Cronkite's War: His World War II Letters Home
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 1426210191
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A giant in American journalism in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation" reveals his World War II experiences in this National Geographic book. Walter Cronkite, an obscure 23-year-old United Press wire service reporter, married Betsy Maxwell on March 30, 1940, following a four-year courtship. She proved to be the love of his life, and their marriage lasted happily until her death in 2005. But before Walter and Betsy Cronkite celebrated their second anniversary, he became a credentialed war correspondent, preparing to leave her behind to go overseas. The couple spent months apart in the summer and fall of 1942, as Cronkite sailed on convoys to England and North Africa across the submarine-infested waters of the North Atlantic. After a brief December leave in New York City spent with his young wife, Cronkite left again on assignment for England. This time, the two would not be reunited until the end of the war in Europe. Cronkite would console himself during their absence by writing her long, detailed letters -- sometimes five in a week -- describing his experiences as a war correspondent, his observations of life in wartime Europe, and his longing for her.
Betsy Cronkite carefully saved the letters, copying many to circulate among family and friends. More than a hundred of Cronkite's letters from 1943-45 (plus a few earlier letters) survive. They reveal surprising and little known facts about this storied public figure in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation" and a giant in American journalism, and about his World War II experiences. They chronicle both a great love story and a great war story, as told by the reporter who would go on to become anchorman for the CBS Evening News, with a reputation as "the most trusted man in America."
Illustrated with heartwarming photos of Walter and Betsy Cronkite during the war from the family collection, the book is edited by Cronkite's grandson, CBS associate producer Walter Cronkite IV, and esteemed historian Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of History at Hamilton College.
Now this historical portrait is new in paperback.
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Mountbatten’s sister who has been going around with a negro rhumba band-leader much to the embarrassment of the Royal Family, was there, as was some British naval commander who spoke nine languages including two Chinese dialects and Japanese, a smooth Hungarian who did native dances with Countess Norborough, some gal in the French Ministry of Information at whose wedding DeGaulle was best man, an American lieutenant-colonel in the railway transport service who went around slapping on the back and
order to get transportation to cover a big victory parade at the Hague tomorrow. I hope to get a ride back to Amsterdam tomorrow afternoon, and then I’m stuck again. To make matters worse, Saturday afternoon I was unceremoniously kicked out of the Park. The Canadian Army requisitioned it as a billet for service women. I have now moved into the much nicer Krasnopoldky which is on what is called “the dam” (it isn’t), a sort of large plaza flanked on one side by the old Royal Palace. It is only
Doug Werner and Collie Small at the bomber bases and Bill Higginbotham at a fighter base finally managed to get priority calls through to the office where we were panting to hear from them, this lout cut me off time and again. To top even that, our wireless circuit to New York went out midway in the evening but the New York receiving post neglected to tell us for three hours and all of that air copy was delayed by that much. Besides that I get what I, but no one else, thought was a pretty snotty
correspondent for the United Press. The next year he was based in London and covering the war on a daily basis, primarily by reporting on the dangerous bombing missions of the Eighth Air Force. London, that most elegant of cities, was on a full-time war footing, blacked out at night to discourage German air strikes, living on reduced rations, and trying to accommodate the crush of newcomers who poured into the British capital to launch the counterattack against Nazi Germany. In this remarkable
fire in our sector had ended and only the distant rumble of battle somewhere to the south—where the Allied armies are advancing toward us—was audible. “Some of our gliders and some C-47 tow planes went through anti-aircraft fire to reach their landing places, but our dive-bombing Mustangs and our vast aerial support silenced the enemy guns one by one.” From page 6 of the Billings (Montana) Gazette, September 20, 1944: WRITER TELLS OF NAZI THRUSTS AGAINST ALLIED AIRBORNE UNITS By Walter
