Bill Downs

Bill Downs
File:Bill Downs delivering a broadcast.jpg
Born	William Randall Downs (1914-08-17)August 17, 1914 Kansas City, Kansas, U.S.
Died	Bethesda, Maryland
Education	University of Kansas
Occupation	Journalist War correspondent
Years active	1937–1978
Spouse(s)	Rosalind Downs

William Randall "Bill" Downs, Jr. (August 17, 1914 – May 3, 1978) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He worked for CBS News from 1942 to 1962 and for ABC from 1963 until his death. He was best known for his work with Edward R. Murrow as one of the original Murrow Boys.

Downs covered 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, and was among the first Americans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombings.

Downs later reported on the Operation Crossroads, the Berlin airlift, and the Korean War. In the 1950s, he was an early and prominent voice urging Murrow to use his platform on See It Now to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Early life

Downs was born in Kansas City, Kansas to William Randall Downs, Sr. and Katherine Lee (née Tyson) Downs. He served as the managing editor of the Daily Kansan at the University of Kansas and graduated in 1937 with an A.B. in journalism. That same year he began his journalism career as a night manager in Denver and later worked the cable desk New York for the United Press. He remained in the United States for the next three years, and in 1940 was stationed in London as a wire reporter.

In September 1942, his former colleague Charles Collingwood introduced him to Edward R. Murrow. At the time, Murrow was in search for a reporter to relieve Larry LeSueur as CBS's 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. Instead, Murrow sent Downs to Piccadilly Circus and told him to describe whatever he saw. Murrow loved his account so much that he hired Downs on the spot, offering $70 weekly and an expense account during his time abroad. Downs was soon sent to head CBS's Moscow bureau and remained there from December 25, 1942 to January 3, 1944.

World War II

On the Eastern Front

Downs stayed with other Western foreign correspondents at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Immediately he joined his colleagues in dealing with heavy censorship by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who required correspondents to submit articles and broadcasts transcripts for approval. They were sometimes limited to what had already been reported in Russian newspapers, and were prohibited from casting Moscow in a negative light.

Throughout 1943 he delivered intermittent shortwave reports on CBS World News Roundup. As Soviet authorities took foreign correspondents to various locations near Moscow, he reported on military developments such as the aftermath of the Battle of Stalingrad and the summer Russian counteroffensive on the Central Front.

As the war progressed, foreign correspondents were given more access to liberated areas. While his predecessor Larry LeSueur had been taken on standard junkets by Soviet authorities far from the front lines, Downs' tenure marked the first time Western reporters were shown evidence of Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front. They were taken to Orel, where the Soviets had exhumed a mass grave of some 300 bodies. Correspondents were also shown the devastation in Rzhev soon after the occupying Nazi troops retreated in March 1943. He interviewed survivors of the Third Battle of Kharkov upon the city's liberation, stating, "A year ago last October, when the Germans took the city, they started hanging people. By the second day of the occupation, every balcony stretching for two miles on the main street through the center of the city had become a gallows. Scores of men and women were trussed up and left to hang."

Following the Soviet liberation of Kiev on November 6, 1943, Downs, Bill Lawrence, and several other journalists were escorted by Soviet authorities to the site of the Babi Yar massacres. He 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:

Vilkis said that in the middle of August the SS mobilized a party of 100 Russian war prisoners, who were taken to the ravines. On Aug. 19 these men were ordered to disinter all the bodies in the ravine. The Germans meanwhile took a party to a nearby Jewish cemetery whence marble headstones were brought to Babii Yar [sic] to form the foundation of a huge funeral pyre...approximately 1,500 bodies were burned in each operation of the furnace and each funeral pyre took two nights and one day to burn completely. The cremation went on for 40 days, and then the prisoners, who by this time included 341 men, were ordered to build another furnace. Since this was the last furnace and there were no more bodies, the prisoners decided it was for them. They made a break but only a dozen out of more than 200 survived the bullets of the Nazi Tommy guns.

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 seeing some colleagues submit stories with unsubstantiated information. 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 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. He found it difficult readjusting to life after Moscow because of what he had witnessed.

On the Western Front

File:Bill Downs on VE Day.jpg

Bill Downs in Lüneburg on V-E Day, May 8, 1945.

Downs came to be considered Murrow's "Ernie Pyle" during his time covering the Western Front. By 1944 the Murrow Boys had achieved fame and recognition for their work. Downs earned a reputation among fellow newsman for ignoring the celebrity life 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 British troops landing at in Normandy. Fellow Murrow Boys Larry LeSueur and Charles Collingwood also accompanied the invading forces in separate landing craft as all three headed for Utah Beach.

War correspondents in Normandy had trouble setting up mobile transmitters and were unable to broadcast live for over a week. Collingwood's recorded broadcast aired on June 6, while LeSueur's account did not air until June 18. On June 14 Downs managed to find a working transmitter to deliver the first live broadcast from Normandy to the United States. It was pooled across all networks. He was then embedded with the 21st Army Group, and remained so until the end of the war in Europe. In mid-August he followed Allied forces on their advance to liberate Paris and reported on the Battle of the Falaise Pocket.

In September 1944, Downs covered Operation Market Garden. He witnessed the 82nd Airborne Division's assault on the Waal river crossing at Nijmegen on September 20. He described 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."

Days later, Downs and his United Press colleague Walter Cronkite were stranded near the front line in the Netherlands during the Battle of Arnhem. They were separated in a dense forest and, after much searching, Cronkite concluded that Downs was dead, and he made his way back to Allied territory in Brussels. He discovered Downs at the Hotel Metropole and angrily asked why he hadn't searched for him. Downs claimed that he searched for a long time, but it occurred to him 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. Cronkite laughed, and the two remained friends until Downs' death.

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."

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.

After the surrender of Hamburg on May 3, 1945, he delivered a broadcast using Nazi propagandist Lord Haw-Haw's microphone and described the city:

People who evacuated their homes to get away from the bombings are beginning to come back. However, many have a strange conception of the meaning of unconditional surrender. Often they find their homes have been occupied by the slave workers who have been forced to withstand the bombing. They come to the military government and ask for authority to evict these people. But they get unsympathetic answers…the forced laborers stay put until they can be sent back to their homes…and the Germans look for billets.

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 Downs out of the corner of his mouth, "This is the moment." He received the National Headliner's Club Award for the report.

Postwar assignments

East Asia

In June 1945, Downs joined a hand-picked group of airborne correspondents organized by Tex McCrary to cover the Twentieth Air Force. The group included veteran journalists Bill Lawrence, George Silk, Homer Bigart, and more. They toured Europe in the weeks after V-E Day in a custom B-17 fitted with high-powered shortwave radio equipment. They started with Paris and moved on to examine first-hand the destruction from the Allied bombing campaigns on Hamburg and Dresden. The group then made stops in Cairo, Baghdad, and Sri Lanka before reaching East Asia in August to cover the final days of the Pacific Theatre. Downs reported from Manchuria during the Soviet invasion. He arrived in Manila in August 1945 and landed with the initial occupying units of Japan, later being present for the signing of the Japanese surrender. Over the following few months the group toured Asia, making stops in China, French Indochina, Thailand, Burma, the Malay States, and Java.

In September 1945 the correspondents covered the postwar turmoil in Saigon, soon after the August Revolution and the arrival of the British South East Asian Command. The press party stayed at the Hotel Continental on the Rue Catinat.

Downs and fellow correspondent James McGlincy were invited for lunch with Colonel A. Peter Dewey at a villa being used as the headquarters for the OSS operation in the region. While they waited, a skirmish broke out between the Viet Minh and the few men stationed at the headquarters. Shooting back as he ran, Major Herbert Bluechel emerged covered in Colonel Dewey's blood. In the confusion, Downs and McGlincy were handed carbines and joined the rest in the firefight. Downs shot down at least one man and is said to later have remarked how "the sight of the little brown figure falling will haunt him for years." After two and a half hours the attackers withdrew, and Downs and McGlincy volunteered to head for a nearby airport in search of reinforcements. They took a bottle of Old Crow, pretended to be drunks and, on Downs' suggestion, sang as they walked when he posited "I don't think anybody would shoot at a man who's singing." They met three Gurkhas at the airfield and addressed them in pidgin English. The men responded in perfect Oxford accents and promised to go to the headquarters. Upon returning, the two joined the search for Colonel Dewey's body. The revolt was ultimately put down by British and French forces who employed the aid of leftover Japanese soldiers in Saigon.

Operation Crossroads and the Berlin Blockade

In 1946 Downs received the "plum" assignment of flying in the observation plane during the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. Part of his report was carried across all networks despite protests from several wire service agencies who insisted that a neutral Naval officer should make the flight.

In 1947, he made his first return to Europe since the end of the war. He led a documentary team that retraced several major battlefronts he had covered in Western Europe. The group was accompanied by photojournalist Chim as part of a CBS series entitled "We Went Back." Upon returning to the United States later that year, he went to Detroit to cover the ongoing labor turmoil, including the attempted assassination of the United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther.

In 1947 CBS sent Downs to Berlin cover the blockade, as they wanted a reporter with war experience. He stayed there until 1949. He delivered a Christmas broadcast from the cockpit of a Candy Bomber aircraft piloted by Gail Halvorsen, and discussed Operation Little Vittles.

The Korean War

File:Edward R Murrow and Bill Downs during the Korean War.jpg

Edward R. Murrow (left) and Downs (right) in South Korea in 1950

Downs covered the Korean War in 1950. When Edward R. Murrow and Bill Lawrence arrived in Tokyo, they saw a disheveled Downs running toward them saying "Go back, go back, you silly bastards! This ain't our kind of war. This one is for the birds!" Murrow would later call it the best advice he ever ignored. Downs and Murrow worked from General Douglas MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters with the rest of the press corps. Military censorship of press broadcasts and cables caused fury among reporters stationed there; Downs' cables were among the scrutinized. Murrow considered resigning, and while he did not go public with the issue, others did.

While the reporting mostly involved radio, there were also televised broadcasts that tested the medium's effectiveness in war coverage. Downs contributed to Murrow's See It Now episode "Christmas in Korea." In one televised report, he stood in a decimated Korean village next to the remains of a peasant's home as the camera showed an old man holding the hand of a child as they walked down the road. Downs concluded in saying "This is the side of war we don't see very much of, but probably it's the most important part of all."

Rome and the Middle East

In 1953 Downs was assigned to the Rome bureau, where he covered the Mediterranean until 1956. Over time he turned his focus toward the Middle East and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Between 1954 and 1955 he recorded an interview with then-Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser. He also interviewed Israeli Presidents David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett about the tensions with Egypt and the Arab world.

While still in Rome, Downs and other CBS foreign correspondents participated in a 1955 news broadcast hosted by Bing Crosby on Christmas Eve. The recording was later released on album as A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World. He returned to the United States the following week for the 1955 edition of Edward R. Murrow's "Years of Crisis" radio series. He joined other Murrow Boys to discuss the most pressing international political developments of the past year.

Later career

While working for CBS-TV, Downs was among the most insistent members of Murrow's circle to press for Murrow to use his platform on See It Now to criticize Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunism campaigns. His wife, Roz, described the atmosphere in Washington at the time, saying that "Nobody at the State Department would talk to [Downs] anymore, nobody at the Defense Department would talk to him anymore, nobody in government would talk to anybody--they weren't even talking to their own friends anymore...Everybody was crazy--and frightened."

In 1951 Downs narrated an anti-crime series for CBS entitled "The Nation's Nightmare." Its 1952 vinyl release featured original artwork by Andy Warhol early in his career. The record sleeve is sought after due to its rarity, though the recording itself has been called "bizarre."

The Murrow-Cronkite rivalry

Downs established close friendships with both Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite during the war. This placed him in the middle of a heated rivalry between the two men. The antagonism began in 1944 when Murrow sought out Cronkite to replace Downs as the Moscow correspondent. Cronkite initially accepted, but when the United Press offered to raise his salary, he opted to stay with them. The move soured his relationship with Murrow.

Cronkite did eventually join CBS in 1950. He covered the 1952 presidential election with Murrow and Downs. At one point, Cronkite and Murrow manned the anchor booth with Downs among the crowd of reporters on the floor as the vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave a press conference. Producer Don Hewitt told Downs to remove his headset and place it on Nixon so that Murrow and Cronkite could speak to him directly. Downs did so, handed Nixon his microphone, and told him "Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow want to talk to you." Nixon went on the answer their questions audible only to him. This practice of placing headsets on personalities to talk to Cronkite became a CBS trademark and joke.

However, as Murrow's career seemed on the decline and Cronkite's on the rise, the two found it increasingly difficult to work together. This placed Downs in the middle of many of their confrontations. He and his wife threw dinner parties at their house in Bethesda, incidentally setting the stage for heated arguments between Cronkite and Murrow:

And so Cronkite and Murrow were both guests at the party they gave in their home in Washington early in Cronkite's television career. It was a heavy-drinking, broadcasting crowd. Downs began noisily berating Cronkite, telling him, "You're coming on too hard, trying to be a success, trying to push other people out of the way." Then, according to Downs's wife, Rosalind, Cronkite said a sympathetic word about sponsors. Sponsors, after all, paid the rent, Cronkite pointed out. It was the sort of statement designed to catch the attention of and to provoke Murrow, the news freedom purist against an apologist for commercialism in broadcasting. However, the purist was handsomely sponsored and the apologist, at this point, barely had his foot in television's door. As Roz Downs remembered that night, "They kept snapping at each other all evening. They were practically chin to chin. It was dreadful. After the party, my husband said, 'That was a small disaster. I didn't know they disliked each other that much.'

At another dinner party, an argument between Murrow and Cronkite devolved into a "duel" in which the two men drunkenly took a pair of antique dueling pistols and pretended to shoot at each other. The tensions continued until Murrow's resignation from CBS in 1961.

ABC News

Despite his relative popularity among colleagues, Downs' postwar career prospects as a radio and television presenter were not seen to be as promising as those of some of the other Murrow Boys, and this affected his future assignments. His gruff voice was not a good fit for radio, and his looks were not great for television. At times he felt overworked and underappreciated by the organization.

He ultimately left his position as State Department correspondent for CBS in March 1962 during a shakeup that also replaced Douglas Edwards with Walter Cronkite as the evening news anchor. He publicly stated that the departure was amicable, but hinted at his dissatisfaction with recent developments at the organization.

Before quitting CBS, Downs thought of taking time off to write a novel. He asked Murrow for his thoughts on how Downs' wife, Roz, would do if he decided to quit and become a writer. "She'll bear up," Murrow replied, "until the second paycheck doesn't come in." Downs spent the next twenty months writing what he hoped would be the "Great American Novel." He struggled to find a publisher, and ultimately returned to reporting.

He joined ABC on November 22, 1963 as a radio news anchor in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. He spent his later years working various roles, and was ABC's White House correspondent during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. In the 1970s he was given smaller assignments on ABC Evening News, where he worked alongside his old CBS colleague Howard K. Smith as well as Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters.

Personal life

Upon returning to the United States after World War II, Downs married writer Rosalind "Roz" Gerson on December 18, 1946. Together they had three children. She had been hired at CBS as a desk assistant at the same time as Shirley Lubowitz, who later married Downs' colleague Joe Wershba. Downs died of laryngeal cancer in Bethesda, Maryland on May 3, 1978. That night Walter Cronkite gave a brief obituary on CBS Evening News.

The dinosaur species Yinlong downsi was named after his son, paleontologist William Randall "Will" Downs III in 2006.

He was not related to ABC newsman Hugh Downs.