1954. The State of Israel in 1954

A U.S. Reporter's Impressions of the New State of Israel

Divided Jerusalem in the 1960s (source)

This text is from a typewritten draft of a piece (including some notes) which Bill Downs submitted to CBS in 1954:

Bill Downs

CBS Rome

May 14, 1954

This is the last of the background series on the Middle East. Again it should be remembered that this was but a two week trip in one of the most explosive and potentially dangerous areas of the world. The conflict of custom, religion, and time is a strange and bloody piecemeal war. The aura of emotional and intellectual conflict that surrounds the problem makes it most difficult to report objectively.

So this last report is on Israel. This new Zionist nation has been called many things—a "State of mind," or a "nationalized ghetto" by its critics; the most "glorious political experiment since the American Revolution"; the "Ireland of the Middle East"; and the "Indochina of the Levant."

Whatever you call it, flying into the State of Israel for the first time is a notable experience. You fly in from Cyprus with a special separate visa. The Israeli diplomatic service realizes the difficulties that visitors have traveling through the Arab east. For example, before getting the Jordan visa, this reporter had to get an affidavit that he is not Jewish. (The document was a one sentence letter from the PIO official in the US Embassy in Rome. The appropriateness of the Embassy in taking such a step is open to serious question, but the guy was acting quickly as a personal favor and I don't want to get anyone into trouble.)

Also, anyone caught carrying one of these special Israeli visas in the Arab countries is subject to arrest under suspicion of being a spy. Several persons have been picked up, but nothing much has happened to them except the inconvenience of an Arab jail, which is considerable. But the Israeli officials are only concerned with the fact that, after you have been everywhere else, you show up in Israel and take a look. What you see is pretty tremendous. Anyone who remembers Hitler's Belsen or Dachau—who saw the pitiful survivors of one of the most inhuman, deliberate race extermination programs in history—cannot help but be impressed by the fact that a Jewish state actually exists.

As a matter of fact, this reporter was a little proud and muchly pleased that as a Gentile he, for once, was a minority person. So you might say that Israel is not only a nation, but also an experience. This is the impact, despite the fact that you had seen the moral decay and stagnation now extant in the Arab refugee camps where some 800,000 persons have been living for the past five years.

As they say about Everest, Israel is there and apparently just about as permanently. It is no longer an experiment, but is now a cause with a difficult autonomy and a powerful army. The desert is not blooming, and the rocky hills are as barren for the most part as they were in the time of Moses, but terraces are being dug out and trees are being planted. And if there is a portent, the people tell you that already the planting of pine forests is beginning to change the climate.

Still, there is war. Not a night or day passes without some kind of incident. Shots are fired at infiltrating Arabs. An Israeli patrol is shot up. Cars and trucks are sniped at along roads up the Jerusalem corridor, where communications are clearly under observation by both sides. The war is real for the men and women of Israeli communal farms along the border areas who each night shoulder rifles and do guard duty. On the Arab side, a newly organized home guard performs a similar duty. And whether it is in Indochina or Korea or Palestine or Jordan, the tension of the not-quite-hot war is everywhere along the border.

By contrast, cities like Beirut and Tel Aviv in the Bistros flourish. The tourists are gay in bars and night clubs as elaborate as in New York or Paris. Sin and vice have their foothold there too. The irony is that the Arab home guardsman or legionnaire patrols opposite the Jewish farmer and soldier to protect this easier and flamboyant life far behind the lines.

The contrast between the two sides is perhaps best seen in the frontier city of Jerusalem. We are not sure it is typical for the entire struggle.

The Arab side of Jerusalem embraces the Old City, which includes Mount Zion, Calvary, the famous Christian and Moslem shrines, plus the suburban Mount of Olives and the residential section surrounding the Hebrew hospital and university.

The Western Wall of the Old City forms the boundary line, and on the Israel side is the new section including the "Country Club District" and the modern shopping center. A no-man's land, sometimes a half block long, separates the two quarters. Wealthy Jews with whom I have talked resent very much the fact that they are cut off from the ancient and venerated place of worship.

The difference in appearance between the two sides is tremendous. On the Arab side, it is not uncommon to see a Bedouin family with a herd of goats and a train of camels making its way along the walls. There are, of course, many automobiles, jeeps, and trucks. But the ancient ways of the tribes seem to make these later inventions seem superfluous and temporary. On the Jewish side of town, emphasis is on the twentieth century. Jews who themselves were in the night shirt of the Persian fellah a few years ago are now driving trucks or running tractors. Girls from Morocco who would have been subjected to a life of traditional slavery or worse have been mustered into the Israeli army and have emerged as individuals and citizens.

The State of Israel not only has succeeded in a mass movement of populations, but has introduced a modern culture into the land. The interesting thing to watch will be to see how irresistible this culture will be in the long haul. The Egyptian revolution is a sign of the times. The question is: can the Arab states of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and other members of the Arab League make a cultural defense against it?

But the greatest contrast comes in the condition of the children. On the Arab side, where refugees sometimes live in caves (incidentally, a cave in the side of a Palestine hill is not the most uncomfortable place to live; it's dry in winter and cool in summer), the children are neglected, for the most part unwashed, allowed to run free to beg or steal or just wander. They often are dirty, diseased, underfed, and generally neglected. By way of contrast, we saw no child on the Israeli side, including the children of the few remaining Arabs, who did not look well-nourished, healthy, and content. It might be said that the children of the Arab peoples appear to have assumed their ancient burdens at birth, while Israel in the modern manner attempts to give their children a running start on life through food programs, schools, and nurseries before they take on the burden of being Israeli citizens. The Arab states create only Moslems.

The above few paragraphs are an attempt to picture the contrasts between the two sides. No fourteen day wonder, which defines what this reporter is, can completely reach into the roots of the two civilizations. Again, it is oversimplification to say that the twentieth century has arrived with Israel while it is hidden behind a curtain of ignorance and tradition on the Arab side of the line.

In fact, there is developing in the hearty and confident Israeli citizen the same conscious national arrogance against which the Jewish peoples struggled for so many centuries. Talk to a red hot Zionist and you get strangely reminiscent arguments about "the natural untrustworthiness of the Arab;" "the historically proven treason of the Moslem;" "the racial and religious instability of those people who amorally will jump automatically to the strongest side." In other words, say the Jews, "You can't trust an Arab." The words are the same that have echoed tragically in the history of Jewish persecution.

We admit that this is an incomplete analysis of the situation, but it is as best as we could judge it in the short time available.

1944. Operation Market Garden Commences

An Aerial D-Day

"USAAF Douglas C-47 aircraft flying over Gheel in Belgium on their way to Holland for Operation 'Market-Garden,' 17 September 1944" (source)

The text in parentheses and the words crossed out did not pass Allied military censors.

Bill Downs

CBS Brussels

September 17, 1944

This is Bill Downs speaking from Brussels.

Men of the First Allied Airborne Army were landed far behind the German lines in Holland today and are now fighting in strength at vital points in the Netherlands.

Today, Sunday, September 17th, is another D-Day. An aerial D-Day which may be as decisive in the defeat of the German nation as were the landings in Normandy and southern France.

This is by far the most daring stroke attempted in the campaign of Western Europe. Some of the parachute troops were landed many miles behind the fighting line. And now the Nazi troops fighting the battle of Germany must contend with well-equipped fighting in the rear areas (and across their supply lines at the same time that British Second Army troops start a drive to link up with the airborne forces).

This airborne landing is admittedly made at great risk, but the men now fighting behind the German lines in Holland are not suicide battle groups. (They even have light artillery with them. And there is a plan to link up with them in the establishment on a new battlefront on the northwest sector of the continent.)

I flew up over the front lines this morning to watch the beginning of this great aerial invasion of northwest Europe. It was one of the most tremendous sights I have ever seen in four years of covering this war.

We had been expecting the airborne invasion for some time, but never until today was the time quite ripe. Last night we were told that "(Oliver) it was on." (Oliver was the code name given the correspondents for the operation. Knowing that Oliver was on, we went to bed early and got up with that feeling of expectancy. The same feeling we had on the first D-Day when we landed in Normandy on June 6th.)

We would be informed early if there was a last minute cancellation of the operation, but about eleven o'clock this morning hundreds of Flying Fortresses flew over after bombing Germany and Holland, and we knew that the operation was definitely on.

(H-Hour was one o'clock in the afternoon.) We went to a base airdrome to find fighters and fighter-bombers already running a shuttle relay back and forth to the front, preparing the way for the airborne troops. It was perfect parachute weather; the sky was blanket gray. A haze restricted visibility to three or four miles, just enough to allow the pilots to keep themselves on course and for the troops to see where they were dropping. There was enough haze to keep any enemy aircraft from spotting the planes as they came in. But the sector over which I flew this afternoon needed no haze to protect our paratroops. Our fighters were so thick that it would have been suicide for a Nazi plane to appear in the area, but no Nazi pilot wanted to commit suicide today and not an enemy plane was to be seen.

As we flew into the battle area, it could have been a peacetime joy ride. Except for the miles and miles of Allied convoys on the road, there was no sign of battle. (The army was scheduled to move on a zero-hour coinciding with the H-Hour of the airborne forces.)

We flew around for about fifteen minutes, staring into the grey haze until our eyes hurt. It seemed as if they would never come. Our slow, lumbering unarmed observation plane, which we call the "horse and buggy," soared peacefully over the lines. There was no ground fire at any time on our sector, and although we stared hard enough to produce the whole German air force, not an enemy plane was to be seen.

Then the pilot shouted, "There they are," and flying out of the haze like bees swarming out of a hive came hundreds upon hundreds of planes. To the sides and above and below them were the fighters forming an armored aerial tunnel through which men of the First Allied Airborne Army flew to their destination.

And in the center of this swarm of fighter planes were the low-flying transports in perfect formation. It made a lump come to your throat to see them. You knew that inside those planes were men who shortly would embark on one of the most dangerous operations of warfare; men who would land smack in the middle of enemy territory and fight on as men ever fought, with enemy on all sides of them.

Every once in a while one of the fighter planes would come over to take a closer look at our ship. There were Lightnings and Mustangs and Spitfires and Thunderbolts giving this aerial production, and they gave us a few anxious moments when the dove in to identify us, but all of them held their fire.

Three great waves of planes approached and then made a majestic half-circle, every plane in formation. After the turn, the ships disappeared ahead of us into Holland.

And we saw an example of the kind of courage these men have. For in the center of one of the carrier formations, a plane suddenly burst into flames. Something had gone wrong, for there was no antiaircraft fire in this sector.

But the pilot of this transport kept the plane in perfect formation. To have broken off at that time would have meant a collision with another plane. It probably would have meant the lives of all the airborne troops inside. This pilot kept his burning plane flying perfectly, and suddenly from the side the parachutes began to bloom. One by one they came out like mushrooms popping in the air, and finally the last paratroopers dropped to safety. Only then did the pilot leave the formation. The flaming plane plunged to earth. We did not see the pilot get away. He had given his life for the men riding behind him.

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

1944-1945. Bill Downs Reports From the Western Front

The Liberation of France and the Fall of Nazi Germany

A French veteran of World War I holds a French flag and greets incoming Canadian soldiers of the South Saskatchewan Regiment around Fleury-sur-Orne during Operation Overlord in June 1944 (source)

Bill Downs sent out these dispatches from the Western Front in 1944 and 1945. The accounts are from the 1946 collection BBC War Report: A Record of Dispatches Broadcast by the BBC's War Correspondents With the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6 June 1944 - 5 May 1945.

THE LIBERATION OF CAEN

pp. 142-143.

While the battle raged through the city, the civil population sheltered in churches, schools, anywhere that offered a chance of survival. The moment it was moderately safe to come into the open, the people of Caen emerged from their shelter to welcome the British troops and to celebrate the liberation of their city:

10 and 11 July 1944.

"Caen has suffered terrible things in this last month, yet the reception which its citizens have given to us has been moving in the extreme. Not a word of reproach; not a word of self-pity. This morning the war was still very near at hand. German aircraft kept appearing overhead: German airburst shells were exploding just above the roofs; occasional mortar shells were bursting in the streets. Yet the people of Caen were out, picking their way through the rubble, smiling at us, waving to us, embracing us, giving us flowers, and time and time again I saw it—weeping for sheer joy. There is no hysterical demonstration: the feelings of these people were far too deep for that; but there was a tremendous conviction and sincerity in their welcome.

"As we went down the roads, crowds gathered round us. They spoke of the savagery of the S.S. troops in the last few days of the German occupation: of their wholesale looting; of the shooting of French civilians who were political prisoners in the jails; of the wanton burning by the Germans of the gendarmerie, of the theatre, and of many private houses and shops into which enemy troops had tossed hand grenades as they left Caen. One man spoke most glowingly of the bravery of a British colonel who led the entry into Caen: bullets were spraying all round him, but still he held himself erect and walked forward—this man said of the colonel: 'My wife screamed: she was sure he'd been killed. But not a bullet hit him. Ah, he was a brave man—a hero.'

"In a small courtyard outside a church the people were already preparing for a ceremony and the raising of the Tricolour over the liberated country. The ridged French Army helmets appeared from nowhere. One man even had on a creased uniform of the regular army. It was rumpled from long hiding in the closet. And every other person wore the Cross of Lorraine. But strangest sight of all was that the men wearing helmets also carried arms. Some had the long rifles of the French Army; some had German rifles; one or two even had some British Sten guns which they had bargained from the liberating troops. They were ready to resume the war where it left off in 1940. Most of them were in tattered civilian clothing, but they weren't waiting to be dressed up to fight the Boche. And this motley group of soldiers representing the resurrection of Fighting France formed a proud colour-guard for the French Flag, virtually under the muzzles of the German guns. British, Canadian, and American officials appeared. They were the military and civilian authorities come in to administer the city. A squad of British soldiers snapped to attention. Everyone in the crowd took off their hats; the mayor of the town, wearing a French helmet and a badge bearing the Cross of Lorraine, gave the command and the Tricolour was raised. It was quiet for a moment for there was not even a sound of gunfire; then the people began to applaud and shout again and again: Vive la France!"

FRANK GILLARD, BBC and BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

"American armored and infantry forces pass through the battered town of Coutances, France, in the new offensive against the Nazis," July 1944 (source)

OPERATION COBRA

pp. 157-158.

In the last days of July a great Russian drive in the East carried Red Army troops into Białystok, Stanislavov, Dvinsk, Rezhitsa, Šiauliai, and Lvov, while the fall of Brest-Litovsk was imminent. Simultaneously the Americans launched a full-scale attack on the west coast towards Coutances and Avranches. The dreaded "war on two fronts"—or, more strictly, on three fronts—was now an active reality, straining German resources everywhere:

29 July 1944.

"At this moment Field-Marshal Rommel is a victim of the old army game—a game in which the Allied forces in Normandy have again called the tune. The American break-through on the western sector of their Normandy front has completed a series of bluffs and counter-bluffs made by the Allied Command, and is now finding its pay-off by the successes of the U.S. Army forces south of the Cherbourg peninsula. The way the Allies have played this game is an interesting study of military strategy. After the fall of Cherbourg the German Command deduced incorrectly that there would be a lot of consolidation and regroupment on the American sector before there could be any further action there. So Rommel concluded that the next move would be an attack on the British sector to the east. He obviously figured that the next Allied move would be a drive for Paris. So he committed some seven divisions around the British and Canadian sector, leaving less concentrated forces more thinly spread along the line of the American sector. When this became clear, the Allies decided that the German Command should go on thinking like this. So the British and Canadians staged a series of sharp, heavy attacks between Caen and Tilly that gained the British bridge-head across the River Odon. This was followed by the attack on Caen itself, which resulted in the capture of the northern half of the town. And then there was the big air blitz down the eastern side of the Orne River, which ended in the complete capture of Caen, and the establishment of a comfortable bridge-head around the city.

"By the time these attacks had finished, more German forces were concentrated on this eastern sector. Then General Bradley made his big move five days ago. And now Rommel is in the position of a poker player who has put so much money into the pot that he cannot afford to drop out of the game. And he has to play it the way the Allied Command wants it to be played."

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

"Cromwell tanks of 7th Armoured Division silhouetted against the morning sky, as they move up at the start of Operation 'Bluecoat', the British offensive south-east of Caumont," July 30, 1944 (source)

AROUND VIRE

pp. 162-163.

Around Vire British and American Forces worked closely together as they advanced, and it sometimes happened that the two armies overlapped:

5 August 1944.

"For example, the other day a British armoured unit was ordered to occupy a wood. It so happened that the Americans also were told to occupy a wood. Over one of the British tank's radios the headquarters asked the British tank commander what he had found in the wood. 'Millions of Americans,' the tank commander replied. Headquarters then said, 'We have learned that German tanks also have been ordered to occupy that wood.' The British commander was silent for a minute, and then said, 'Sorry, there won't be any room here for them!'"

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

"Infantrymen of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada riding on a Kangaroo armoured personnel carrier, Werlte, Germany," April 11, 1945 (source)

OPERATION TOTALIZE

pp. 171-172.

Secure along the banks of the Loire the Americans now wheeled to the north, captured Alençon, and pushed ahead to Argentan in a wide encircling movement designed to gather up the remaining German forces in Normandy. Simultaneously the First Canadian Army fought its way down the Falaise road from Caen to narrow the Germans' escape gap. The Canadian assault, made in darkness, was preceded by a heavy bombing attack:

8 August 1944.

"I watched the tons of bombs plunge into their targets last night; strange flashes lit the sky, the effect was weird and terrible, with a three-quarter moon rising over the Orne Valley shining blood red through the haze, and the dust, and the smoke. The concussion of the bombs pressed my clothing against my body, even though I was several miles away, and the ground trembled under my feet. It is a difficult operation, this fighting in the dark; units get confused, lost, and mixed up, so there were other special methods devised to guide the infantry and the heavy tanks forward in the dark. The infantry were given heavy armoured carriers which had been specially converted for them so they could ride forward with the first wave of tanks. These carriers gave them maximum protection against light enemy fire, and against shell and mortar bursts. To guide the ground forces forward the Canadians employed the old trick which the British used at the Battle of Alamein: lines of tracer bullets were shot over their heads, stretching out like rows of electric light bulbs sailing slowly in the air. The tanks and the infantry and their armoured carriers moved forward while the bombing was still on, the lines of tracer bullets (there were more than half a dozen columns of them) floated over the battlefield looking like a roman candle display, and all around hundreds of guns seemed to grab the atmosphere and shake it, and bounce it, and tear it to shreds."

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

"German forces surrendering in Saint-Lambert-sur-Dive," August 21, 1944 (source)

ALLIED VICTORY IN THE BATTLE OF THE FALAISE POCKET

pp. 181-182.

It was victory, such as we had scarcely dared to imagine—victory over the mighty German army, fighting on ground of its own choosing and led by a brilliant general. Here was an exact measure of comparative strength: if the Germans were unable to check the Allies on the short line between Caen and Avranches they could hardly hope to make an effective stand west of the Siegfried Line—perhaps not there even. In the intoxication of a great success, it seemed as if the final collapse of Germany might be very near; but, to the men who pursued towards the Seine, war was still just war—war against mines and booby-traps and rearguard actions, war against the elaborate technique of retreat in which the Germans had proved themselves to be adepts:

21 August 1944.

"You have to move a little faster, the convoys are more crowded, and you spend a lot more time looking at the back end of the truck ahead of you, and you don't spend more than a night or two in the same slit trench—you move forward all the time. You eat a lot of cold rations because you're on the move and when you bump into the enemy rearguard the fighting is just as bitter as it was before. And when you take the Nazi-held position you find that there haven't been many Germans because the enemy has retreated, and there isn't much booty and not many prisoners—yet. But there are mines, hundreds of them. They lie in the roads, and sometimes there is a string of six of them down a road. You set one off and the whole road goes up for ten yards ahead and behind you. And there are plenty of the S mines—the nasty anti-personnel type that jumps into the air before it explodes and then hurls bits of steel and ball bearings to kill or wound anything living within a hundred feet radius. You have to be mighty careful where you step. And then there are the booby-traps. Maybe you see a bottle of wine lying beside a bombed building, but you don't touch it. And maybe there is a tempting apple-tree beside the road—the apples are just getting big enough to eat, but you leave that tree alone too because it might blow up in your face if you pulled a branch down. There are plenty of snipers, but you've learned to pay not much attention to them anymore, for if someone gets it from a sniper a detachment is sent out to clean him out and the advance continues.

"This might be the big retreat of the defeated German Seventh Army, but it's still just war to the man with the job of pushing the Nazis back. And the German kills just as effectively when he retreats as when he advances."

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

"British Paratroopers from the 1st Parachute Brigade with a captured German soldier" in Arnhem, 1944 (source)

THE INVASION OF GERMANY

pp. 348-349.

An American correspondent, pursuing the British spearheads, caught up with them as the attack on Osnabrück was being launched:

5 April 1945.

"You jeep and jeep until you feel your kidneys are jarred loose from their brackets and you pass through one undamaged village after another, punctuated occasionally by a complete mess of a town that happened to be a railroad junction, or which was unfortunate enough to offer resistance to our advance. Then, as you get closer to the front, you notice the soldiers sitting cheerfully in the convoys, or a lot of horseplay in the fields, for everyone is in high spirits these days. You pass the convoys and the tanks and the guns, and you keep a weather eye out for headquarters. But somehow you miss it; but you keep on driving anyway. Occasionally in the distance your own artillery may let loose a barrage to remind you that there is still fighting ahead. But no one pays attention, including the civilians of this particularly unspoiled bit of Germany. The people smile, and sometimes wave, and the girls mostly just smile. It's hard not to pay any attention to that—ask any soldier.

"You drive on, stopped occasionally by a road jam. It's April, and the spring showers seem to dampen no one's spirits. Then you drive over a hill a mile or so from Osnabrück. More serious-looking soldiers are sitting on tanks, with bayoneted rifles. The sun happens to be shining, and you see one of them asleep. Suddenly, from beyond an ineffective German road-block not fifty feet away, an unholy splutter of machine-gun fire gushes out towards a factory building sitting in the valley. Then the tanks' heavy gun barks with a ferocity that echoes through the forest. Then it's quiet, and you wait for the enemy's return fire. But there is none.

"A British paratrooper lieutenant walks up to the tank with his men sitting atop it. He yawns, and stretches. 'You chaps get ready,' he says, 'We'll be moving up pretty soon.' But he did say it with an air of a man with spring fever, who didn't care when, if ever. As I left, the column started rolling into the town.

"Apparently the British do this sort of thing with that careless unconcerned air all the time."

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

Bill Downs broadcasting from Lüneburg, Germany on V-E Day, May 8, 1945 (Photo by Dennis Allen of the British Second Army)

GERMAN SOLDIERS SURRENDER

pp. 361-363.

Between the armoured spearheads and the occupying forces there was often a nebulous military situation in which anything might happen. There were groups of Germans making suicidal ambushes, and others only too anxious to surrender: there were liberated slave-workers intent on loot of revenge, or hurrying westward on the journey home: there were German civilians seeking to have their towns and villages occupied quickly while they were still intact. To drive unarmed through this country was an experience by turns eerie and comic:

20 April 1945.

"We drove down an empty road, uncomfortably empty, with no sign of anyone on it. We reached the crossroads, when suddenly out of the woods appeared eight Germans; it was a frightening sight, particularly when I remembered that the only gun we had was the driver's Sten gun, and it was buried under our raincoats, and the bullet clip was somewhere in a corner of the jeep. However, these were very tame Germans, they all had their hands up. We stopped, searched them, and rigged up a white flag for them and told them to march on down the road and somebody would pick them up. That took care of the first eight.

"Sergeant Arthur joined our party. We drove on down a side road, and there we ran on to five more German soldiers, who were waving a white flag. Again we told them which way to go, but this group were more frightened and one of them asked 'What do we say when we want to surrender later?' Sergeant Arthur had the answer, and he wrote the words down on a piece of paper. As the prisoners walked off they were practising the phrase 'We have had it.' It's a British expression used to denote the completion of anything. As the prisoners walked off, the five of them were muttering 'Vee hev had it.'

"About that time, another young American flyer rode by on a motorcycle. He also was an ex-prisoner getting himself some food and fresh air for the first time in months. 'There's a town down the road that's just begging to be taken, why don't you go down and have a look?' Then about that time he spotted a chicken running across the road and that was the last we saw of him.

"We took two British boys back to the camp; there I told the story of two BBC engineers who had been with me making recordings at the camps. They were all for taking the town. Again there was kilometre after kilometre of distressingly empty road, but it seemed like a good day for conquering and no one worried particularly. Finally we reached the cross-roads village of Hohne just west of the town of Burgen. I knew the traditional way to capture a place and maybe stick a sword in the ground, and proclaim the place was ours, but I had no sword, and besides, it was a beautifully hard road, and no sword would stick in it anyway. But Sergeant Tinker knew what to do—he went in search of eggs—fresh eggs, and meanwhile, Sergeant Arthur got interested in the farm across the road. There was a big German Army car—with a white flag flying from it. We went into this farmyard to find out what it was all about and to our surprise up stepped one of the most magnificent German officers I've ever seen, complete with Iron Cross and a number of other decorations. My first-year college German was still intact enough to understand that he wanted to surrender—he had his belongings all packed including a pair of ski shoes—what he wanted with ski shoes I was never able to find out. He turned over his pistol and said that we could drive him back to captivity in his own car. Then the German colonel said that he'd like very much if we would take his entire battery prisoner. He was the commander of a battery of 88-mm. combination anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. We decided against capturing the gun battery for we were not sure that a battery of 88's would appreciate being captured by just one Sten gun, no matter what the colonel said, but we took the colonel up on his offer to use his car. Sergeant Arthur drove the car—Sergeant Tinker reappeared with a cap full of eggs. The colonel climbed in and we made up a convoy—my jeep in front—the colonel's car in the middle with two sergeants, and the BBC truck with the two unarmed engineers bringing up the rear."

BILL DOWNS, C.B.S.

1951. "Korea Toughest of Them All" by Don Whitehead

Veteran Correspondents Cover the Korean War

War correspondent Don Whitehead in Anzio, Italy in 1944 (source)

Article by Don Whitehead in The Quill magazine, March 1951, pp. 10-12:

Korea Toughest of Them All

By DON WHITEHEAD

That's what the veteran war correspondents call it . . . and many are men who covered North Africa and Italy, Normandy and Germany

Time: A warm night in August.

Place: Taegu, Korea

Scene: A little balcony on the rambling old building which served as the U. S. Eighth Army Press center.

Characters: A group of war correspondents, retreads from World War Two grown a little balder, a little grayer, and resigned to the possibility that war reporting may become a life-time job.

•      •      •

We sat in the warm darkness watching the flare of artillery and the glowing beads of tracer bullets strung from the muzzles of machine-guns in the distance. Occasionally, there was the swish of an enemy shall passing over. Then an explosion. A lone North Korean gun somewhere out there in the hills was pumping shells into the city.

Finally, the talk turned to past campaigns—battles in Africa, Sicily, Italy, Europe and the Pacific. We dredged up stories which, for a fleeting moment, brought back names and faces and places long forgotten.

The talk droned on far into the night, with occasional bursts of laughter, until a young reporter on his first war assignment exclaimed: "Are we going to sit here all night listening to the reminiscences of tired old war correspondents?"

The kid's barb hit its mark. We laughed—but with the sheepish realization that our yarns were beginning to have the ring of an old soldiers' reunion, although only five years separated us from the last war. 

Actually, a war correspondent is merely a police reporter who is covering a shooting where they use 105 millimeter artillery instead of .32 caliber pistols. Someone has said a veteran at the business is one who finds he is at the front and suddenly asks himself: What the hell am I doing here?"

I had asked myself that question long ago but I found myself asking it again while en route from New York to Korea last July with Hal Boyle of the Associated Press.

Hal and I had reported the last war together and I don't think I'd ever agree to any war assignment without the Irishman. He always brings along a heart as big as his grin, plus a satchel full of laughs to ease the tension when the going is roughest.

The two of us had arrived in Tokyo and were preparing to shove off for Korea next day. It was the shank of the evening and we were sitting in the Correspondents Club having a cool drink when the door burst open. In came Bill Downs of CBS, an old friend just returned from Korea. Bill's clothes were filthy. A tangled beard sprouted below his blood-shot eyes. He smelled like a rice paddy on a hot night.

Downs took one look at us and croaked: "You stupid sob's! Go back! Go back! This ain't our kind of war!"

He was accurate on all points but it was too late to turn back. Five months later, the AP messaged Boyle to return home as soon as feasible. Boyle received the message in Korea and said: "I wonder where Feasible is? I can't leave until Feasible gets here."

That started a great search by the correspondents for Feasible. He must have arrived at last, because Boyle is back in the United States.

•      •      •

My own experience as a war reporter began in 1942 when I flew from New York to Egypt to join Montgomery's British Eighth Army in its drive across the Western Desert.

For the correspondents, this was a leisurely sort of war and a soft touch compared to Korea. Each three correspondents had a conducting officer to do most of the worrying. We had a sedan in which to follow the army and a truck—pardon me, a lorry—to catch food, water, and camping gear. Each morning, Bert, the truck driver, would wake us for a steaming cup of tea.

Our only communication link with Cairo, the censorship and cable point, was by courier plane once a day. This meant we had ample time to get our stories, write them, and even polish up the prose.

Since then, the tempo of war reporting has increased by bounds as a result of better communications in the field and keener competition to get news to the American public. Rapid transmission from war zones is a break for the daily newspapers and the readers—but the wear and tear on the correspondents is terrific.

The Korean war—uncensored until late December—added some staggering burdens which made it the most difficult war of all to cover. (Note: I went into Korea in July with 185 pounds and a 38-inch waistline. I came out with 159 pounds and four inches less suet around the middle.)

•      •      •

When General Patton took his 7th Army into Sicily in July, 1943, combat reporting still was on a comparatively leisurely basis. We often went into the line to live with the troops and follow them in battle to get the feel, sight and smell of war at close range. After four or five days, we would return to the press camp and write a series of stories to describe that particular phase of the campaign. These dispatches went by courier plane to Algiers for relay home.

The Sicily campaign ended a month after it began and in September the Allies invaded Italy. The pressure increased on correspondents for faster coverage of frontline developments.

The army had radio facilities for transmitting dispatches to Algiers from Italy. This called for a new technic, at least for the reporters representing wire services and the large dailies which were in competition. Except for columnists such as Ernie Pyle, who had no spot news deadline to meet, the correspondents were forced to battle for minutes. Stories filed with the censors were released on a first-in, first-out schedule. There was no time for leisurely reporting or polishing a story. A two-minute headway on a story filed in Italy might stretch into a twelve-hour beat in New York.

On the invasion of Europe, the reporting was geared to its present swift pace. The cause of it all, for better or for worse, was the arrival of mobile Press Wireless transmitters which handled press dispatches exclusively. They followed the combat units closely. A story filed by Press Wireless was in New York in a matter of minutes.

This rapid transmission, even faster than it was in Italy, put a premium on mobility of reporters in the field, quick judgment on news values, and speed in getting the story from typewriter to censor.

I remember the day that Cherbourg fell to our troops. I entered the city with Clark Lee and H. R. Knickerbocker. We followed the troops in the street fighting to the center of the city where we wrote our eyewitness stories of the fight.

We completed our stories at 12 noon (Cherbourg time) and sent them by courier to the Press Wireless unit a few miles behind the fighting front. My story was radioed quickly to New York. It appeared in the 9 a. m. editions—by a quirk of time three hours "earlier" than I had written the story—since we were in a time belt five hours ahead of New York time.

An old campaigner, Knick said later: "Wars are getting too fast for me. Now you write a story that may appear in print before you have written it."

•      •      •

Veteran correspondents agree Korea has been the toughest of them all. The country itself is depressing. And then there was the weariness of constantly fighting for communications. You spent one-fifth of your time reporting and the other four-fifths getting the story to Tokyo. There were 100-mile jeep rides over washboard roads to find a telephone. There were weeks when the correspondents traveled as much as 4,000 miles between Korea and Japan to file dispatches.

The army in Korea had no mobile radio transmitters such as the armies in Europe. The only direct link with Tokyo was by telephone or teletype from 8th Army headquarters—an unreliable link often denied to us by the crush of official army business.

Cut off from a telephone, we had only one alternative—to send our stories to Japan by Air Force courier or else carry them back ourselves. Most of the time we took the stories back ourselves to avoid delays.

When the 8th Army began its retreat before the Chinese hordes last November, it was one of the great tragedies of our times. The United Nations army had been defeated. General Douglas MacArthur's "end the war by Christmas" drive was shattered. All hopes for a quick end to the conflict were destroyed.

I was with the 25th Infantry Division at the time and watched the drive falter, grind to a halt, and then fall apart. I had to get the story out—but to telephone from division C. P. through Corps to Army headquarters in Seoul was impossible. The lines ware jammed.

There was only one thing left to do. I hitch-hiked a 20-mile ride by truck, then persuaded an artillery observation pilot to fly me across a mountain range to an air strip near the west coast. An ambulance filled with wounded took me to an evacuation airfield at Sinanju. From the Sinanju strip, I thumbed a plane ride to Ashiya, Japan, from where I dictated the retreat story to Tokyo.

The trip spread over seven hours but was worth it. I was able to give my office the first news that the 8th Army was falling back in retreat.

This experience is cited only as an example of what all the correspondents in Korea were doing to get stories to their papers. The trip was not unusual and, in fact, was an everyday sort of thing.

Frequently we had the premonition we were pushing our luck too far in riding the war-worn cargo planes day after day. Seven correspondents were killed and others injured in plane accidents. We began to feel that plane rides were a greater hazard than the enemy.

Once a British correspondent, Denis Warner, was returning to Korea aboard a "flying box-car" loaded with 500-pound bombs. The two-engine ship was an hour out of Ashiya when one of the engines dropped off. The plane rapidly began losing altitude.

The pilot ordered the cargo jettisoned. Warner pitched in to help the crew shove bombs into space as air gushed into the open doors and threatened to suck him out of the cabin.

Finally the bombs were pushed into the sea and the plane limped back to Ashiya. Warner recalled: "I didn't know I was frightened until I opened my mouth to speak and not a sound came out."

Before Warner could regain his speech, an Air Force officer had pushed him aboard another plane and he was on his way to Korea again. This time he rode with a load of high octane gasoline.

Sometimes we worked to the point of complete exhaustion, traveling from the front to a communications point—then hurrying back to the front to start all over again.

Covering the Southern battlefront in the early part of the war was a cruel test of stamina for some of us whose joints were beginning to creak a bit. Day after day, we went to the front at Chindong-ni to get the story of the fighting. Then we would climb into a jeep for the 50-mile ride to Pusan, three hours of teeth-rattling over one of the roughest roads in Korea.

Usually, we arrived in Pusan before midnight. Often it was dawn before the story was finished and dictation completed by telephone to Tokyo. I have seen reporters like William H. Lawrence of the New York Times, Phil Potter of the Baltimore Sun and Bob Miller of the United Press hunched over typewriters—filthy and gray with fatigue—punching out stories in the slow motion of men whose fingers refuse to keep pace with their thoughts. After two or three hours of rest, they would return to the front.

•      •      •

Tempers became ragged in this rat-race. We felt keenly that the army was giving us little help with transportation and communications. Once a group of us called on a major general who was in charge of the port operations at Pusan. He greeted us cordially and then announced if he could do anything for us—all we had to do was command him.

Frank Holeman of the New York Daily News unkinked his six feet seven inches and growled: "Would you tell your people, General, to quit treating us like pisoners of war?"

After that, our relations with the army in Pusan were a little better.

There were occasions, of course, when the impossible happened and communications were perfect. Once I picked up a telephone at the 25th Division C. P. and dictated a bulletin to AP's Leif Erickson at 8th Army headquarters—the Reds were in retreat toward Chingju. Within eight minutes that bulletin was flashed across the United States.

On another occasion, Lee Ferrero of International News Service completed three consecutive calls from a division C. P. in North Korea to Tokyo while other reporters sweated for hours to get their calls through over the same circuit. But these small triumphs were the exception. For the most part, the battle of communications in Korea was heartbreaking.

Two of the most fabulous characters in all Korea were the Jones twins, Gene and Charlie. Ex-Marines, they took some of the greatest television movies of the war for NBC. They swarmed all over the front, causing Hal Boyle to comment: "That Jones boy works so hard you'd think there were two of him."

During the Inchon landing, Gene was hit in the chest by mortar shrapnel. He spent weeks on a hospital ship. Finally, Charlie brought Gene to Japan for a rest. I met them at Ashiya where I had flown with a story.

The Jones boys were hungry as usual. Neither of them had a dime. I took them to a little snack bar at the Air Force base and asked them what they wanted.

They chorused: "Malted milks."

I lined up eight malted milks—four each—and they went to work on them. Finally Gene looked up and said dreamily: "Malted milks! They're better than women."

That is a point of view not shared universally—but the story illustrates at least what the rigors of war reporting can do to a man.