Bill Downs
William Randall Downs, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He worked for CBS News from 1942 to 1962 and for ABC News beginning in 1963. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.
Downs reported from both the Eastern and Western fronts during World War II, and was the first to deliver a live broadcast from Normandy to the United States after D-Day. After the surrender in Europe, he joined a press party that toured Asia in the months leading up to the end of the Pacific War. He entered Tokyo with Allied occupation forces and covered the Japanese surrender, and was among the first Americans to enter Hiroshima after the atomic bombing. He later covered the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, the Berlin Blockade, and the Korean War.
Early life
Downs was born in Kansas City, Kansas to William Randall Downs, Sr. and Katherine Lee Downs. He served as the managing editor of the Daily Kansan at the University of Kansas and graduated in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He began his career as a newspaper reporter for The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Kansan. He soon joined the United Press and worked stints at the Denver and New York bureaus for the next three years. At the end of 1940 he was transferred to London, where he covered the war in Europe as a wire reporter over the next two years.In September 1942, his former United Press colleague Charles Collingwood introduced him to Edward R. Murrow. At the time, Murrow was in search of a reporter to relieve Larry LeSueur as CBS' Moscow correspondent.
Prior to hiring Downs, Murrow had him undergo two pro forma voice tests, both of which went poorly due in part to Downs' gruff voice, an issue which would affect him throughout his career. However, Murrow was more interested in writing ability when building his team, later recalling that, when faced with complaints from CBS about how his reporters sounded on air, he responded, "I am not looking for announcers, I am looking for people who know what they're talking about." After Downs failed the voice tests, Murrow sent him to Piccadilly Circus and told him to describe whatever he saw. Murrow enjoyed his account and hired him on the spot, offering $70 weekly and an expense account during his time abroad.
Downs became a member of Murrow's team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys, and worked alongside Collingwood, LeSueur, William L. Shirer, Howard K. Smith, Eric Sevareid, Richard C. Hottelet, Cecil Brown, and several other CBS reporters stationed throughout Europe. Downs was soon sent to head CBS' Moscow bureau and remained there from December 25, 1942, to January 3, 1944.
World War II
On the Eastern Front
Throughout 1943 Downs delivered intermittent shortwave radio reports on the CBS World News Roundup and concurrently served as the Russia correspondent for Newsweek. He stayed at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow with other Western foreign correspondents along with their secretaries and translators. They faced heavy censorship by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which required correspondents to submit articles and broadcast transcripts for approval. This led to frequent clashes between government officials and foreign correspondents, who were prohibited from filing any reports that might reflect negatively on Moscow. Access to military updates was often limited to official communiqués and articles in government-sanctioned newspapers. Up-to-date maps of the Soviet Union were difficult to obtain, and reporters had trouble gathering basic information from the front lines.Downs and other foreign correspondents entered Stalingrad days after the Germans surrendered the battle. He described the scene in a graphic broadcast, saying: "There are sights and smells and sounds in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick at your stomach." Over the next several months, correspondents were gradually given more access to liberated areas, and Downs reported on developments such as the summer Russian counteroffensive on the Central Front. They were shown the devastation in Oryol and Rzhev soon after the occupying Nazi troops retreated in March 1943.
Several weeks after the Soviet liberation of Kiev on November 6, 1943, Downs, Bill Lawrence of The New York Times, and several other American and Russian journalists were escorted by Soviet authorities to the site of the Babi Yar massacres. They came across bits of human remains and old possessions at the site. The SS had attempted to destroy all evidence in their retreat from Kiev. Downs interviewed survivors of the Syrets concentration camp who were forced to participate:
Many in the press party were skeptical of the Soviet claims at Babi Yar, with Lawrence doubting the sheer scale of it. He later admitted to having "furious arguments" with Downs over how to report the story and wrote that his reluctance to wholly accept the claims resulted from witnessing some colleagues submit unsubstantiated stories. Because of this, their two accounts were markedly different in tone and reflected their own individual perceptions. As late as 1944, some Western journalists remained skeptical of the actual scale of the Nazi mass murders.
Downs' descriptions of atrocities at Babi Yar and Rzhev were especially graphic. After returning home from Russia he came across more skepticism and disbelief. He "discovered that not everyone shared his strong feelings for the Russian people and the horrors they had experienced. Some looked at him curiously. Others expressed pity. Still others said he was a liar." In 1944 he received an anonymous postcard calling him a "Russian agent" and threatening his life.
Downs returned to the United States in January 1944 with the score of Dmitri Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony after CBS acquired the exclusive American broadcast rights for $10,000. Prior to leaving Moscow he provided the English narration for the documentary film Ukraine in Flames directed by Alexander Dovzhenko.
On the Western Front
Downs found it difficult readjusting to life after Moscow because of what he had witnessed. However, he returned to Europe in 1944, and during that time came to be considered Murrow's "Ernie Pyle." Downs earned a reputation among colleagues for ignoring the Murrow Boys' newfound celebrity in favor of accompanying soldiers on the front lines. CBS came to rely on him heavily as a result. At one point he was the only CBS foreign correspondent covering the campaigns of the First Canadian Army, the British Second, the American Ninth, and the American First.In June 1944 he accompanied the British 50th Infantry Division in their assault on Gold Beach during the Normandy landings. Fellow Murrow Boys Larry LeSueur and Charles Collingwood also accompanied the invading forces in separate landing craft en route to Utah Beach.
In the days following the initial landings, war correspondents had trouble setting up mobile transmitters and were unable to broadcast live for over a week. In the meantime, Collingwood recorded a broadcast on June 6 that aired two days later, while LeSueur's account did not air until June 18. On June 14 Downs managed to find a working transmitter and unwittingly delivered the first live broadcast from the Normandy beachhead to the United States. It was pooled across all networks at 6:30 p.m. Eastern War Time.
He was soon embedded with the 21st Army Group, and remained so until the end of the war in Europe. In the following weeks he covered the Battle for Caen, being one of the first correspondents into the city after its liberation. In mid-August he joined Allied forces on their advance to liberate Paris, a time during which he described the Battle of the Falaise Pocket. He was with the Canadian forces who liberated Dieppe on September 1.
In September 1944, Downs covered Operation Market Garden alongside his former United Press colleague Walter Cronkite, following the 101st Airborne Division's fight to maintain control of key bridges. On September 24, Downs reported on the assault on the Waal river crossing during the Battle of Nijmegen, describing it as "a single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach. A story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal possible."
During the Battle of Arnhem Downs and Cronkite were stranded at the front line near Eindhoven during a sudden air raid, and were soon separated from one another in a forest during a German air raid. After much searching Cronkite concluded that Downs was likely dead, and he made his way back to Allied territory in Brussels. He discovered Downs at the Hotel Metropole and angrily asked why he had not looked for him. Downs replied that he had searched for a long time before ultimately realizing that yelling "Cronkite! Cronkite!" sounded like the German word for sickness, and that he figured he would be taken to a Berlin hospital if he kept it up, to which Cronkite laughed.
After months of following the Allied advance, he experienced a temporary bout of battle fatigue after the major defeat at Arnhem. He felt disillusioned by what he saw as indifference among the people at home who seemed to carry on as if nothing happened. To recover, he returned to London and stayed at Murrow's apartment before heading back to the front. He later joined Murrow and several other of the Boys in a visit to the death camps at Auschwitz. The experience provoked increasing anti-German sentiment among the men, including Murrow, who was strongly rebuked by Richard C. Hottelet for remarking that "there were twenty million Germans too many in the world." By 1945 the Murrow Boys had grown notably more disillusioned after witnessing years of combat, with Bill Downs saying later, "By the time the war ended, all our idealism was gone...Our crusade had been won, but our white horses had been shot out from under us."
In March 1945, Downs and correspondents from the other major networks drew lots in Paris to determine who would parachute into Berlin during the first phase of the battle and deliver the first broadcast in the event that the Western Allies reached the city first. Despite never having jumped from a plane, Downs received the assignment, and the broadcast was to be pooled among all networks. The plans were ultimately canceled upon the Soviet capture of the city.
In late March, Downs, Hottelet, and Murrow covered the crossing of the Rhine from the air. Downs was the first correspondent to broadcast from Hamburg after its surrender on May 3, 1945. One day later he delivered an eyewitness account of the German unconditional surrender to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath. Downs described the Spitfires and Typhoons overhead flying north in pursuit of Germans reportedly attempting to escape to Nazi-occupied Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. As Montgomery approached the German delegates with the surrender papers in hand, he said to reporters out of the corner of his mouth, "This is the moment." Downs received the National Headliner's Club Award for the report.