The following five correspondents all covered the Battle of Britain on August, 1940, when Germany under Hitler's orders went for "an all-out attack of the Luftwaffe on English ports, airfields, industrial centers, and London." These reporters were embedded in London and gave first-hand accounts of the attack.
Robert Brunnelle
The New York Times, August 12, 15, 1940
Quote:
"The British ringed them; then, one by one, dived on them. One vast, wild jamboree of twisting, flame-spitting planes developed. Four planes, then another, then others rocketed, burning, into the sea."
~ Description, good use of action verbs. I get a mental picture of bird-like planes fighting in the air.
"In a house that had not a window left the family remained at the dinner table. A newspaperman poking his head through a gaping window, apologizing at the same time for the intrusion, was told by the father of the family: 'You aren't the first one. It's a bit public not having windows, but the fresh air is nice.'"
~ People attempt to live life as normal even in the midst of destruction.
Helen Kirkpatrick
Chicago Daily News, September 9, 1940
Quotes:
"There is some terror, but nothing on the scale that the Germans may have hoped for and certainly not on a scale to make Britons contemplate for a moment anything but fighting on."
"And on top of it all London is smiling even in the districts where casualties must have been very heavy."
~ Germans bombed London hoping to devastate its citizens. But Londonites remained calm.
Edward R. Murrow
Broadcast by Edward R. Murrow, Columbia Broadcasting System
Quotes:
"It didn't require a bombing of Buckingham Palace to convince these people that they are all in this thing together. There is nothing exclusive about being bombed these days."
"The King and Queen have earned the respect and admiration of the nation, but so have tens of thousands of humble fold who are much less well protected."
"You must understand that a world is dying, that old values, the old prejudices, and the old bases of power and prestige are going."
"You are witnessing the beginning of a revolution, maybe the death of an age."
~ Murrow's underlying theme is that class distinction was slowly disappearing as a result of the war. The elite no longer had special privileges, the old order was passing away. This showed a particular common war sentiment -- painting a rosy picture of the future.
Robert J. Casey
Chicago Daily News, September 17, 1940
Quotes:
"It is most unlikely he will ever have any funeral at all."
"In other words, though nobody noticed it at the time, he was made of the stuff heroes are made of."
"The bomb went off at 9:10, blew a crater forty feet wide. No trace has been found of Evans."
~ Jock Evans was simultaneously a nobody and a hero. But he was a hero of circumstances. War gave him fame and attention, but also took his life.
S. N. Behrman
The New Yorker, 1945
Quotes:
"Most of the women wore no stockings. I had been seeing this all summer in New York. But the American legs were tanned and agreeable, whereas these English ones were muddy and streaked bluish and red with the cold."
~ During war, the tangible limitation to ordinary people were material restrictions, not the abstract "loss of freedom."
"I looked up. On the third story of a house on the corner, following accurately the theatrical convention of the missing fourth wall, was an exquisite, suspended drawing room.... All but the framework of the rest of the house was gone, but there it hung, this upstairs drawing room, elegant and aloof."
~ The drawing room is a symbol of the elite, of the old order. The structure that was part of the elite was being destroyed as a result of the war. Again, rosy picture war sentiment.
"'England,' he said in the standard summary, 'will never be the same again.' He then made a rueful acknowledgment that there would be another England, but he felt that his had vanished. Fashionable London, upper-class London, is a vast, urban Cherry Orchard."
~ War sentiment, predicting the destruction of the social fabric.
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