The Writing 69th flies to Wilhelmshaven
In February 1943, a specially trained group of correspondents accompanied an Eighth Air Force bombing raid over Germany. One would not return.
Read moreTag Archives: Walter Cronkite
Operation Market Garden: Dropping in on Holland
In its earliest hours, Operation Market Garden seemed yet another Allied success. But correspondents on the ground soon realized little was going to plan, and their reports from the field reflected the increasingly dire situation — particularly near Arnhem.
Read moreD-Day: Correspondents balance ambition, fear ahead of invasion
The classic bit that sums up the tension between the press and its handlers ahead of the Normandy Invasion first appeared in Leonard Lyons’ syndicated column on June 12, 1944: Shortly before the invasion began, Britain’s Ministry of Information was besieged by hundreds of newspapermen seeking credentials to cover the story. For a while the confusion seemed interminable. One disgruntled
Read moreThe Dambusters raid: Guy Gibson and 617 Squadron
On May 16, 1943, the RAF launched one of its most ambitious operations of the war, bombing a pair of dams in Germany’s Ruhr region.
Read more‘Orchestrated Hell’: Edward R. Murrow over Berlin
Last night, some of the young gentlemen of the RAF took me to Berlin. Edward R. Murrow was nothing if not cool, as the opening sentence of perhaps his most famous wartime report makes clear. Seated before a microphone at the BBC’s London studios on December 3, 1943, Murrow spent 18 minutes walking CBS listeners through his experience accompanying a
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World War II on Deadline 