The Baltimore Sun covered World War II with an outstanding team of
combat correspondents, among them three future Pulitzer Prize winners.
The correspondents witnessed momentous events: Anzio and Cassino, D-Day,
Black Christmas in the Bulge, the crossing of the Rhine, the link up
with the Russians on the Elbe, the German surrender at Rheims, the
invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Japanese surrender on the
U.S.S. Missouri.
They took enormous risks. Price Day was in action at Anzio and Cassino;
Holbrook Bradley landed with the 29th Division on the Normandy beaches.
Lee McCardell narrowly escaped death when a bomb exploded near his jeep.
Howard Norton was on a sub chaser when a Japanese shell killed most of
its crew. Philip Heisler's escort carrier nearly capsized in a typhoon.
They filed stories from the front lines of history. Norton scooped the
world on the execution of Mussolini. Day and McCardell were among the
first to file stories on Nazi atrocities and death camps. The doyen of
these correspondents, Mark Watson, wrote prescient articles on military
strategy. All of them sent back gritty stories of the endurance and
humor of ordinary GIs.
This was a time when correspondents wore uniforms, censors could block
their stories, and journalists wrote on portable typewriters and
traveled dozens of miles to file their copy. Enjoying a personal freedom
of movement and decision-making unknown in today's electronic era, these
newspaper men were working at a time when print journalism was the prime
medium for news. Their dispatches, which reported the war with the
immediacy of real time, make up the core of this book.
