AN ESSAYIST’S BRUTAL BAPTISM OF FIRE

by Jim Freund

© 2022

            As in the words of poet Robert Burns consoling the mouse whose cozy dwelling he’d destroyed – “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley” – so too has my April essay ended up in quite a different place than what I’d originally envisioned. 

            (By the way, for you non-Scots among the readership, “awry” is a passable translation for “agley” . . . .)

            I had set out to write a piece highlighting the oeuvre of an essayist I’d long admired – Andy Rooney. I found the contrarian comical commentary of this clever curmudgeonly commentator (sorry, Andy, for the trivial alliteration . . . .) oddly touching and deserving of a blog tribute.

            Rooney’s best-known gig was to host the recurrent end-of-the-show segment for the famed television mainstay, “60 minutes.” His commentary began in 1978 and continued until his death in 2011 (five weeks after his last appearance) – that’s 33 years on the show, comprising 1,097 commentaries. The best of these, plus other essays he’d written or spoken, ended up filling 15 books – so I had plenty to choose from in highlighting my subject.

            His subject matter ranged all over the place. The cover of his book Common Nonsense, for instance, enumerated the following subjects: “Food, drinks, money, sports, politics, religion, education, the arts, home life, work life, health, doctors, people, travel, progress.” 

            I felt an instant kinship, for instance, to “The Urge to Eat.” Andy was convinced that he was just naturally overweight – There’s too much of me everywhere, which resulted from some faulty wiring in my brain – and he was certain that overeating is as much a part of my personality as blue eyes and wide feet.

            At my age, I also reveled in “The Glories of Maturity,” in which Rooney stated, I don’t do as many things I don’t like to do as I had to when I was young . . . . They can write about the glories of youth but there are advantage of maturity, too. I don’t read anything I don’t want to read. I don’t go places I don’t want to go. I don’t spend a lot of time talking to people I don’t feel like talking to.

            And how about “Lost and not Found” – There are days when I just look for things. I don’t find them, I just look . . . . Looking and not finding is certainly one of the most frustrating ways to spend time. You don’t know whether to get mad and kick someone or sit down and cry. I usually try to think of someone other than myself to blame it on.

            And so on – offbeat musings on matters we’re all aware of but perhaps have never viewed in quite the same way as Andy does. 

            But then – before I could really dig deeply into Rooney’s vast repertoire – I discovered that he had been a war correspondent in Europe during World War II. Well, no matter what Mr. Putin chooses to call it, war is something that’s very much on everyone’s mind today. My interest was aroused, and I decided to get a copy of Andy’s book, My War – if for no other reason than to see whether he exhibited the same curmudgeonly self back then as he projected later on.

            What I encountered was definitely not just some clever wordsmith dealing with everyday topics in a humorous way. His participation in World War II as a reporter for The Stars and Stripes was, in his words, the long, terrible and fascinating episode in my life. For my part, I couldn’t put his book down. Since it’s so timely now, given the agony of what’s happening in Ukraine, I decided to put aside Rooney’s later efforts and give you a flavor of what Andy’s personal engagement in the European theatre of the brutal ’40s conflict meant to him. 

            When the war began, Andy was a student at Colgate University and involved in the pacifist movement. He freely admits that I didn’t want to go to Europe to fight and die for what seemed to me to be someone else’s cause. So when he was then drafted, he naturally thought about becoming a Conscientious Objector. But, he concluded, after months of anguishing over it I realized that, while I was an objector, I could not claim to be a conscientious one. And so, on July 7, 1941, he reported for duty. 

            Since Rooney had some minor journalistic experience, he was transferred to the fledgling U.S. Army publication, The Stars and Stripes, and sent to England, which was then undergoing the Blitz. His harsh introduction to modern warfare came at an underground air raid shelter. The terrifying wail of the sirens had stampeded people into the shelter, but the escalator broke – and that night 478 people were crushed to death. Oh, and by the way, no bombs fell and the air-raid siren turned out to be a false alarm.

            Rooney’s major initial assignment was covering the bombing missions that the Americans, along with the Brits, were conducting against Continental targets in areas that Germany had conquered. It was a dangerous pursuit for the air crews – so many planes were shot down, so many lives lost – The casualties among the men who flew in combat were astronomically worse than those of any other service. Andy presents the statistics, emphasizes the terrible odds they faced, but then (in a preview of the later offbeat angle he took on so many things) he comments: If you were assigned to an airplane in the British Isles, your chances of meeting a girl in London were better than those of a grunt in the armed forces, but your chances of seeing her again in a month were worse. 

            Invariably, his attention turns to the men in the plane crews. It was terrifying for crewmen to lie in bed at night and consider their slight chance of getting through the war alive, free and whole. There were a great many breakdowns suffered by crew members.

            Rooney tells an agonizing story about a ball turret gunner in a B-17 that had lost its wheels. When the gears jammed on a raid, he was trapped in the plastic bubble that hung beneath the plane. They tried everything but to no avail. The trapped gunner, Andy reports, knew what comes down first when there are no wheels . . . . We all watched in horror . . . as this man’s life ended, mashed between the concrete pavement of the runway and the belly of the bomber . . . . I returned to London that night, shaken and unable to write the most dramatic, the most gruesome, the most heart-wrenching story I had ever witnessed. Some reporter.

            Then, in early 1943, the decision was made that reporters covering the 8th Air Force ought to go on a mission themselves. Eight were chosen – seven pro’s (including Walter Cronkite), and one Andy Rooney. The previous targets had been exclusively in France or Holland – U-boat pens and railroad yards. But at the February 26 briefing for the raid that day, Andy learned that the bombers in his flight were to bomb Wilhelmshaven – a port located in Germany itself, heavily defended by antiaircraft batteries and within the range of several Luftwaffe squadrons.

            Here’s how Andy mused about this. February 26 was the first time I’d seriously considered my own death  . . . . A thousand things went through my mind. I wondered what I was doing there. Was it really necessary for me to volunteer for a mission that could easily cost me my life simply to get a story for the newspaper or to appear more legitimate in the eyes of the crewmen I was covering on a daily basis?

            Still, Andy never seriously considered pulling out, although he reports that two of the eight reporters came up lame and decided they weren’t well enough to go. Listen, it happens. The thought crossed my mind that I didn’t feel too well myself.

            Andy’s description of the agonizing five hours of his claustrophobic flight are totally gripping. His plane somehow managed to avoid the heavy flak, and drop its bombs, only to take direct fire from Luftwaffe fighter planes on the way home.  Several of the B-17’s were hit; the long, slow, death spiral of a bomber with its crews on board is a terrible thing to see.

            And then it happened. Suddenly there was an explosion six feet in front of me in the bombardier’s nose compartment, and a viciously cold gale rushed in through the hole. The supply line to the navigator’s oxygen mask was cut and he became unconscious. The pilot directed Andy to retrieve oxygen bottles from another compartment to save the man. It was unsettling to be pressed into service doing a real job. I felt inadequate. They’d forgotten I was a reporter.

            Rooney proved useful – even managing to restore the navigator’s consciousness – and the plane managed to struggle back to its base. The six correspondents who participated in the raid had arranged to meet to write and transmit their stories back to London. But then came the news they dreaded: There would never be more than five of us. The New York Times reporter went down with his plane.

            Rooney’s resulting story made page one of The Stars and Stripes, and he was celebrated in his hometown newspaper, but here’s how he reacted: The following day, I read the official report on the raid. We had not won the war with it.

            There’s much more about this phase of Andy’s service (including the disastrous Ploesti raid), but I’ll now move ahead to the land war that began with the Allies’ invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944. Rooney fully appreciated the significance of the occasion. There have been only a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in one twenty-four hour period by an act of man. June 6, 1944, was one of them. 

            Another thought that never left Andy’s mind was that returning the continent to its rightful owners from the grip of Hitler’s army was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people did for another. He voiced this sentiment again after viewing row on row of dead American soldiers laid out on the sand . . . . If you think the world is selfish and rotten go to the cemetery at Coleville overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6, 1944. 

            Andy came ashore on Utah Beach soon after the initial landings and joined the troops heading down the Cotentin Peninsula toward Cherbourg. Among his many vivid descriptions and absorbing stories, one that really got to me was his account of how American tanks kept rolling down the narrow paths between the French hedgerows, even when there were dead or badly wounded bodies in their path. Seeing what a tank left behind after it had traversed the narrow paths between two hedgerows with dead or wounded lying in it is my grimmest vision of the war – four or five halves of what had been men, mashed into the dirt and mud by the grinding tracks of a ten ton tank.

            But then he looked at things from the point of view of the tank’s crew. Being inside a tank when it’s hit must be one of the worst ways for a soldier to die. Even if a direct hit didn’t penetrate the armor, thousands of razor-sharp shards of steel, more deadly than bullets because of the jagged, irregular shapes, ricocheted inside the tank, tearing up anything they hit and especially human flesh – not the casual commentary of a later Andy Rooney.

            He tells some striking tales about the breakthrough at St. Lô, and concludes with this culminating paragraph: I don’t know why the people of St. Lô don’t hate Americans today. We destroyed the town. We didn’t damage it, we annihilated it . . . . [Still] every year, on the anniversary of their liberation, they hang banners across their main street and make festivals of thanks to the Americans for coming to their rescue. They don’t mention that, in the process of the liberation, we destroyed what we were liberating. 

            Rooney keeps coming back to war’s catastrophes, such as when the first wave of Allied bombers mounted a big air raid, dropping 50,000 tons of explosives on German positions. But a strong wind blew clouds of smoke, obscuring the new position to which the American troops had withdrawn; and the second wave of our bombers, using the smokeline as a target, dropped their bombs on U.S. troops – producing the highest number of casualties from friendly fire of any incident in any war.

            Then there was the Falaise Gap. It irritates Andy that the history books blame us for allowing 50,000 Germans to escape; in fact, this was a shooting gallery . . . the worst slaughter of the war, a massacre vastly more deadly for the German soldiers than D-Day was for ours.

            Sprinkled throughout the book are Andy’s unvarnished opinions about the people he meets or observes. So, for instance there’s a wonderfully warm description of his having befriended Ernie Pyle, the best of the war correspondents. But he takes some nasty swipes at Ernest Hemingway, who was also reporting on the war. You should never meet one of your heroes. I had greatly admired Hemingway [for his novels], but after [witnessing an absurd Hemingway performance] I laugh whenever I think of him.

            As for General George Patton – well, to Andy he was the kind of general who gives war a bad name . . . . I have nothing but contempt for George Patton. Rooney claims that many of his soldiers not only hated Patton but also his nickname of “blood and guts”. Their interpretation was “Yeah, his guts and our blood.” Just listen to Andy rant here: He was a loud mouthed bore who got too many American soldiers killed for the sake of enhancing his own reputation as a swashbuckling leader in the Napoleonic style. And Andy can’t resist the temptation of adding, What kind of a jackass general brings a dog with him wherever he goes? 

            On the other hand, Charles De Gaulle, whom Rooney encountered in the liberation of Paris, struck a different chord with the reporter. Although Andy initially described the general as a six-foot-six-inch French leader with an ego to match his height, he later concluded that in the resulting parade down the Champs Elysees, DeGaulle was perfect. Few men in history could have cut the figure DeGaulle did as he strode that historic mile. He didn’t walk, he strode. His stature fit his imperial air and, for all his pomposity, he was a great man. DeGaulle may have been egotistical and pompous, but egotists can be great, too, and he was great.

            Rooney rode into Paris with the French army and wrote a major story about the event. He entrusted the text to an American messenger (who was flying a piper cub) to bring it to Rennes where the newspaper was housed.  But Andy’s story of the entry into Paris never got to The Stars and Stripes. It was the single most disappointing event in my three years as a war correspondent . . . The pilot had experienced engine trouble and never made it to Rennes. When Andy ran into him at a later time, he tried to make amends by telling me how much he’d liked the story, which he read in the field where he’d slept that night. It was small consolation . . . I blew it . . . I hadn’t paid off on the biggest story of my life. 

            As our troops moved into Germany and Andy witnessed the cities that had been destroyed by bombing, he wrote: Seven and a half million German civilians killed during the war and most of them died during air raids. You looked at these cities and wondered how the German people who had lived in them could keep from detesting Adolph Hitler, who had brought all this down on them.

            In November 1944, Andy was sent back to New York for a six week vacation. It was a happy day, he noted – especially since a number of war correspondents were being killed in the ensuing actions. But in New York, he found himself unsettled about missing the action. I’d given up my front-row seat to go back into the lobby and buy a Coke during one of the most exciting parts of the show, the Battle of the Bulge. 

            He came back to Europe for the crossing of the Rhine, writing about the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. There’s a wonderful story about a personal one-on-one encounter he had with an armed German soldier, and a sad tale of the death of one of his favorite officers, Major General Maurice Rose, who may have been the best tank commander of the war. And then came the gruesome eye-opener of  Buchenwald.  

            Andy admitted that he was initially suspicious of all the reports of Nazi concentration camps. But when he got there, he saw for himself. Buchenwald represented the worst of everything in all the Nazi extermination camps. The dead and dying were still everywhere.

            A little later, though, he was even more shocked by the scene in a smaller camp, Thekla. A contingent of SS troops had been stationed there due to the importance of its aircraft-parts factory. When the SS became aware that the American troops would arrive within hours, they herded 300 prisoners into one of barracks, threw gasoline everywhere and tossed incendiary grenades into the building. It surely was one of the pinnacles in the annals of man’s inhumanity to man. Some clawed their way out, running in flames to the barbed wire fence where they burned to death or were machine-gunned by SS troopers. The burned and blackened bodies of about sixty men were hanging in contorted positions from the needle point barbs of the wire.

            And as for the people who lived in Thekla, it was my first exposure to what we began to hear so frequently: “We didn’t know.”

            For Andy, engaged in a young reporter’s first assignment, it’s clear that the war was an overpowering experience – as he put it, the long, terrible and fascinating episode in my life. As he said later, Because war is the ultimate drama of life and death, stories and pictures of it are more interesting than those about peace. But it didn’t seem to him that writing about it would be the ideal future occupation, and he explained why:

            The best books about war may already have been written . . . Stories of future wars may not be as interesting because the killing will be less personal. Combatants have gradually distanced themselves from each other during the evolution of war. Originally, enemies battled to the death face to face with cudgels, knives or swords in their hands. Now, when the modern warrior presses the button that sends a missile hundreds or thousands of miles toward a target, it may cause the death of thousands whose faces he has never seen.

            Those wars won’t make good reading.

            And that, I believe, is why Andy turned to the less demanding role of essayist commenting on our peacetime foibles. He knew he could never find an experience that would match what he’d already been through. Moreover, a sense of disillusionment seemed to have set in. Just listen to this later observation of his:

            A soldier at war . . . is busy destroying and it does not occur to him that he will have to help rebuild the world he is pulling down. He often mistakes the exultation of victory for a taste of what things will be like for the rest of his life. And they are only like that for a very short time.

             Well, I hate to leave you on that note, so to conclude I’ve collected a dozen choice quotes from Andy Rooney’s later years. In no special order, here goes:

• The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

• It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.

• I can’t choose how I feel. But I can choose what I do about it.

• I’ve learned that to ignore the facts does not change the facts.

• People will generally accepts facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.

• A great many people do not have the right to their own opinion because they don’t know what they are talking about.

• If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.

• I had one typewriter for 50 years, but I have bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that’s why Bill Gates is rich and Underwood is out of business.

• It’s just amazing how long this country is going to hell without ever having got there.

• Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.

• I’ve learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

• Do I have opinions that might piss people off? Yes – that’s what I’m here for. 

            Oh, there’s one more I can’t resist adding, for reasons that should be obvious. So here it is, for a baker’s dozen:

            The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

* * * 

            All of which makes me think that one of these months I might yet write the original article that went agley . . . .