Reporting the Big Story: D-Day at Omaha Beach

Covering The Big Story

Eyewitness to D-Day,
Unable to Get the Story Out

NBC radio correspondent John MacVane covered most of World War II in Europe. He went ashore with the first units on D-Day --- the ultimate big breaking story.

It was one thing to be an eyewitness to the start of this critical offensive. It was something else to get a report to the NBC network in new York. Besides military rules and censorship, there were tremendous problems transmitting reports.

You don't have a story unless you get it out to your audience.

Years after his military reporting, MacVane told what it was like reporting the war against Hitler and moving across Europe.

You can sometimes get a used copy of On The Air In World War II from alibris.com This service's alliances with rare book stores worldwide are very useful in finding these classic works.

	MacVane was aboard a landing craft. It was a stormy morning as they headed towards the entrenched guns, mortars and war machine of the Germans in France. The reporter was seasick as they approached the general landing area.
	He wrote, "The whole scene, as we among hundreds of other boats headed for shore, could have been a study in gray by El Greco, weird streaks of black and light gray, gray seas with frothing peaks. It was a wild, dark, and oppressive scene. The wind and the spume beat at my face. I felt almost hypnotized by the rise of the bow up which I stood and the smacking against the waves."

They were delayed as they arrived. The tide, the bad weather, obstacles in the water, other ships, and the German weapons fire made it difficult.
"We felt hemmed in, like rats in a narrow corridor," he wrote. The German mortarmen would bracket the ships and the men and sometimes connect with devastating impact.

When the landing craft stopped, MacVane was one of the first out, landing in cold water up to his thighs. He wrote, "The typewriter and my entrenching tool felt as heavy as if they were made of lead ... I wanted to trot across the sand and stones toward the bluff ahead of me, but I could hardly walk, slogging along, looking ahead ... Wrecked landing craft and tanks half covered with water were dotted here and there. The dead lay rolling in the income tide at the water's edge, and some still floated on the sea."

He made across the sand and found some shelter from the German guns by digging in.

I could think of nothing but the movement of my shovel. I cursed whenever some sand ran into the hole and made me dig an extra few shovelfuls to clear it away.
When the hole was about up to my armpits and wide enough for me to crouch down into it without difficulty, I began to take an interest in my surroundings.
Across the draw on the other bank some of our men were moving in to attack among bushes and trees. I could hear fierce bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire and some of our own tanks or artillery piece shooting. I judged that we were clearing up some gun positions of some German infantry that were making trouble farther up the draw.

But right in front of me on the beach, I watched the unfolding of a grand and terrible martial spectacle.
We had not, of course, expected anything like the opposition we received at the very beach itself.

In the late afternoon, an Army public relations officer arrived on Omaha beach. He had no communication gear. He offered the few correspondents to try to send their brief written dispatches back with Naval officers. They agreed, but MacVane said nothing reached their news organizations in London.

The NBC reporter had thought that he would be able to broadcast from the beach. He was discouraged when his contact, a division signal officer, told him that all four radios he had expected had been sunk.

Another signal officer expected a radio the next day. It did arrive. MacVane carried his censor-approved script, and at one o'clock in the morning, transmitted his report. Electrical conditions were bad. The sergeant on duty had no idea if anyone had received it in London.

MacVane kept trying. The next day --- forty-eight hours since arriving --- he made another broadcast. Here's what happened:

Lieutenant Colonel Pickett, the signal officer, detached a captain with one of his 399s on a truck which had just arrived that day to try to get a broadcast over to England.
We went to the edge of the bluff overlooking the beach, so there would be no obstacles between us and the far shore, I started talking up on the only frequency I knew, and after fifteen minutes, with atmospheric conditions good, I began my broadcast, first giving the name and number of the censor who had censored the script

Now in London, elaborate preparations for broadcasting from Normandy had been planned, all unknown to me, the one most closely concerned with such things, unknown as well to my CBS colleague Larry LeSueur over on Utah Beach. The plan was to have an American broadcaster do the first broadcast from the British sector of Normandy about three weeks after the landings, when all arrangements had been perfected.
This was hands-across-the-sea stuff, which in ordinary times I might have approved, but I had not risked my life on Omaha to be frustrated about broadcasting for any longer than the time it took me to find and use a transmitter.

In London, there was a big U.S. Army relay station, meant to pick up our broadcasts from the BBC and boost them along to our networks in New York. I had timed my broadcast to coincide with NBC's morning broadcast.

In the NBC London office at 2 Manfield Street, the telephone rang. It was Roy Trouncer, one of the BBC censors, saying, "We're getting John from the beachhead. It's coming in fine, and we're sending it right along to the army transmitter."
The NBC London office was overjoyed, first, to know that I was still alive and, second, to think that we had obtained the scoop of the war, the first broadcast from Normandy-or vice versa.

It was only later that disillusionment set in. In the Army Signal Corps installation in London, a bunch of bureaucratic desk officers were warming their capacious rears on cushioned swivel chairs. "A broadcast-from the beachhead," they said. "Impossible. No broadcast is expected for at least three weeks."
They examined further and discovered the broadcast was not arriving on any of the frequencies they had allotted for such matters, allotted in such deep secrecy that no correspondent knew the secret.
Whoever was in charge said, "This is on an unauthorized frequency. It must not be sent on to New York. This is breaking all the rules. We'll fix the bastard. We won't retransmit his broadcast."

That was what happened. The broadcast went to London perfectly, but nobody outside the BBC and the Army Signal Corps ever heard it. When I got back to London, Roy Trouncer told me the sad story, and we had a drink to bemoan the great scoop, the first broadcast from Omaha Beach, the broadcast that would have startled America.

Two or three weeks later, when I was in England, I heard Bill Downs of CBS give the first broadcast from Normandy, all in order, all arranged, from the British sector. I was not happy.

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Eyewitness to D-Day, Unable to Get the Story Out

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Eyewitness to D-Day,
Unable to Get the Story Out