"By this time we had reached the trench system. On both sides of us men were going along the trenches with their Tommy guns. A tank assaulted one of the trenches and behind it was a young radio operator calmly chewing a stalk of wheat, waiting to flash the words that the bastion had been taken. Shouts of “come on out of there you Nazi so-and-sos" and "keep your hands up you such-and-such" announced the arrival of the First Troop. Then they began to pop up like prairie dogs."
William Randall Downs, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He worked for CBS News from 1942 to 1962 and for ABC News beginning in 1963. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.
"The Hindenburg and Bleecker bastions were so strong that it was decided to bypass them on D-Day, and let this group of Nazis stew in their own juice. There was no hurry; the Germans couldnt do much damage there. They were completely isolated and could be cleaned out at will. Yesterday, the order came to blast them out."
"Driving to the studio today, I passed a big football field. I had to look twice before I realized that the stands were jammed with people...thousands of them. I looked out on the playing field, and there wasn’t a soul. And then I realized that this crowd were war prisoners. I went into the field, and there was a quiet, docile atmosphere about the place…the sort of atmosphere you get in an American football crowd between halves. Germans of every description sat quietly, chatting to their neighbors and doing nothing in particular. Bored British sentries stood around looking like ushers equipped with Tommy guns. It was that quiet."
"In Russia during the war, you seldom spoke of Communism versus capitalism. In the first place, we were then comrades-in-arms and the subject was not important. In the second place, the official line of the inevitable struggle between capitalism and Communism was a bit confused. Marshal of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin had indicated to Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt that the two systems could live in Diplomat-at-Large Wendell Willkies One World side by side."
"Right now I could take you in my jeep for a ride of any 25 miles through the streets of Hamburg and pay you dollar for every undamaged house you could point out. I don’t believe I would lose a five dollar bill in doing so. There is acre after acre of nothing but bricks and rubble. Particularly in the port and manufacturing area do you see nothing but twisted steel and shattered walls and broken bricks."
"Downs was so apoplectic all the time, I found it hard to get along with him. It got to the point where I gave up on him. I didnt see him anymore."
"Perhaps the greatest good that will emerge from this Far Eastern crisis is an awareness that freedom-loving men of all races and all nations will have proved that they can and must work and fight together if their freedom is to survive."