asia they looked to Americans in the first weeks after the surrender as true liberators and believed in democracy for everybody, everywhere. They hoped the United States would guarantee their freedom. They knew the French would not give an inch more than they had to, despite the "liberal" promises of De Gaulle and his henchmen. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the Annamites about the French, it disappeared when the colonial overlords were released from internment after the Japanese surrender.

Feeling their oats once more, the French resumed their old habit of kicking around—literally—the despised natives. This was a grave mistake, because the French were not strong enough to get away with it pending the arrival of reinforcements of guns, tanks, rifles and hand grenades. Then the Annamites turned back on them and suddenly the French realized that they were dealing with people who were willing to give their lives to demonstrate to the world their desire for freedom. The Annamites were still fighting when the vanguard of British troops came in, and it was at this stage of the struggle that we reached Indo-China.

The Japanese just stood by and chuckled while the Annamites turned their arms on the French, kidnapped and killed many of the most hated of their tormentors, and drove the terrified Colonials out of their suburban homes and into a narrow section of Saigon paralleling the Rue Catinat. Inside the city the Annamites quit their jobs. Most of them faded away into the countryside, hiding in villages which the British troops attacked and burned in reprisal for attacks on their supply lines. The city, stripped of ninety per cent of its populace, was paralyzed. We found the water supply off, the lights working only fitfully. To the disgust of the French, who for years had been accustomed to regard their servants as pieces of furniture, the servants disappeared. There were no rickshaws in the streets, no public transportation of any kind.

Along the Rue Catinat and the small "safe" area surrounding it, the French gathered in little worried knots. They were ashamed of their war record, their cooperation with the Japs, their inability to do anything now about the Annamite uprising. The men huddled in the cafes, unwilling even to take rifles and go out and protect the city. They shouted for more help—Japs, Gurkhas, Americans, it didn't matter—and they plotted how they would avenge themselves on the Annamites when their turn came.

View of Đồng Khởi Street (formerly Rue Catinat) in Saigon, October 1945. Photo by John Florea (source)

Starting at seven in the morning, the French came out to parade up and down the Rue Catinat, stopping at the sidewalk cafes for an apéritif of anisette, ice, and water. At eleven they went into the few restaurants still open, but soon to close, and ate heartily for two hours and then disappeared for a siesta. About four in the afternoon, people started to emerge again and an hour before dusk everyone had gathered either in the candle-lit lobby of the Continental Hotel or on the sidewalk outside. We learned a new line there. All around the world, in Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, Egypt, the Philippines, Japan, young kids had approached us with outstretched hands and pronounced the local equivalent of "cigarette pour papa." In Saigon, Frenchmen stopped us on the street and, too ashamed to ask for themselves, begged, "A cigarette for my wife."

It was pitiful to watch the French when the sound of shooting was heard. One night a platoon of Japanese ran up on the double to take sentry positions outside the hotel, and there was a panicked rush for inside. Another night Annamites set fire to the market place four blocks from Continental. The French, silent and terrified, refused to go near the fire—even though the supply of food was growing scantier every day—but the Chinese stall owners made frantic and futile efforts to drench the flame with small splashes of water from leaking buckets. Most of the time there weren't any lights, and in the confusion of that pushing mass around the hotel, more than one Frenchwoman wound up in the room of an English officer or correspondent. Despite this amateur competition, the bright-looking half-caste girls roaming the Rue Catinat did a big business.

During one outbreak of shooting, the owner of the Continental called us into his office for an apéritif with him and some friends.

"Why," they demanded in an aggrieved tone, "do you not protect us from those devil Annamites?"

We baited them, "This is not the quarrel of Americans. For all we know, justice is on the side of the rebels. We hear that the French have been inexcusably cruel to them. In fact, we would just as soon shoot French as Annamites." This last remark was accompanied by an ostentatious fingering of carbine triggers.

"Ah, monsieurs," the hotel owned gushed, "it is quite right that you are. All of us in this room are not French. You are surprised, no? The fact that we do not come from Metropolitan France. We are Corsicans. This local political squabble is not of our making, but the fault of the French who have treated the Annamites inconsiderately."

Meantime, Frenchman and Corsican alike continued to plan for vengeance. They got it after the French troops under irascible General Jacques LeClerq finally arrived to take over behind Gurkha and Japanese guns. Witnesses later described the long lines of Annamite prisoners, manacled or trussed up, being marched down the Rue Catinat to the filthy jail, where they were fed miserably, given drumhead trials lasting a few minutes and then sentenced to many years at hard labor on Poulo Condore Island—or even condemned to die for distributing leaflets asking for independence. In this and other ways, the French finally got retribution for the humiliation that we watched them undergo.

At night, Annamites would slip into the city, set fire to the power plant and other buildings, and shoot off their rifles. The harassed Gracey was unable to stop them with his small force, whose forays into the countryside and across the river to the Chinese quarter proved fruitless. He blamed the Japs for his troubles, accusing them of instigating the Annamites to fight, and at the same time he called on the Japs to assist him in putting down the fighting. In desperation, the British commander visited the home of the aged and ailing Japanese field marshal, Count Terauchi, and warned him that unless the Japs behaved themselves they "would not be sent back home to Japan." Gracey pointed out that the Allied plan was to repatriate the Japs in Nipponese shipping. Very few bottoms were available, Gracey said, and he threatened that unless Terauchi saw to it that his troops were good boys, no ships would come to Indo-China for them. This provided another big laugh for the Japs, who didn't care very much either way whether they stayed or went—after all, it was France that wanted the colony back.

Meantime, the fighting was getting sharper every night and more and more factories and homes were being burned by the Annamites. On the third night of our stay, Captain Joe Coolidge, a distant relative of the late Calvin and Colonel Dewey's No. 2 in the O.S.S., was shot through the throat and arm while escorting a group of French women and children through an Annamite barricade.

We got word of it through Colonel Dewey, who sent for us to come to his room at the Continental. Perhaps it was premonition that made Dewey talk at length about something that was on his mind. He had been doing a great deal of running around in the midst of the fighting, and had found the Annamites friendly when they discovered him to be American. "It's the French they're after. Not us, nor even the British. They won't shoot at the Japanese at all." Dewey's difficulty was to identify himself as an American. "I had an American flag on my jeep, he said, "but General Gracey forbade me to fly it. When I go up to one of the barricades, there is always a chance that the Annamites will kill me before I can identify myself."

Several of us stormed up to see Gracey and protest against his refusal to allow the American flag to be flown from automobiles. "I cannot permit it," he said. "That is a privilege of general officers only." If you chose to be strict about it—and Gracey did, for obvious reasons of European and Imperial prestige—the British general was correct in his position, according to military regulations. He went on to say that he had no objections to flags being painted on jeeps and cars, which was a meaningless concession in view of the total absence of paint in Saigon. Likewise, he agreed to flags being tied to the side of vehicles, but that was no assistance whatever since the important thing was to be recognized well before you drove up to a barricade, and a flag on the side was not visible from a distance.

Ho Chi Minh (center) and Vo Nguyen Giap (far left) with American OSS agents

The following day Colonel Dewey invited two of our party, Bill Downs and Jim McGlincy, to lunch at the O.S.S. house on the northern edge of Saigon. They drove out with Major Verger and with Captain Frank White, a member of the nine-man O.S.S. mission, and sat in the patio to have a drink and wait for Dewey to return from the airport.

Five minutes later there was heavy firing up the road, and an American officer came running toward the O.S.S. villa which was also, in effect, American Army headquarters in Saigon. The officer halted every few yards to crouch and fire his .45 back down the road at some invisible pursuers.

Hurriedly, Captain White issued carbines to the correspondents and to the other four men in the house, and they got behind the garden wall and fired at a crowd of Annamites who suddenly came into sight pursuing the American. The Annamites took cover—there were about a hundred of them—and the officer staggered into the yard behind the protective wall. He was Major Herbert Bluechel. His neck, shoulders, and most of his body was covered with blood and he appeared to be seriously wounded.

"They got the colonel," he gasped hysterically. "They killed the colonel."

The blood on Bluechel was Dewey's blood. The two Americans had been passing a barricade in their jeep. Dewey gestured to the Annamites ahead to remove the crisscrossed trees forming the road block, but they suddenly opened fire with a machine gun. The colonel's head was blown off. Bluechel, unharmed, jumped out of the jeep and sprinted frantically up the road.

"What a pity," Bluechel exclaimed. "The Annamites liked Dewey and he liked them and he believed they should be free. If they had only recognized us as Americans, they would never have shot."

Meanwhile, the Annamites began pushing toward the house. The Americans ran inside and took positions at the windows. Like Dewey, they did not want to kill Annamites, but they were being fired upon and there was no choice except to shoot back. Yelling and shouting, the Annamites advanced down a drainage ditch parallel to the road, pausing from time to time to fire their guns. They were bad marksmen and although their bullets bounced off the house, none of the Americans was hit.

Spacing their shots, the Americans picked off the attacking men. Three fell as they tried to run across an open field. Several others were wounded. Bill Downs shot down at least one man, and he says that the sight of the little brown figure falling will haunt him for years. But blood was being shed, hysteria had taken command, and there was no chance to stop and argue things out.

Briefly, the Annamites retired, and then returned with a machine gun. They fired one burst into the front of the house and then ceased fire. In this interlude a jeep with three more O.S.S. men drove squarely down the road without drawing a single shot, and turned into the yard. Meanwhile, six Japanese sentries who were on duty guarding the villa had taken a casual part in the fighting, firing once or twice but mostly just crouching out of the way.

After more than two hours of skirmishing, the Annamites began to withdraw, and McGlincy and Downs volunteered to walk across the field and try to reach the airport in search of reinforcements. They took their sidearms for defense, a bottle of "Old Crow" for courage, and on the theory that nobody would shoot at a singing man they walked along caroling at the top of their voices, "For he's a jolly good fellow." They made it to the airfield without trouble and dispatched a message for help. Then the two correspondents, with Major Rhoades of the A.T.C., drove back in a jeep through the Annamite positions, where a group were picking up wounded under a Red Cross flag. The Americans waved their arms and shouted, "Chee-Wee, Chee-Wee," which means American in the Annamite tongue.

Back at the house, the Americans decided to go out after Dewey's body. Major Verger took the precaution of changing his French army shirt for an American jacket. He tied a white handkerchief to his carbine and waved as the jeep gingerly approached the Annamite positions. "Where is the commandant?" McGlincy demanded of the sentries.

Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey

An excited young man—in civilian shirt and shorts like the other fighters for freedom—stepped forward and delivered a fiery speech on liberty and the rights of man, intermingled with violent protests against the Americans, who loved liberty, killing Annamites who sought it. Another young Annamite, about sixteen or seventeen, assisted in translating the leader's discourse.

Downs explained, "We would like to get Colonel Dewey's body."

There were lengthy negotiations, and finally the commander agreed to return Dewey's body if the Americans would bring back the bodies of the Annamite casualties. These terms were accepted. The Americans drove back to the scene of the battle, picked up three bodies, and piled them on the hood of the jeep.

When they returned to the barricade, the Annamite leader became even more violently excited. "Three for one is not fair exchange," he protested through the interpreter.

"Where is Colonel Dewey's body?" Downs asked.

"It is not here," the young man said. "I cannot go through with this agreement when you ask three for one." The Americans insisted that they had kept their part of the bargain.

The negotiations were broken up suddenly by the sound of firing. A group of Gurkhas were coming down the road, shooting off their rifles and driving before them a terrified group of native refugees, mostly women and children. The Annamites at the barricade glared at the Americans, as if they suspected that the negotiations had been a trap to hold them until the Gurkhas arrived. Then they faded away into the woods and behind nearby houses.

Dewey's body was never recovered. For months afterward the French used the missing American's body—the body of a man who believed they should be free—as a bargaining point against the natives. They refused to enter discussions until the body was produced and the Viet Nam government even offered a reward for the corpse.

Reports of Dewey's death in his flagless jeep—there had been a flag but it was wrapped around a pole and thus unidentifiable—quickly reached Lord Louis Mountbatten in Singapore as our stories went out. He sent an urgent message to General Gracey to fly down to Singapore and report on the incident, and the general asked for a lift in our B-25, which had returned after making a trip to Calcutta to pick up equipment for our crippled B-17. As we drove to the airport, we passed through a deathly quiet mile of no-man's land, with torn trees and the bodies of animals on the road—souvenirs of the Gurkhas drive the day before. Native villages along the road were aflame, and here and there Frenchmen crouched behind the stone walls of fine villas. Every few hundred yards there was a Japanese soldier with a rifle and a bayonet—unconcernedly guarding our route. Our own carbines and pistols were cocked as we peered over the sides of the truck.

Throughout the night there had been the sound of drums and shouting from the perimeter around the city and sporadically the noise of shots smashing into buildings. Circling over the city in the B-17 we counted a half dozen large fires, several of them quite close to the besieged Rue Catinat. These fires were symbolic funeral pyres of many natives, for the French came back in with American arms and with the help of the British engaged in bloodletting and slaughter. But eventually they would be the signal fires of freedom.

1944. Battle Fatigue in the Netherlands

"This Must Absolutely Be the Last and Final World War"

"The V-2 followed up on the Fieseler Fi 103 V-1, which was the first rocket-powered missile used in war, and a precursor to modern cruise missiles. The distinctive sound of its simple pulse jet engine earned the V-1 the nicknames 'buzzbomb' and 'doodlebug'" (Photo by A. R. Coster – source)

Bill Downs wrote this letter home on October 21, 1944, while still in the Netherlands. The ellipses between paragraphs indicate omissions of personal details and well-wishes.

October 21, 1944

Dear Folks,

Well, I'm back in Eindhoven again and more or less ready for the winter campaign. I'm feeling better than I did three weeks ago. They said I suffered from battle fatigue; another way of saying I was fed up with the war. I wasn't sick, just worn out after four months of steady campaigning since D-Day. Couldn't sleep and had nightmares when I did and that sort of thing.

Went to London where Ed Murrow took me in hand. Got into civilian clothing, read a half dozen books and lived in his apartment in normal surroundings and found that my morale went up 100 per cent. I'm still browned off by the complacency that exists in rear areas, and in America about the war. No one seems to realize just what the men over here are going through and have yet to go through before this thing is done. But there seems little that we can do about it. Somehow I feel responsible because it has been my job to report the bloody war and still no one seems to know what we're talking about.

Anyway, I had some rest and got myself some long underwear and woolen socks and am back at it again. The front is dull right now and I am doing very little broadcasting, but should get to work soon I think.

.  .  .

I came back by way of Paris, and really you have to see the city to believe a place can be so beautiful. It's going to be a hard winter for all of Europe—lack of fuel and food. The only cheering thought is that it is going to be harder on the Germans than on us. We are beginning to run into the old atrocity stories again. I tried to tell them in Russia but no one paid any attention. Now we are finding the same Nazi prisons, the same torture weapons—with some improvements—and the same sad stories of persecution, execution and privation by Hitler's bad boys. I don't suppose anyone will believe these stories either, although we are collecting and printing enough evidence to hang the whole German army.

It seems that the Presbyterian mind of the average American cannot accept the fact that any group of people can coolly sit down and decide to torture thousands of people. And if torture isn't enough, then to kill them as calmly as an ordinary person would swat a fly. This refusal to believe these facts is probably the greatest weapon the Nazis have, and it will operate in the post-war judgment of the Germans—wait and see. All of us more or less normal people will throw up our hands in horror even at the prosecution of the guilty, because there are so many guilty that we again will think that we are carrying on a pogrom when actually it is only making the Nazis pay for their crimes.

Unless it can be brought home as to what the Germans have done in Europe—the cruelty and ruthlessness and bestial killings and emasculations and dismemberment that has gone on—well, I'm afraid that we'll be too soft on them.

Maybe I've gone a little nuts on the subject, but this must absolutely be the last and final world war. I have seen too many terrible things to even imagine what our scientific invention will produce as the weapons of the next. The flying bomb was only a sample of the terror in store. The large scale use of this weapon means that our air forces—or any air forces—are completely outmoded. The aircraft as a bombing weapon is obsolete. Our only good fortune is that Hitler did not get it and other things into production sooner. As it is, he is too late. We hope.

But enough of preaching. I will stay up here as long there is a story. But I plan to dig into Brussels too, and perhaps alternate on a back area assignment with someone else such as Paris and maybe London. Ed Murrow asked if I wanted to go to Stockholm. I turned it down because I couldn't see myself sitting comfortably there while this thing is going on. It may have been a good assignment because there is a chance of some good stories breaking there.

Anyway, we are fairly comfortable here. We have lights and hot water although there is no heat. But lights and hot water are godsends in this country and we're sticking to them.

I think I'll be okay when I get back to work again. And don't worry about me because I haven't even caught the colds that are wandering about. Army rations may be boring but they are healthy and I have enough clothing to keep me warm through a dozen winters.

Still I'm optimistic about the end of the war. I feel that Germany cannot stand up under cold and lack of fuel and food and arms and everything else she needs to fight us and the Russians. Wait until the Red Army gets rolling this winter and I believe that we won't have much quarrel with the Nazis. They are going to be tough to root out of their holes but they know they will be rooted out no matter what. And I think sooner than expected.

Anyway, we'll have to wait and see. I hope to god I'm right. 

.  .  .

Take care of yourselves . . . I certainly intend to.

Love, 

Bill