Ben Robertson by Jodie Peeler

Author:Jodie Peeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2019-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“What are we going to do about it?”

Ben Robertson walked the streets of New York the evening of January 7, the glow of streetlamps making him feel he was in another world. People weren’t scurrying home, trying to beat the next raid. Store windows spoke of plentiful bounties, of being able to buy a thick steak for one meal that would have been two weeks’ ration in London. The city was calm, its offerings abundant. As he walked along through the night, Robertson lit a cigarette and marveled for a moment that he could do that without getting arrested.

PM, happy to have its star reporter home, made the most of it. The afternoon Robertson arrived, a photographer captured him happily devouring a spoonful of ice cream. The photo ran the next day alongside an article Robertson quickly composed about how it felt to be home after the hell of London under siege, of the wonder and strangeness he felt in New York. “You can walk and you can stay at home and do nothing if you want to,” he wrote. “There is no compulsion. You find it makes you very happy and at the same time very sad to get home again from London.”1

Robertson had little time to rest. Almost immediately he began distilling his experiences into a series for PM, due to begin in a week’s time. On top of that, before Ambassador Kennedy delivered a radio address on January 18, Ingersoll pulled Robertson aside for an extended interview about Kennedy. While stenographers jotted down their words for publication in the following day’s edition, Robertson and Ingersoll discussed the varying statements Kennedy made to the British and to the Americans, and the ambassador’s ambivalent feelings about Britain’s chances in the war. Robertson said that Kennedy often avoided the bombings in London by staying in the country, and once said “I can’t make head or tail out of what this war’s all about. If you can find out why the British are standing up against the Nazis you are a better man than I am.” Correspondents had tried to decipher the ambassador’s attitudes, but Robertson finally concluded Kennedy’s business sense governed his feelings about the war. “He was a confirmed pessimist and would sell anything short,” Robertson said. “He told us one day, ‘This war’s raising hell with my business.’”2

On January 20, Robertson’s stories of London in wartime began in PM. Free from British censorship, he could be candid in detail and assessment. He wrote of the strength of the British people, of watching Churchill lead a nation at war, of how a bombing raid felt, of the gruesome aftermath of German raids. He described the heroism of Coventry and his disappointment with the Irish. He wrote of a class system giving way to unity in a common cause. He wrote of the British attitude that they could win against the Axis. And in his final piece, he delivered a piece of advocacy:

The British think, too, that this war will be the last war in which the U.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.