1944. American GIs in London Send Their Regards

Voice Messages Home

"Time to relax: Two British-based GIs kick back with a well-earned beer" (source)

Wed./Thurs. 12th/13th April 1944.

CBS "OLD GOLD" PROGRAM

BILL DOWNS: This is Bill Downs in London. I've got five GIs and a beautiful WAC in the studio here, and they're ready to go. First here's Corporal Matt Wolthuis from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Go ahead, Matt.

WOLTHUIS: Kalamazoo is going to look mighty good when I get back. I'm going to walk down Burdick Street and down Inkster Avenue, and then I'm going to walk down that middle aisle with Ruth. I've gained 20 pounds since I've been over here. But don't worry folks, those 20 pounds are all in the right places. You can't call me fatty yet.

DOWNS: That's telling them, Matt. Next in line is a flying man from Lithonia, Georgia, right outside of Atlanta. He's Technical Sergeant Jack Sinclair, 8th Air Force veteran of 25 missions over the continent. Fire away, Jack.

SINCLAIR: I just hope Helen hangs on to that present she said she's saving for me in the icebox. The folks will be glad to know that I hope to be transferred home in the next two or three months. My commission hasn't come through yet, but I'm practicing saluting like a shavetail, anyhow.

DOWNS: Thanks a lot, Jack. Now here's Private Betty Litchfield, our lovely WAC from Virginia Beach, Virginia. She's got brown eyes and a beautiful smile, and she's a credit to this man's army. Okay, Betty.

LITCHFIELD: I've only been over here a show time, but this is a wonderful country. Of course, it's not like Virginia Beach, and the people talk a little funny. But everyone is very nice to me. I hope everyone sends lots of Vee mail and lets me know what's going on at home. Incidentally, I saw a couple of old "sand fiddlers" from Virginia Beach the other day. They're George Barnes and Howard Marcet. We all send our regards to Atlantic Avenue.

DOWNS: Thank you all, Betty. And now for a Corporal from National City, California. And he's one of the most important men in the army. He's a cook. Go ahead, Corporal Leslie "Winston" Titchenell from Norton Avenue, National City, California.

TITCHENELL: I just wanted to let the Gang on Norton Avenue that the army's gaining weight on my phone. However, nothing very exciting ever happens to a cook. I've been hoping to see Edith Payne over here, but there are so many WACs around I haven't been able to yet. Tell everyone hello...but don't expect me to cook a meal when I get back.

DOWNS: Okay Les, thanks. Now for another Eighth Air Force gunner, from Athens, Alabama this time. Technical Sergeant Lifford French, whose home is on the Bee Line Highway just outside Athens. Go ahead, Liff.

FRENCH: I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Dad's steers. It's a lot easier riding hard on those critters than riding on the "Touch the Button, Nell." We have a new Fortress now, after the accident in February when we lost the first Nell. We now have "Nell the Second." She's a good ship. I'm feeling great, so don't worry.

DOWNS: Thanks Sergeant. Now out last GI is a top kick from Battle Creek, Michigan. He's First Sergeant Albert "Brandy" Brandimore. Take it Brandy.

BRANDIMORE: The Folks will be glad to know that they finally sweat a new picture out of me. They should get it in about a month...that faint black line you see on my upper lip is a mustache. Susie was only two days old when I left two years ago. But she's still my best girl. Pass along my regards to the gang in East End.

DOWNS: This is Bill Downs returning you to Allan Jones in New York.

1944. Victory in the Raw in Belgium

Celebration and Violent Retaliation in Belgium

German prisoners in a lion's cage in the Antwerp zoo in September 1944 (source)

The text in parentheses did not pass Allied censors.

Bill Downs

CBS Brussels

September 6, 1944

This is Bill Downs speaking from Brussels.

Brussels still has not paused to catch its breath, and the Belgian capital is just now beginning its fourth night of celebration with thousands of people swarming the streets, mobbing Allied soldiers. And they still cheer the Sherman tanks now passing through the city as riotously as they cheered the first tank that entered Brussels Monday afternoon.

This is victory in the raw. And you wonder why the people don't go home and rest. The whole country is still dazed by the rapid advance, and they are still pinching themselves to make sure it is true.

The British troops advanced something like 205 miles in six days rolling from the Seine to the banks of the Albert Canal. Belgium has, to all intents and purposes, been liberated. Only two large Belgian cities remain to be taken from the retreating Germans—the cities of Liege and Bruges.

British troops today reached the outskirts of Ghent. German resistance in Antwerp is almost completely overcome. Lille is now completely in our hands.

The Battle of Belgium was won in something like three days, which I believe is something of a record for the liberation of a country.

And now we have another pocket—the channel pocket where again trapped German divisions are fighting for their lives. This new pocket promises to develop into another Allied victory even bigger than the Normandy bag.

Estimates as to the number of Nazis trapped in the channel pocket vary from 50,000 upwards. No one knows exactly how many Germans there are. Prisoners continue to arrive from everywhere. How many, no one has had time to count. One unit is capturing Germans at the rate of 1,000 per day, and the Belgian White Army is holding thousands of other prisoners waiting for the British troops to take the Nazis off their hands.

With the mopping up of this pocket, the Canadians moving up from the coast from the south, and the British closing in from the east and north, this will just about wipe out the Wehrmacht in Northwest Europe. Right now there are only isolated pockets of resistance that have to be cleaned up one by one. However, as the Nazis are squeezed back toward the sea, they may be able to better organize themselves, and hard fighting can still be expected.

But it is the supreme irony of this war that the Germans in this pocket are being pressed back on the same beaches over which they chased the Allied troops in 1940—only the Germans have no boats waiting for them.

About the only way to describe Belgium today is to concentrate all the New Year's Eve celebrations you have ever seen and throw in a Fourth of July celebration and then mix them together—and then you have a liberated Belgium.

I have heard Tiperary sung at least a thousand times. I have been kissed so often that I almost wear a permanent blush of lipstick. I have refused enough wine to float a battleship, and I must admit that I have taken some along with me too.

Never have I seen so much joy. And when you contemplate that this is only the reaction to another feeling these people had for the Germans, you know that their hate must have been very great. And it frightens you . . . the hate.

The homes of collaborators are still being ransacked and burned. Odd persons are still being rounded up by the Belgian White Army. I saw a young man today bringing in one of them—an elderly man with his hands tied behind the back. As the White Army man produced the collaborator along the street with his rifle, crowds along the sidewalks hissed and booed.

The White Army lists of collaborators are very long. (A number of people have simply been shot.) Scores (of others) await trial and prison sentences. The Rexists, the fascist Belgian group, were a nasty bunch. They dealt in the lives of American and Allied flyers who parachuted into Belgium, getting as much as 10,000 francs for turning the airmen over to the Germans. They had their own little program which resulted in the death or deportation of some 40,000 Jews. Their list of crimes is long and obnoxious. The Belgian people are having their revenge.

The British advance was so swift that the Belgian forces of the interior did not go into full action. I have talked to dozens of White Army men who are just a little disappointed that they didn't get a chance to kill a few Nazis. But the White Army cooperation has been complete. They even have tanks hidden for four years—tanks for which they stole German oil and gasoline and which they maintained daily to have them ready. These tanks were abandoned during the retreat before the German army in 1940. The White Army even had an antitank gun. They only had seven shells for it, and they saved them very carefully for the day they could rise up.

Now Belgium is beginning to think of the future. The people are confused and frustrated by the actions of King Leopold. They still want a king but they also want some explanations for many of his actions under German rule. Leopold is now in German hands somewhere in Bavaria. He was taken there soon after D-Day.

But one thing is certain. Belgium now has her freedom and she is determined that nothing in the world will ever cause her to lose it again.

This is Bill Downs in Brussels returning you to CBS in New York.

1943. Soviet Military Strategy After Stalingrad

Tenacity on the Eastern Front

"The 8th Guard of the Army of General Chuikov in the streets of Odessa, April 1944" (source)

The parentheses indicate text that did not pass Soviet censors for military security or propaganda reasons.

(For more, see the complete 1943 Moscow reports.)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

March 2, 1943

One of the notable things about this Russian winter offensive is the hardheaded attitude of the Soviet high command towards the enemy.

Even in the flush of the Red Army's greatest victories, there has been no official suggestion that the German commanders are fools, or that the German soldiers are cowards, or the power of Hitler's Wehrmacht crushed.

When Josef Stalin said in his Red Army anniversary Order of the Day that the Germans "can launch new adventures," he meant it. (The Soviet press throughout the winter offensive has emphasized this. Generals to whom I talked maintained the same attitude.)

(For example, when I talked with General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the victorious 62nd Army at Stalingrad, he said matter-of-factly that Hitler probably would launch a counteroffensive. He added, however, that "The Red Army is going to have a lot to say about any future German plans.")

(It must be pointed out that) Russia's hardheaded attitude towards this war does not end with a careful assessment of the enemy. It is just as realistic and frank about the Soviet fighting forces as the troops which oppose them.

The army newspaper, Red Star, had an interesting editorial today which clearly demonstrates this attitude. (This editorial is also worthy of study for those people who think there is no such thing as criticism in the Russian press).

(Speaking of the fighting in the Donbass, the Red Star editorial pointed out that German resistance has greatly increased. "Our victories are great," the newspaper said. "However, this does not give anyone the right to harmful delusions. Hard fighting is ahead. The enemy is still very strong.")

(Red Star continued explaining that the Soviet strategy of breaking through defensive positions and sending mobile units to roam the enemy's rear capturing fortified points had been very successful. It then added, "to develop these successes, it is necessary first, at all costs, to hold the captured junction points and ward off counterattacks of troops attempting to restore former positions.")

(The importance of immediately establishing a completely circular defense around these captured points was emphasized.)

Red Star said that the Germans in the Donbass have adopted the Soviet tactic of bypassing an objective and attacking from the flanks and the rear. "There have been cases," the newspaper said, "where Red Army commanders did not organize a circular defense and establish strong reconnaissance. German tanks bypassed and attacked them from the rear. The commander took the German tanks for his own approaching units, and thus the enemy succeeded in braking through. (Our units were forced to wage a battle in disadvantageous conditions.")

(Red Star then observed that, in order to avoid such counter blows, the forces capturing a fortified point must immediately completely mine all approaches to the objective and establish reconnaissance. "It is impossible to restrict oneself only to observers. Scouting detachments must be sufficiently mobile and equipped with firing means to find out where the enemy is concentrating for a counterattack and smash these attempts in the beginning.")

(The Russian air force aided in smashing the German fortifications, sending bombers and stormer planes over to smash pillboxes and points of support.)

"The difficulties of the offensive are growing," the newspaper concluded. "We must treble our efforts, stubbornly overcoming these difficulties and consolidating our victories."

The Germans didn't leave Rzhev voluntarily. This is shown by the great amount of equipment they left behind. They were kicked out of Rzhev in a blow that eliminated the main Axis threat to Moscow. (The newspapers say that soon the railroad between Velikiye-Luki and Moscow will be in full operation. And this spring shipping on the upper Volga will start again from the ancient town of Rzhev.)

Red Star this morning hails the offensives in the Demyansk, Rzhev, and Kursk sectors as being of major significance. The paper points out that the Axis is getting exhausted and becoming weaker. However, at the same time it warns that "we can expect new adventures from the enemy. It is natural on such a large front that in some sectors the Germans have succeeded in concentrating considerable forces," the newspaper said.

"The Red Army has to ward off furious counterattacks by tanks and motorized infantry in the Donbass. And west of Kharkov the enemy is bringing in reserves and has counterattacked several times."

However, Red Star does not strike any note of despair. The initiative is still in the hands of the Red Army, and it intends to keep it there.

1943. Soviet Play Features Heroic American War Correspondent

American News Correspondent Built Up As Hero in New Soviet Play Click

Edward R. Murrow's D-Day team in 1944 featuring some of the Murrow Boys. (Standing, from left to right): Charles Shaw, Gene Ryder, Richard C. Hottelet, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, Bill Downs, and Bill Shadel. Edward R. Murrow is sitting in front.

American News Correspondent Built Up As Hero in New Soviet Play Click

By BILL DOWNS

Moscow, July 27, 1943

There has opened in Moscow Red Army theaters a play co-authored by Andrea Arbuzov and Alexander Gladkov called "Immortality." It is the story of guerrillas in the early war and is distinguishable by the fact that it portrays an American correspondent in one of the leading roles, the first time since the war that any American has been depicted on the Russian stage. It is also one of the few times in the history of the Soviet Union that it has been done.

The play is built around a group of students sent to dig potatoes on a collective farm near Moscow as part of the war effort. The American correspondent turns up doing a story of Soviet youth in wartime when the Germans break through and isolate the students who flee to the forests with the correspondent accompanying them. From there on the story is of their transformation into a full-fledged guerrilla unit with the typical tragic Russian ending. Only three escape death.

The author's portrayal of a correspondent called Jack Warner, identified as a representative of the "Atlantic Press," is one of the most sympathetic characters in the drama. The correspondent is depicted as about 40, greyish, with an intense interest in getting the story but with little interest in taking a personal part in the war. He is constantly taking notes and snapping pictures and making what are, to the Russian mind, wisecracks. The author allows the correspondent to jibe the Russians about their love for tragedy, maintaining that Tolstoy should have ended "War and Peace" with "everyone loving everyone else."

He is asked when the Americans are coming into the war (the play occurs in November, 1941). Warner replies "I'll have to ask my old friend, President Roosevelt."

However, after the guerrillas are surrounded and gradually killed off, Warner gets the biggest hand of the night when he grabs a machine gun, whips off his coat, and announces dramatically: "Now America goes to war." He and the remainders of the surrounded group are killed by artillery fire.

The play is overlong for American audiences. It lasts four hours, with eight scenes and four acts. Warner is perhaps more convincing as a Yankee newspaperman to the Russians than he would be to Americans. The foreign press corps is flocking to see the play. It's one of the best local stories of the war. But the first correspondent who can arrange to visit camp behind German lines will have one of the really great stories of the war.