1942. Bill Downs Meets Edward R. Murrow

Downs Meets Murrow in London

Bill Downs (left) and Edward R. Murrow in East Berlin standing under a Free German Youth banner in 1948

This excerpt from The Murrow Boys (pp. 154-156) tells in part the story of how Bill Downs first met Edward R. Murrow in London in September 1942:

In the late summer of 1942, when Larry LeSueur was becoming tired and frustrated after a year of covering the eastern front, Murrow began looking for someone to replace him in Moscow. Collingwood said they needed a "very good feature writer, someone to tell the anecdotes, give the flavor of life in wartime Russia, rather than just paraphrase communiqués." That, of course, was a backhanded slap at LeSueur. (As generous and charming as Charlie Collingwood was to most people throughout his life, he could be a devious competitor; this unfair little insult was just the first bud of what later became a full-flowered rivalry between him and LeSueur). Bill Downs, in UP's London bureau, was just the man for the job, Collingwood said.

Downs did have a flair for feature writing, but he was above all a hard-nosed reporter, the kind who "got the story, got it first, got it right." He wore thick glasses with heavy frames. He was short and had an ample, powerful build, an abundance of dark hair, and a loud growl of a voice that when raised (as it often was) gave new meaning to the concept of wrath. But more than yelling, Downs loved to laugh. And drink. And tell stories. And argue. In roughly that order. He hated pomposity. When he first arrived in London, he entered a pub on Washington's Birthday and loudly proposed a toast to the man "who kicked the hell out of the English army one hundred and fifty years ago." Bill Downs also had a fierce sense of integrity and honor. Ed Murrow took to him instantly.

Downs had grown up in Kansas City, and all he ever wanted to be was a reporter. His father, William Sr., was a Union Pacific railroad engineer, his mother a housewife with a third-grade education. During his father's long absences on the railroad, Bill—an only child for nine years, until his sister, Bonnie, came along—was doted on by his mother.

The family was never very poor. When business fell off during the Depression, the Union Pacific cut back on Downs's runs, but he always kept his job. Even so, Bill Jr. was expected to help pay for his schooling: two years at Wyandotte College and two years at the University of Kansas. One of his summer jobs was as a grain sampler, testing the quality of the wheat before it went to market. Downs had to climb to the top of huge silos and dive down into the "damn dusty stuff" and come up with a pint of sample wheat. It was a dirty, hot, dangerous job, but it helped strengthen Downs's already powerful physique. Later it turned out to have had another advantage: it was the kind of hard youthful work that always appealed to Ed Murrow. In school Downs was sports editor of his high school newspaper and manager of the paper at Wyandotte College. At the University of Kansas, which he entered in 1933, he was according to a college friend, John Malone, "the best and most prolific writer and reporter in the whole university."

In 1935 the campus paper, the Daily Kansan, went bankrupt. The next fall the newspaper's board appointed Malone publisher, and he in turn chose Downs as managing editor. Within a year the paper began to turn a profit, and it has operated successfully ever since. Malone gave most of the credit to the energetic, impatient Downs: "He was a great managing editor. He had the newsiest paper around, far better than the Kansas City papers." After college both Downs and Malone were hired by the UP for its Kansas City bureau, along with another Kansan (and recent University of Texas dropout) named Walter Cronkite.

Downs was immediately tagged as a comer at UP. Within a few months, he was transferred to the Denver bureau and not long after that to New York. In 1941 he was given the wire service's plum assignment—the London bureau, the war. He loved the speed and immediacy of wire-service work, but when Murrow approached him about the CBS job in September 1942, Downs didn't hesitate. "Not only will it establish my name," he wrote to his parents, "but the work is easier and I believe has more future." Not to mention a seventy-dollar-a-week salary and an expense account.

First, though, he was supposed to undergo the pro forma voice test. It did not go well. Even Murrow called it "terrible" and told Downs to try again. This time, Murrow said, just go to Piccadilly Circus and come back with a story describing what you saw. On his return, Downs talked about two GIs leaning against a wall, admiring the passing parade of women, most of them in slacks. Suddenly one of the soldiers spotted an American Red Cross worker in a skirt. "Look, Willie," he shouted. "Ankles." Downs's growling voice didn't improve in the second test, but Murrow loved the story so much that he hired him anyway.

In November, after receiving a little radio training from Collingwood, Downs was deemed ready for Moscow. He set off, equipped with a new ankle-length, fur-lined leather coat and matching fur-lined flying boots for protection against the Russian winter. Although Downs found the assignment in Moscow no easier than LeSueur did, he managed to demonstrate that he was the equal of his seniors on the Murrow team. In late January 1943, after the Red Army's siege of Nazi-occupied Stalingrad had finally forced a German surrender there, Downs and several other American correspondents were taken to see the ruins.

"Try and imagine," he told his listeners, "what four and a half months of the world's heaviest bombing would do to a city the size of Providence, Rhode Island, or Minneapolis or Oklahoma City." It was "utter and complete and absolute devastation." In a fifty-mile radius one could see only piles of bricks and rubble and corpses." Downs continued, "There are sights and smells and sounds in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick at your stomach."

1942. The Allied War Effort and News from Axis Radio

Axis Radio

Douglas Boston aircraft of the Royal Air Force taking part in Operation Jubilee, the raid on Dieppe, 19 Aug. 1942 (source)

The portions in parenthesis were censored by Allied officials.

Bill Downs

CBS London

October 1942

The people of Britain have to depend on Axis radio nowadays to find out just what their Commandos are doing, and this morning the Berlin radio gave them an earful. The Berlin announcer revealed that there have been at least four raids on the Occupied coast of Europe since the first of September. The raids apparently were not large attacks—just small landing parties assigned to test the German defenses, take prisoners and get information out about military installations. It was these raids which led Adolf Hitler to order the chaining of the Dieppe prisoners. Apparently these small scale attacks must have been too successful for German comfort. The German announcer said this latest series of Commando attacks were concentrated on the Normandy coastal region. 

The German announcer then made a statement which sounds mighty good to the British man-in-the-street whether it's true or not. The announcer said the Commando raids were in preparation for what he called "a major invasion of the coast of Normandy." You notice he didn't say "an attempted major invasion"—he said invasion. 

All in all, the stuff that has been pumped over the Axis controlled radio stations the past few weeks sounds pretty encouraging. Vichy is showing unprecedented concern about what is going on in North Africa. Only the other day Paris radio said American army contingents are "arriving daily" on the Gold Coast and in Liberia and the Belgian Congo as well as in South Africa. 

Goebbels formally declared that the Germans can soon expect a major Allied offensive in Egypt, and the people of France just the other morning were told to prepare for Allied air, sea and land activity and to keep away from military areas. 

In many ways, Germany today is in the same position which Britain found herself at the end of 1940. Germany has officially announced that she will be on the defensive this winter. Although this statement might be propaganda, most military experts believe it's true. (It appears that the time has at last arrived for the United Nations to reveal itself. How, where and when is a military secret—but it's a secret that must be causing great concern in Berlin and Rome). 

This morning's authoritative London Times, which often acts as the unofficial spokesman for the government, had this to say in its leading editorial discussing future strategy. (The Times said "The British Isles on the continent of Africa have stood siege for three years ?) . . . the time approaches for their Allied garrisons, along with the armies from the unreduced strongholds of Russia and China, to turn upon their assailant and carry the war into the heart of hostile lands." 

[Handwritten footnote: Not only the London Times, but all of Britain feels the same way]

1938. Edward R. Murrow's First News Broadcast

March 13, 1938: The First Broadcast of CBS News' "World News Roundup."

This is Edward R. Murrow's first-ever broadcast. The roundup also features William L. Shirer and Robert Trout as they report the current status in Europe during the lead-up to World War II.

1945. American Humor on the Western Front

Soldier Humor on the Front

American  soldiers cross the Siegfried Line (source)

Bill Downs on Soldier Humor

January 17, 1945

The American soldier who landed in Britain in 1942 made the world chuckle when he remarked to his new Irish girlfriend "Pucker up, Babe, I'm coming in on the beam."

The same American doughboy, when he landed on the continent, brought more than liberation to Western Europe. He brought a laugh and a gag with him—and God knows the people of Europe need laughter and gaiety.

An incident on a London bus is a good example of the American soldier's high spirits in a foreign land. This particular soldier was completing 48 hours leave and was returning to his billet after drinking a good deal of beer. He felt so good he started singing—sitting alone and singing all the verses he remembered of "Dixie." The British, being modest, retiring people, were a little shocked, and some looked disapprovingly on the doughboy's good spirits. The lady ticket collector asked him to sing a little more softly—but this didn't faze him. He grinned and kept singing at the top of his voice. When he'd finished the last stanza he looked around at the passengers and said, "Now I'll stop singing—thanks for listening."

That's more or less how the American soldier gets along with the people of foreign countries. He's independent and sometimes his jokes are beyond the understanding of people who don't know Americans. But generally people like him.

Here's a story that's now told pretty much all over Belgium. A GI got on a train and went into a compartment and sat down opposite a very elderly lady. He was chewing gum vigorously. The old lady, who spoke some English, would look at him every once in awhile, but neither said a word. Finally she leaned over to the gum-chewing soldier and said, "Thank you very much for talking to me like this—but I'm deaf and can't understand a word you say."

I can't tell you much about the GI front line humor—not over the radio. It's rough and vulgar and sometimes filthy. Analyzed coldly, away from the front, a lot of GI front line humor really isn't funny. But in the strain and violence, misery, bloodshed and death of the front line, men laugh at anything that comes along.

Even the most unprintable words that a soldier uses somehow seem inadequate. They hate the frustration—the plain, simple discomfort of war are reflected in his words.

But most GIs keep their sense of humor under the most trying circumstances. And they laugh mostly at themselves. I think it's because, underneath, it seems ridiculous to them that they should wear uniforms and be engaged in the business of killing. Underneath, they are still civilians. One of the most popular statements of the ordinary doughboy is, "Boy! It's good to be in a democratic army where a man can do as the sergeant tells him!"

But the front isn't funny. The miserable situations go into comic relief only after the danger is passed—only after the wounded have been cleared and the dead buried.

Then the GI remembers with relief the comic aspects of his narrow escape. For example, PFC Nathan Gorochowski from New York takes great delight in telling you he was smoking a (blanking) cigarette when a (blanking) fragment from an 88 millimeter shell knocked it out of his (blanking) mouth—then he'll tell you it was a (blanking) Lucky Strike cigarette, too.

Sergeant Robert Weister, from Pittsburgh, will laugh when he tells how he was in the second story of a front line house—the best (blanking) observation point he'd ever seen—and he was calling down mortar fire directly on the German positions. However, after a while he found two (blanking) Germans on the other side of the (blanking) house, who were using the same position to direct 88 fire on our positions. Weister captured the Germans.

Those things are funny now—but they certainly were not at the time.

It's often been said that the Germans never understood the American sense of humor. But it's accurate to say that the GI can't understand why the Germans have none. But the other day it took an American to make a group of very scared, cold Germans to chuckle—and at themselves, too.

Eighteen Germans surrendered in a body to a company of the 30th Infantry Division north of Saint Vith. The Germans, it was discovered, had been ordered to fight to the last man and the last bullet. When the sergeant that marched the Germans back to the prisoner of war cages turned them over, saying "I guess those guys couldn't make up their minds who was the last man and who had the last bullet," one of the prisoners who spoke English translated the remark and to his comrades and they all grinned—except two who, being Nazis, couldn't see anything funny about it.