REVIEW: The War Correspondents: The Incredible Stories of the Brave Men and Women Who Covered the Fight Against Hitler’s Germany by Keith Warren Lloyd
The War Correspondents unveils the extraordinary bravery and unmatched literary legacy of the journalists who risked their lives to cover WWII’s European Theater
Ernie Pyle, John Steinbeck, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Ernest Hemingway, Bill Mauldin, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Andy Rooney, Martha Gellhorn, Richard Tregaskis—the list of American correspondents who covered the fighting in Europe during the Second World War is a veritable Who’s Who of American literary and journalistic greats of the twentieth century. War correspondents not only rubbed shoulders with generals, admirals, prime ministers, and presidents, they also often witnessed the fighting first-hand and up close, placing themselves at great personal risk in order to get the story. The War Correspondents recounts the most destructive conflict in human history, from the civil war in Spain to the ultimate collapse of the Third Reich, and tells the story of the legendary reporters who accompanied Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen into battle.
“A ruffan gang, gallant and gay,” Steinbeck continued, “and better reporters we will not see in our lifetime—so many dead now, brave men and fine newspapermen. The morning sun flashing on the white terraces of Algiers—warm and sad at the same time.”
Review
The main focus of the book is on those who covered the action in the North African/European Theater. We start with some background on many of these reporters and photographers – perhaps too much, to be honest – but then settle into how they began to cover the lead up to the start of hostilities in 1939 and the early days when most of these (predominantly) American reporters began sending word back to the US about what was happening as the Germans swept through France then began bombing the UK. Many tried to convey the growing menace of what they’d seen in Europe to a skeptical US public.
“The last man to leave the plane was the pilot,” Capa wrote. “He seemed to be all right except for a slight gash on his forehead. I moved to get a close-up. He stopped midway and cried: ‘Are these the pictures you were waiting for, photographer?’ I shut my camera and left for London without saying goodbye . . . I hated myself and my profession.”
On the train to London, Robert Capa made a silent pact with himself. If he was going to continue taking pictures of soldiers fighting and dying in this war, he would have to share in the same dangers.
In an age when newspapers and increasingly radio were the main news sources, the work of people like these was how most people discovered what was happening around their country and around the world. Getting a scoop or having your photos splashed across a double page spread could make a cub reporter or new photographer a household name. Many of the people in this book were already well known such as Ernest Hemingway, Ernie Pyle or John Steinbeck but others such as Walter Cronkite, Martha Gelhorn, Bill Mauldin, Eric Sevareid or Andy Rooney first came to public notice during the war.
“I could break into tears thinking about the bomber crews that were lost. I would get to know them,” Andy Rooney said many years later. Late one night, Rooney was talking with an aerial gunner in the enlisted barracks of one bombardment group, when he noticed that there were seventeen hash marks drawn upon the wall above the man’s bunk.
“Gosh,” Rooney exclaimed. “You’ve been on seventeen missions?”
“No,” the gunner replied. “That was the guy before me.”
And they did it by going ashore with the troops through enemy gunfire, flying along with the crews of B-17 or B-24 bombers, being on ships that were torpedoed, or close to the front lines that were shelled. Bill Mauldin, who drew cartoons of sarcastic dog-faced soldiers surviving the mud, rain, and inept officers, knew what he was talking about as he’d lived it. Ernie Pyle was beloved because he got in foxholes with them and listened to what they had to say. Ed Murrow’s dramatic opening phrase “This … is London” brought radio listeners directly to the streets of London as the bombs of the blitz fell. One reporter who parachuted in with the 101st Airborne in Normandy heard footsteps in the dark, dove into a ditch and almost landed on top of General McAuliffe then later sent word to his editor via carrier pigeon that he’d arrived.
“I found it hard at first to take photographs in the face of so much suffering,” Bourke-White wrote in 1944, “but with the operating surgeon so absorbed in his work, it became increasingly easier for me to become equally absorbed in mine. I realized that people at home wanted to know what their boys were going through.They had a right to know, and it was my assignment to portray the reality of war as I found it.”
These reporters had to hustle to get noticed, talk their way onto transports and planes, rush to find someone who could get their copy or film back to places where it could be examined by military censors before being transmitted back to London or New York. Their stories and pictures were dramatic but in the end, what they went through to get them began to wear them down.
“I dread going back and I’d give anything if I didn’t have to go,” Ernie told Life magazine’s Lincoln Barnett. “But I feel I have no choice. I’ve been with it so long I feel a responsibility, a sense of duty toward the soldiers. I’ve become their mouthpiece, the only one they have. And they look to me. I don’t put myself above the other correspondents. Plenty of them work harder and write better than I do. But I have in my column a device they haven’t got. So I’ve got to go again. I’m trapped.”
Alcohol kept some going or, in the case of Hemingway, remained what kept him going and wound up pissing others off. Bill Mauldin’s slovenly cartoon soldiers so enraged General Patton that Mauldin had to meet with the General and soothe his feelings to avoid yet another Patton PR fiasco. Capa was the only civilian photographer covering the landings at Omaha Beach and managed to capture what are known as The Magnificent Eleven photographs.
“The dying man was left utterly alone, just lying there on his litter on the ground, lying in an aisle, because the tent was full,” Ernie remembered.
“Of course it couldn’t be otherwise, but the aloneness of that man as he went through the last few minutes of his life was what tormented me. I felt like going over and at least holding his hand while he died, but that would have been out of order and I didn’t do it. I wish now I had.”
Pyle was so broken by what he saw and endured in France that eventually he had to head home to recuperate only to feel compelled to continue to the Pacific to cover “his boys.” A decision that would cost him his life. Murrow was one of the ones who arrived first at Buchenwald and wrote searing reports of what he’d seen. Gelhorn sarcastically stated that all the Germans she met claimed to not be a Nazi, or have approved of what was done, or to have fought.
“In another part of the camp they showed me the children. Hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm . . . the others showed me their numbers. They will carry them until they die . . . I could see their ribs through their thin shirts. The children clung to my hands and stared.”
Thirty seven correspondents would die in the war. Much of the book is direct quotes from these reporters. There are also photographs and an extensive bibliography of source material. B
~Jayne
Omar Bradley wrote in his memoirs. “This was my first press briefing and it marked the start of a long friendship with many of those hard-working newsmen . . . throughout the war many of these newsmen were better informed on pending operations than some members of my staff. Together they represented the public interest, and they would have been poorly equipped to evaluate our current operations had they not been adequately informed on what was to come. But though they were privy to many of our secrets, not once during the war did a newsman accredited to my command willfully violate a confidence of mine.”
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This sounds both fascinating and depressing, Jayne. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
@Kareni: That’s a perfect way to describe it.