Assignment to Hell (87 page)

All five correspondents witnessed the reprisals that would take place against collaborationist women once villages were liberated. Nazi concubines had their heads shaved; collaborationist leaders and militiamen were often executed on the spot.

Stars and Stripes
“Continental HQ,” probably in Rennes, France, in late summer 1944. Rooney’s great exclusive on the liberation of Paris never reached Rennes—and never got into print.

August 25, 1944’the day Paris was liberated—was the happiest day in Francophile Liebling’s life. Liebling and Rooney were among the first correspondents into the freed French capital. Boyle was not far behind.

Rooney snapped this shot of GIs being greeted by delirious Frenchwomen on the day of the liberation of Paris. The locale was probably the Place de l’Opéra, where the correspondents were holed up at the Hôtel Scribe or the Hôtel Le Grand.

Rooney took this photograph of German prisoners being paraded through the streets of Paris. A few moments later, a Parisian smashed a bottle over the head of one of the prisoners. Rooney wrote that he’d never witnessed such hatred.

A wrecked American glider from ill-starred Operation Market Garden, September 1944. Cronkite crash-landed in Zon, Holland, on a glider carrying 101st Airborne general Anthony McAuliffe.

Close-in street fighting in the war’s final winter produced ghoulish scenes like this one in Deidenberg, Belgium, with German soldiers lying dead near an American tank.

A few weeks after the Battle of the Bulge, Brigadier General Clift Andrus took command of Liebling and Boyle’s favorite outfit, the Big Red One, the Fighting First Division. Boyle (
left
) got an exclusive with the general on February 3, 1945.

Andy Rooney was one of the first correspondents on the scene when the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen was captured intact. When it collapsed on St. Patrick’s Day 1945, this is the view Rooney saw from the bridge’s eastern end.

Cronkite finally returned home to Kansas City in December 1945 after three years of covering the war. This photograph was probably taken on the porch
of his mother’s home. The following month he was back in Europe to cover the Nuremberg Trials.

A
Stars and Stripes
reunion in the 1960s. Charlie Kiley is to Rooney’s right. The great editor Bob Moora is directly across from Kiley. Bud Kane and Ben Price are to Rooney’s left.

A mid-1960s reunion of the fabled “Writing 69th.” Former USAAF media relations maven Hal Leyshon sits to Rooney’s right; to Leyshon’s right is former CBS correspondent Paul Manning. At the head of the table is former Associated Press correspondent Gladwin Hill, archrival of Cronkite (
standing
). Bigart sits to Hill’s left. Two other former USAAF officials, Jack Milady and Jack Redding, sit in front of Cronkite.