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Wartime documentary docudrama · Syndicated (United Press)

Soldiers of the Press

November 9, 1942 – June 17, 1945 · 40 broadcasts

In the last months of 1942 the United Press started mailing its subscriber stations a free quarter-hour disc a week, and asked only that they leave three minutes for a local sponsor. What was on the disc was the war -- specifically, the war as the wire service's own correspondents had just filed it. One reporter, one dispatch, fifteen minutes: Henry Gorrell riding a bomber over Navarino Bay, Leo Disher hit again and again crashing the boom at Oran harbour, Frank Hewlett the last reporter off Corregidor, Doris Rubens Johnston hunted through the Philippine mountains, Ann Stringer questioning the men who took the Rhine bridge under fire. The reporters were not there. Every correspondent was impersonated by an anonymous New York actor while the real one was still overseas -- Walter Cronkite, three of whose stories were dramatized, said years later that he had no idea a stranger was reading his dispatches in his name, and likened the result to a war-correspondent version of Gangbusters. It was promotion, and United Press never pretended otherwise; it was also, as Cronkite allowed, more or less true, and the sound crew's typewriters and engines and shellfire were state of the art. About 137 programs were made. Ninety-four are catalogued as surviving discs, and roughly forty circulate. In August 1945, with the war over, the same staff renamed the series One Man's Destiny; its sponsor held the Sunday slot until November 1946.

Collection status: 40 of 40 held (100% complete)
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Episode Spine

Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.

1942

November 9, 1942 Henry Gorrell Bombing of Navarino Bay Listen (MP3)
The series opens with United Press's Henry Gorrell aboard a B-24 on the first American bombing run in the Mediterranean, against Navarino Bay in Greece -- where he put down his notebook to help the wounded gunners of a badly shot-up aircraft. He was later awarded the Air Medal for it.
November 16, 1942 Robert Miller The Men At Guadalcanal Listen (MP3)
Robert C. Miller goes ashore with the Marines on Guadalcanal.
November 23, 1942 Richard D McMillan North Africa Listen (MP3)
Richard D. McMillan reports North Africa at its hinge, as the Allied fight against Rommel turns from defence to offensive.
November 30, 1942 Joe James Custer Pacific Fleet Listen (MP3)
Joe James Custer is at battle stations with the US fleet off the Solomons when his ship goes down -- and he loses an eye.
December 7, 1942 Leo Disher Heroism in Oran Listen (MP3)
His ankle already in a plaster cast, Leo Disher rides a Coast Guard cutter into Oran harbour under point-blank fire, is wounded over and over, and dictates the story from a hospital bed. It made him the first combat reporter awarded the Purple Heart.
December 14, 1942 Robert T Bellaire Japanese Prisoners Listen (MP3)
Robert T. Bellaire was in Tokyo the day Japan struck Pearl Harbor, and spent the six months that followed interned.
December 21, 1942 William Tyree The Pacific Theater Listen (MP3)
In Hawaii when the attack came, William Tyree wanted to enlist; his editor talked him out of it, arguing a trained reporter was worth more than a passable private. He covered the Pacific instead, from Midway to Guadalcanal.
December 28, 1942 Frank Hewlett Fall of Bataan Listen (MP3)
Frank Hewlett was the only reporter who stayed to cover the fall of Bataan -- and the last one off Corregidor.

1943

January 4, 1943 Ned Russell The Siege Of Stuka Acres Listen (MP3)
Ned Russell reports the siege of the North African position the troops nicknamed Stuka Acres.
January 11, 1943 Robert P Martin Bombers over Haiphong Listen (MP3)
Robert P. Martin flies with American bombers striking Japanese shipping in Haiphong harbour.
February 22, 1943 Leo Disher A Letter To Mrs Marshall Listen (MP3)
A widow asks her local paper how her husband died at Oran. The question reaches Leo Disher in an English hospital, and the letter he writes back to her -- describing the man she lost as he looked standing against the gunfire -- becomes the program.
March 1, 1943 Robert Miller A Son Of Bushido Listen (MP3)
Robert C. Miller on the fighting on Guadalcanal, built around the warrior code the title names.
May 9, 1943 Walter Cronkite Dry Martini Listen (MP3)
The earliest of the three Walter Cronkite programs, filed from an American heavy-bomber base in England, where Cronkite was one of the eight reporters trained to fly on high-altitude Fortress missions over the Continent.
May 16, 1943 Robert Vermillion Atlantic Convoy Listen (MP3)
Two United Press men crossing to London stand watch alongside an exhausted crew, and see their convoy fight off a U-boat pack in the grey before dawn. The sound crew built the attack from the reporters' own account of what the tracer fire looked like skipping over the sea.
May 23, 1943 Clinton B Conger Night Patrol Listen (MP3)
Clinton B. Conger spends a night in action aboard a British motor torpedo boat off the coast of Holland.
September 19, 1943 Russell Annabel Kiska Mission Listen (MP3)
Russell Annabel goes in with American and Canadian forces at Kiska, in the Aleutians.
November 28, 1943 George Palmer Torpedo Listen (MP3)
George Palmer is aboard when the ship he is travelling on is torpedoed, and watches the crew keep her afloat all the way home to port.
December 5, 1943 Reynolds Packard Battle Boomerang Listen (MP3)
Three unarmed Americans are taken prisoner by German troops -- and by the end of Reynolds Packard's story they are the ones marching their captors back.
December 26, 1943 Richard W. Johnston Leathernecks At Tarawa Listen (MP3)

1944

January 2, 1944 Reynolds Packard Phantom Enemy Listen (MP3)
April 30, 1944 Frank Hewlett Merrill's Raiders Listen (MP3)
Frank Hewlett goes into northern Burma with the hand-picked jungle force the war remembers as Merrill's Marauders.
May 7, 1944 Robert Vermillion Anzio Diary Listen (MP3)
Life on the Anzio beachhead once the Allies had dug in -- a wedding, a baptism, laughter and death -- gathered from Robert Vermillion's features. Off the air, a German bomb once interrupted his own birthday party in Naples.
June 25, 1944 Virgil Pinkley Invasion Listen (MP3)
An unusual program: not one reporter at the front but the whole of D-Day as United Press covered it, from correspondents leaving on secret assignments to editors in New York waiting for the official word. Virgil Pinkley, UP's European general manager, had the byline on the invasion story.
July 2, 1944 Robert Vermillion The Road To Rome Listen (MP3)
Robert Vermillion's story of two friends on the road to Rome, and how it ended for them.
September 17, 1944 Joan Younger The Return Of The Soldier Listen (MP3)
The only home-front program in the surviving set, and the hardest. Joan Younger is assigned to the men at the Mitchel Field hospital who have to find the words to tell their families and sweethearts that they are coming home as amputees.
September 24, 1944 Robert Vermillion The Paratroopers Listen (MP3)
Robert Vermillion talks his way onto a 2 a.m. paratroop drop into southern France on forty-five minutes of training. A colonel asks whether he is after another scoop; a serviceman tells him, with respect, that he is nuts.
November 12, 1944 Boyd Lewis The Ghost Goes To War Listen (MP3)
The one outright comedy in the surviving set, and the furthest the series ever got from a battlefield: Boyd Lewis on an English village convinced somebody had disturbed the Witch of Scrapfaggot Green.
November 19, 1944 Henry Gorrell Hour Of Decision Listen (MP3)
Henry Gorrell on the destruction of Aachen, a city eleven hundred years old, and what its fall meant.
November 26, 1944 Ralph Teatsorth Communique 168 Listen (MP3)
Ralph Teatsorth at sea in the Pacific -- the log places his report with the Seventh Fleet at the battle of the Philippine Sea.
December 3, 1944 Leo Disher Drama In The Air Listen (MP3)
Leo Disher's story of a pilot blinded in the air and the crew who brought him home. The program announced on air that it would be made into a film -- and it was.
December 24, 1944 Mac Johnson Target Tokyo Listen (MP3)
Mac Johnson flies the first raid on Tokyo mounted from Saipan, with crews who took it as revenge.
December 31, 1944 Henry Gorrell Christmas Greetings Listen (MP3)
A strange Christmas on the Western Front, told by Henry Gorrell through a general, a private and a sergeant.

1945

January 21, 1945 Thirty-Day Furlough Listen (MP3)
January 28, 1945 Ten Biggest Stories Of 1944 Listen (MP3)
February 18, 1945 Walter Cronkite Symbol Of Caduceus Listen (MP3)
Army nurses on the Western Front, working around the clock in field dress as the German advance came closer, refused a colonel's order to fall back and leave their wounded behind. Walter Cronkite watched them and named them for the Army Medical Corps emblem.
March 25, 1945 Walter Cronkite Grease Monkey Listen (MP3)
April 15, 1945 Doris Johnston Hideout Listen (MP3)
Hunted after the fall of Manila, Doris Rubens Johnston hid in the mountains with Filipino help for more than a year before surrendering to spare her friends' family, then waited out two years of internment. The script gave her guerrillas and left out her husband, who was beside her the whole time.
April 22, 1945 Ann Stringer Bravest Men In The Army Listen (MP3)
Ann Stringer interviews the soldiers who went out under fire to strip German demolition charges off a Rhine bridge -- the first patrol of an invading army across that river in 140 years. One captain, meeting a woman reporter at the front, remarks that the war is becoming almost civilised.
June 10, 1945 Boyd Lewis Victory In The West Listen (MP3)
Boyd Lewis on the end of the war in Europe -- and on the fifteen correspondents invited to the surrender ceremonies who promised to hold the story until the military released it. One of them broke the promise.
June 17, 1945 Eddie Beattie Prisoner Of War Listen (MP3)
The last program under this title. Edward W. Beattie of the United Press is captured by the Germans, taken to Berlin and then to Buchenwald -- and a colleague from his own wire service goes in to bring him back.
The Story

In the last months of 1942 the United Press started mailing its subscriber stations a free quarter-hour disc a week, and asked only that they leave three minutes for a local sponsor. What was on the disc was the war -- specifically, the war as the wire service's own correspondents had just filed it. One reporter, one dispatch, fifteen minutes: Henry Gorrell riding a bomber over Navarino Bay, Leo Disher hit again and again crashing the boom at Oran harbour, Frank Hewlett the last reporter off Corregidor, Doris Rubens Johnston hunted through the Philippine mountains, Ann Stringer questioning the men who took the Rhine bridge under fire. The reporters were not there. Every correspondent was impersonated by an anonymous New York actor while the real one was still overseas -- Walter Cronkite, three of whose stories were dramatized, said years later that he had no idea a stranger was reading his dispatches in his name, and likened the result to a war-correspondent version of Gangbusters. It was promotion, and United Press never pretended otherwise; it was also, as Cronkite allowed, more or less true, and the sound crew's typewriters and engines and shellfire were state of the art. About 137 programs were made. Ninety-four are catalogued as surviving discs, and roughly forty circulate. In August 1945, with the war over, the same staff renamed the series One Man's Destiny; its sponsor held the Sunday slot until November 1946.

Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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