To this hard-bitten bunch of professionals I
arrived as a Johnny-come-lately, a sacred cow, a kind of tourist. I think they
felt that I was muscling in on their hard-gained territory. When, however,
they found that I was not duplicating their work, was not reporting straight
news, they were very kind to me and went out of their way to help me and to
instruct me in the things I didn’t know. For example, it was Capa who gave me
the best combat advice I ever heard. It was, “Stay where you are. If they
haven’t hit you, they haven’t seen you.” And then Capa had to go and step on a
land mine in Viet-Nam, just when he was about to retire from the whole
terrible, futile business. And Ernie Pyle got it between the eyes from a sniper
on the trip he planned as his weary last.
All of us developed our coy little tricks with
copy. Reading these old pieces, I recognize one of mine. I never admitted
having seen anything myself. In describing a scene I invariably put it in the
mouth of someone else. I forget why-1 did this. Perhaps I felt that it would be
more believable if told by someone else. Or it is possible that I felt an
interloper, and eavesdropper on the war, and was a little bit ashamed of being
there at all. Maybe I was ashamed that I could go home and soldiers couldn’t.
But it was often neither safe nor comfortable being a correspondent. A great
part of the services were in supply and transport and office work. Even combat
units got some rest after a mission was completed. But the war correspondents
found that their papers got restive if they weren’t near where things were
happening. The result was that the correspondents had a very high casualty
rate. If you stayed a correspondent long enough and went to the things that
were happening, the chances were that you would get it. In reading these
reports I am appalled at how many of the reporters are dead. Only a handful of
the blithe spirits who made the nights horrible and filled the days with
complaints, remain living.
But to get back to the conventions. It was the
style to indicate that you were afraid all the time. I guess I was really
afraid, but the style was there too. I think this was also designed to prove
how brave the soldiers were. And the soldiers were just exactly as brave and as
cowardly as anyone else.
We edited ourselves much more than we were
edited. We felt responsible to what was called the home front. There was a
general feeling that unless the home front was carefully protected from the
whole account of what war was like, it might panic. Also we felt we had to
protect the armed services from criticism, or they might retire to their tents
to sulk like Achilles.
