This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES British and Dominion War Correspondents in the Western Theatres of the Second World War Brian P. D. Hannon Ph.D. Dissertation The University of Edinburgh School of History, Classics and Archaeology March 2015 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………… 5 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………… 6 The Media Environment ……………...……………….……………………….. 28 What Made a Correspondent? ……………...……………………………..……. 42 Supporting the Correspondent …………………………………….………........ 83 The Correspondent and Censorship …………………………………….…….. 121 Correspondent Techniques and Tools ………………………..………….......... 172 Correspondent Travel, Peril and Plunder ………………………………..……. 202 The Correspondents’ Stories ……………………………….………………..... 241 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 273 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………...... 281 Appendix …………………………………………...………………………… 300 3 ABSTRACT British and Dominion armed forces operations during the Second World War were followed closely by a journalistic army of correspondents employed by various media outlets including news agencies, newspapers and, for the first time on a large scale in a war, radio broadcasters. These war reporters on foreign soil, under the direction of their editors and managers on the home front, provided an informational link between the fighting military personnel and the public – in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the British Dominion nations – eagerly awaiting news of their progress. The purpose is to look beyond the news stories that came out of the reporting and analyse the correspondents themselves: how they acquired their positions and prepared for deployments, what sort of monetary support they received, how they operated under difficult field conditions, what they wore and carried, what specific tools made their work possible, how they moved among the battles, what they did when they rested, and how their labours made some of them household names. This study aims to pull together these various aspects of the work and lives of the journalists, illuminating the methods and motivations that made them war correspondents; in short, the story behind their stories. The focus is solely on British and Dominion correspondents in the European and North African theatres of the Second World War in order to keep the parameters within reasonable limits. It also provides the opportunity to concentrate on a specific group of correspondents, which is still large but not so much as attempting the outsized and therefore less distinct job of looking at all Allied correspondents. Primary sources include the archives of news organisations and the United Kingdom National Archives, as well as the invaluable memoirs of correspondents who related their personal experiences and details of their work. Other sources include relevant secondary material such as historical manuscripts about the overall war or specific battles, news articles, and sound recordings. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Jeremy A. Crang and Dr. Paul Addison, who pointed me toward the important sources I needed to complete this study, showed me how to write like an academic, and encouraged me throughout. I would also like to thank my examiners, Dr. Trevor Griffiths and Dr. Siân Nicholas, whose corrections and suggestions were a great help. Professor Jill Stephenson was a wonderful mentor and role model from my first day at Edinburgh University. Yvonne McEwan provided me with professional opportunities I otherwise would never have had. I am grateful to them all. The staffs of the National Archives at Kew, the Reuters archive in London, and the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading were all extremely helpful in guiding me to the vital research material required to write this dissertation. I would like to extend an immeasurable amount of gratitude to my family: my brothers, Mark (#3) and Jay (#2), and their wonderful wives, Samantha and Jenni; my effervescent niece, Lila Beatrix (Go! Go! Go!); my new nephews, Fergus and Francis; my cousin Cindy Hannon; and my mother, Barbara, and her husband, John. I could never have finished without the unswerving support they all provided. Thanks go to my good friends: Dr. Andrew Vince Colthurst, Dr. Pertti Ahonen, Dr. Julius Ruiz, and Dr. David Kaufman, without whom Edinburgh would have been far less interesting; my email debate team, Shane Cough and Liam McCarthy, for consistently giving me something to discuss, regardless of its merit; my friend and fellow Tanglewood veteran Alyssa Radcliff; Stuart Campbell, John McClay and Dana Higgins, for remaining my greatest friends over twenty-nine years; and to my flatmate and friend, Dr. Katherine Nicolai, for encouragement, kindness and understanding in all matters, BRE. This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Frank J. Hannon. Brian P. D. Hannon Edinburgh 5 INTRODUCTION The Topic The actions of the British and Dominion armed forces in the most destructive conflict to ever plague mankind have been well documented in historical books, films, television and radio programmes, and in countless remembrance and memorial pieces in magazines and newspapers. Yet at the time of the Second World War, the sources of information about the war beyond the government were the print and broadcast reporters who often risked their own lives by traveling with the forces abroad and relaying the news of the losses and victories in the field back to the readers and listeners at home. The media reports, due to official government and military censorship, as well as self- censorship by the journalists, did not always paint the full picture, as can be seen in the examples of Dieppe and “The Miracle of Dunkirk”. Also, at least for the first part of the war, the news was hardly a source of high morale, with military defeats abroad and the disruption of normal civilian life. Yet the public relied on the daily news reports, those at home during the Blitz but later in large part those from distant battlefields, to learn of the course of the war, with mixtures of anger, fear, sadness and, ultimately, widespread joy. The British public – those at home struggling with what would be characterized as The People’s War – demanded ceaseless information about the events of the conflict in foreign lands and subsequently some of the most important figures outside of the government and the military in the Second World War were those who served as eyewitnesses to these events: the war correspondents. British and Dominion armed forces operations overseas were followed closely by a journalistic army of correspondents employed by various newspapers, magazines and, for the first time on a large scale in a war, by radio. These war reporters on foreign soil, under the direction of their editors and managers on the home front, provided an informational link between the fighting military personnel and the public – in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the British Dominion nations – eagerly awaiting news of their progress. The Second World War was unprecedented in its breadth, and in the same way the news reporting of the daily events of the war was also of a scope never before 6 experienced. Therefore, beyond the news stories that came out of the reporting, it is crucial to analyse the correspondents themselves: how they acquired their positions and prepared for their deployments, how they operated under difficult field conditions, what they wore and carried, what tools made their work possible, how they moved among the battles and what they did when they rested, and how their labours made some of them household names. The aim of this dissertation is to fill the gap left by the previous works of historians, writers and broadcasters with a detailed study focused specifically on the job of being a combat correspondent covering the British and Dominion armies during the Second World War. Literature Review Opportunity for analytical consideration of the war correspondents is found in the wide span of secondary sources. Yet among all the books that study the war in general or specific war correspondents, such as biographies, none of these books takes on the job of analysing in detail the various aspects of working as a combat correspondent in the Second World War, which is distinct from previous wars through its new technology and the grand scale of the conflict. This dissertation will fill that gap by looking at the Second World War correspondents as a whole, both in their work and their lives as journalists, and not just one prominent correspondent or a particular battle covered in the press like Anzio or Dunkirk, or a single media outlet such as The Times or