When War enters a country
It produces lies like Sand.
When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty. For D-Day The Times did
what it had been doing for the previous two centuries, what made its name
and led the way for the Fourth Estate. Through the fog of war, it strained
to be first with the news, and by 1944, the pictures also. It published the
first draft of history on the morning after that world earthquake in
liberated France. The fog of D-Day was evaporated.
The Times was severely bombed in the Blitz, including a direct hit by
high explosive. The whole production of the paper, editorial as well as
mechanical, could be carried on, in emergency, underground. On the occasion
of the direct hit, the presses were stopped for only 18 minutes. Because of
the rationing of newsprint (paper), The Times was able to publish
only three ten-page and three eight-page papers a week. Of a total staff of
1,570 at the outbreak of war, 584 had joined the Armed Forces by D-Day.
Communications were difficult, slow and subject to strict censorship. The
military controlled the medium as well as the message. For D-Day the
military treated the journalists as just another branch of the services (the
awkward squad). As part of a broad deception plan, it put them on a train to
Scotland a month before the invasion, and kept them there for a week.
Reporters were "embedded" with the military long before Iraq.
Censors were provided on the assault craft and even on the beaches.
Our photographers with the invasion force were Eric Greenwood and Bill
Warhurst. Greenwood was on board Admiral Vean's flagship, HMS Scylla,
opposite Juno beach. Ulric Van den Bogaerde (the actor, Dirk Bogarde's
father) was the first picture editor of The Times. His files in The
Times archives record the subjects of Greenwood's D-Day films: the
first wave of landing craft going ashore in "bad light"; fighting
on the beach. On June 7 he was allowed a short trip on the beach, and
snatched a scoop of General Montgomery landing. Bill Warhurst was
photographed being driven in a jeep by members of the FFI (Free French of
the Interior). For a "monkey", which is what reporters rudely call
photographers, he looks more like a dignified Colonel.
Getting films and copy back to Printing House Square was a nightmare. There
were limited and erratic radio links, infrequent courier planes,
speed-boats, and special facilities for journalists covering D-Day from
London.
William Howard Russell invented the craft of war correspondent. He reported
the Crimean War to The Times by going to the front and recording
what he saw and heard, rather than repeating the self-serving briefings of
generals behind the lines. Our recording angels for The Times
covering D-Day were Robert "Bob" Cooper and John Prince. Until the
war, Prince had been on the parliamentary staff in The Times Room
at Westminster. Cooper had joined The Times as a shorthand
telephonist/typist, and then been promoted to a sub-editor in the
Sporting-Room, before becoming Lawn Tennis Correspondent. In 1939 he was
sent to the French Army, then India and Burma. He was a friendly, tall,
burly man, distinguished by deeply reflective eyes; a man slow in gait, and
often slow in speech. He was a writer of great power, with many passages of
brilliance. His approach to writing was intuitive and ruminative rather than
strictly intellectual. This took a great deal out of him. It also meant that
his copy was often late, and always worth waiting for.
On the morning of D-Day, his report, marked up in pencil "R. W. Cooper"
by the archivist, is bylined "From Our Special Correspondent", a
far prouder signature than the modern celebrity cult of picture bylines.
Censorship has datelined it: "AN ENGLISH PORT, June 5". And it
begins with a Cooperish roll of drums: "The time has come. All we await
now is the word to go forth and strike the terrific blow in Western Europe
of which General Montgomery writes in his valediction to the assault troops."
Cooper was born in Toronto. His Canadian French helped his work in liberated
France. But by now he was feeling the strain of four years of war. War
correspondents do not have a regimental organisation to sustain them in
their work. Beyond all the difficulties of living, Cooper felt that the
authorities were helping the broadcasters and American journos to get away
their dispatches much more than they were helping the British. His immediate
boss at Printing House Square was Captain Ralph Deakin, a Times proconsul
of the school. Cooper's first service message to him runs: "Your
message very disappointing - first word I've had of any sort since leaving
... Difficulties are great. I'm out day and night looking for material, the
censorship is miles away from house where I've dug in, and given lack any
lumiere at night there's little enough time for writing. I'll do my best but
would emphasise that initiative [for improving communications] must come
from your end... Could you please have a Times posted to me? I
never see one. Regards."
In those less sentimental days, newspaper executives did not need continually
to stroke the egos of their prima donnas. Deakin replied:
"REALIZE YOUR DIFFICULTIES TRYING HELP BY PRESSURE THIS SIDE FULLSTOP FOR
GUIDANCE OUR FIRST NEED IS FOR PROMPT HALF COLUMN DAILY TRAVERSING YOUR
ACTUAL FRONT SUPPORTING AND AMPLIFYING COMMUNIQUE WITH LOCAL COLOUR OF
COURSE ALLOWING FOR SPECIAL CLOSEUPS WHEN OPPORTUNE."
Cooper answered with another heart cry from a war correspondent stuck in the
bocage. "If these despatches are appearing in The Times it is
in spite of public relations service that must be one of the most inept to
be operated in any theatre of war. Correspondents are called for many miles
from their sectors to wait hours for conferences that never take place and
are regimented with an officialness that comes straight out of pantomime."
In spite of the fog and frustrations of war, he was still filing every day. "DOOMED
GARRISON CHERBOURG WAS STILL OUTHOLDING SEVERING [?] IN FACE RELENTLESS
PRESSURE BRADLEYS AMERICAN FORCES WHOSE RING STEEL AND FIRE IS CLOSING IN
FROM ALL SIDES PORT ON LAST DOMINATING RIDGE WST OF RIVER DIVETTE LEADING
TROOPS CAN LOOK DOWN THROUGH WOODS TO CENTRE TOWN ONLY ONE AND HALF MILES
AWAY..."
Meanwhile John Prince, embedded with the United States army, was also
suffering the loneliness of the long-distance war correspondent. To Deakin: "People
here are somewhat angry about premature, too optimistic Shaef announcements
as heard from time to time via the BBC. One tries to get to a place where
fierce fighting is going on only to hear over the radio that it is in our
hands. These Shaef announcements are misleading and inaccurate."
Prince and Cooper, Greenwood and Warhurst were joined by colleagues. They
covered the advance across Europe from D-Day to VE-Day. Bob Cooper went on
after the war to become the Washington Correspondent of The Times,
then the Paris Correspondent. In his memoirs, Field Marshal Montgomery
described him as "the most soldierly of correspondents".
Bill Warhurst died on the job, while photographing a dress rehearsal at the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. They were faithful heirs of William Howard
Russell. Through the fog, obfuscation and hell of war, they brought the news
of D-Day and the liberation of Europe back to Printing House Square. They
wrote the first and most accurate account of that famous victory. They were
true Times Men.
