NRJ Book Review: Combat Correspondents: The Baltimore Sun in World War II

Abstract

Joseph R.L. Sterne, Combat Correspondents: Baltimore Sun in World War II (Baltimore, Maryland: Maryland Historical Society, 2009) 281 pages, $34 (paperback).In Mainz, Germany, on the grounds of a 1000-year-old cathedral bombed during World War II, a behemoth bell lies quietly to the side, a museum piece salvaged from a destructive epoch. Buildings, of course, are the least of the casualties in any such conflict, but they are a continual reminder that nothing is truly safe in war.That perilous reality is underscored by this account of the intrepid news correspondents who covered those battles for the Baltimore Sun-Thomas O'Neill, Mark Watson, Lee McCardell, Price Day, Holbrook Bradley, Howard Norton and Philip Heisler. In Italy, France, Germany and the Pacific, they risked their lives to tell harrowing stories of grit and valor, of defeat and death, of boredom and inanity. They also asked the ubiquitous question, Any of you guys from Maryland? When they found a local connection, Sterne says, they printed the soldier's name and address, a practice repeated 6,000 times.The Baltimore Sun clearly wanted to be an indispensable newspaper for its readers. But it had loftier ambitions as well. During the first half of the 20th century, the Sun was carving out its reputation as an important national source for original international news and incisive commentary. paper offered two great advantages for reporters, says Sterne: Their editors left them alone.... And they were blessed with a huge news hole...that allowed them to write at prodigious length if they wished.The author, a 40-year veteran of the Sun who at one time was a foreign correspondent, notes journalists' ambiguous role at the time: It was a war in which accredited correspondents wore uniforms, supposedly carried no firearms, got Purple Hearts if wounded, were ranked as officers, even though newsmen were always addressed as 'Mr.,' and often had to find their own transportation by flagging corporals or privates driving jeeps (86). Sterne is sometimes guilty of an uncritical regard for his colleagues: Never did they forget their duty to their readers, he writes. But his narrative and his analysis aren't the point. Rather, what stands out is the excerpts from these journalists' dispatches that Sterne generously reprints, and they are often riveting indeed.McCardell's reports were intensely personal: The kids who fly these ships are more than names and faces to us. They're guys with whom we have lived and talked and come to like and even love as friends. They're the heroes. We're just the worshippers. But even for us it's a rather weird business, this going to bed at night wondering who'll be here tomorrow night. He fretted constantly about soldiers' daily deprivations:Most Joes' private opinions are that the masterminds for these decisions spent too much time in the hotel bedrooms of Washington, London, Algiers and Naples and too little in foxholes on the front line, where management never turns on the steam heat.The average Joe's winter bedding has been a bitter joke ever since the war began. …