- [Person 1] Funding for this program was provided in part by the Donald and Lorena Meier Foundation, Humanities Nebraska, the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

(somber music) (bombing) (somber music) (bombing) - [Narrator] The limestone cliffs and sandy beaches dotting Normandy, France are more peaceful today compared to a lifetime ago.

Here on June 6th, 1944 D-Day forever altered five years of World War II that disrupted and destroyed the lives of millions of people in France and far beyond.

(somber music) - [Person 2] Allied Naval forces began landing Allied Armies this morning on the northern coast of France.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] On Omaha Beach, 2,400 US Army First infantry troops were killed, wounded, or went missing in the first wave of soldiers to attack the German gunners.

(somber music) They are among 9,300 Americans buried on the bluffs above Omaha Beach, who died on D-Day and in the battle of Normandy.

(somber music) Farther inland US Army Airborne troops had their share of chaos on D-Day too.

- [Person 3] These are the first ships to take off in the Airborne invasion of fortress Europe.

(airplane engines) - [Narrator] Hours before the Allies amphibious invasion, 13,000 American Airborne troops flew in darkness from England to parachute and land troop gliders behind enemy lines in Normandy.

- [Person 2] Ready with a green.

(intense music) Show the green.

Go.

- [Narrator] Among them was Omaha, Nebraska born Robert Reuben.

He was 25 years old and witnessing combat for the first time in his life, not as a soldier, but as a Reuters news war correspondent.

- A lot of the estimates said 90% glider crew's not gonna make it.

Three outta four paratroopers not gonna survive.

They're gonna survive the drop.

- [Narrator] If they survived.

The US Airborne's mission was to attack German troops from the rear with their British and Canadian counterparts.

Robert Reuben parachuted with them.

- [Robert] Suddenly I was conscious of a violent swinging of the plane.

Evasive action.

- [Narrator] 500 feet above the ground.

Reuben's C47 transport plane was the first to reach its Normandy drop zone and that's where Reuben made his first combat jump.

- [Robert] We were being shot at enemy planes or flak.

Even machine guns could reach us.

We were flying so low.

- You are in the belly of the beast.

I mean, you're jumping into a hot zone at night.

- [Robert] I have no recollection of going through the door at all.

I began to shuffle forward a burst of flak, a ball of red fire beside the plane, and I was hurdling down in the propeller blast almost the next thing I felt the Jolt of my chute opening.

(intense music) - [Narrator] Looking up Reuben wasn't sure what to expect.

He was the first war correspondent to land in Normandy for months to come.

He chronicled the US soldiers fighting and dying in Europe.

- [Robert] How did they die?

Machine guns, artillery, snipers, but what difference does it make to the dead?

Are they dust?

No life left or does life go on?

(intense music) What is the mystery, the soul, the breath of life?

(intense music) All I can tell you is how they died.

Machine guns, artillery, snipers.

(intense music) - [Narrator] Most people run from the fire of war.

Robert Reuben ran towards it.

(intense music) (intense music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Robert] You must carry the burden alone and never can you share it or relive it or explain it to someone who has lived it.

- [Narrator] A typewritten manuscript wrapped in cellophane never published, it sat in the archives of the global news agency Reuters ever since its author Robert Reuben died in 1964.

(gentle music) Reuben was the son of Jewish immigrants who escaped religious persecution in eastern Europe.

He was born in Nebraska and grew up in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

He graduated from college in 1939, the year the Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.

(bombing) Five years later, just months before the Allies D-Day invasion, Reuben Reuters war correspondent stood in awe on the British airfield watching US Army Airborne troops stage a parachute demonstration for British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

(gentle music) - [Robert] The sky was full of them as far as you could see in the bright sunlight.

Blue, red, white, green parachutes popping, swinging gently flowing in a steady stream into the ground as wave after wave of the hundreds of planes passed overhead, I turned to parachute as public relations officer Major Barney Oldfield and said, I'd like to try parachuting if it wasn't too dangerous.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Nebraskan Barney Oldfield was one of General Eisenhower's public information officers who recruited and vetted a select group of 50 war correspondents for the D-Day invasion.

(gentle music) - [Robert] Barney, one of the greatest salesmen in the Army seized on me happily and from then on my goose was cooked.

I was going to jump school, come hell or high water.

- Barney was the consummate showman.

- [Narrator] Dan Shelley radio, television and Digital News Association President knew Oldfield, who later in life helped to found that very organization.

- There was always a smile on his face, always one of these toothy grins that belied the notion that he knew something that nobody else knew.

And boy wouldn't you like to know.

- [Narrator] Oldfield had previously served with the US Army Airborne and struck a deal with Reuben and five other war correspondents.

If they could make it through Airborne jump school and survive five practice parachute jumps, they could skydive into Normandy with the Airborne soldiers and be the first to report on the ground.

(military drill chatting) - [Robert] My first question, of course, was everyone's first question, do the chutes always open Barney and I got the usual answer, practically always (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Before he died in 2003, Oldfield explained why General Eisenhower wanted war correspondents like Ernie Pyle in scores of other journalists like Robert Reuben embedded with US combat troops fighting the Nazis in Europe.

- [Barney] The General Eisenhower philosophy was that he wanted the war correspondent to be the conduit to the home front for reassurance of the people who were back there who would have to rely on what they saw in the newspapers or heard on radio.

- The war correspondents, they had a lot of responsibility.

- [Narrator] Author and military historian Mitch Yockelson says the American public had a personal interest in knowing the latest news about our troops in World War II.

- [Mitch] You'd see these wonderful photographs of people staring up into Times Square looking at the headlines as they flash by.

People were grabbing the newspapers each morning.

They wanted to follow where the troops were going.

They wanted to know was successes.

Were there any failures?

And obviously the casualties, who was going to better tell that than the war correspondents.

- [Dan] Barney helped General Eisenhower in World War II understand how this could be useful, a useful tool not just for the military, not just for the war effort, but for the citizens of the United States.

- [Narrator] In the hours before D-Day General Eisenhower was still unsure if the Allies could get a foothold in Normandy against the strong German resistance.

If the attack failed, he planned to release this letter to the public, - [Eisenhower] The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do.

If any blame or fault is attached to the attempt, it is mine alone.

- [Mitch] There is very little margin here.

- [Narrator] Historian David Eisenhower said his grandfather believed if America's military mission were to succeed, it needed the independent ears and eyes of war correspondents to keep the world informed and win public support.

- I think under those circumstances, even a great journalist understands that their role is to preserve a free society, which means preserving a free country.

(intense music) - [Narrator] Five hours before the Allies storm Normandy's beaches, Robert Reuben was among the first Airborne soldiers to parachute into combat against the German troops.

- I used to tell people that one of the greatest lies on earth was when the jump master would say, are you ready?

And everybody said, yeah, if you don't know what fear is, you'll be introduced to it rather quickly as you go out the door.

- Went in absolutely blind, absolutely cold, completely in the dark, into combat they'd never seen before.

(intense music) (gunfire) - [Narrator] Many Airborne soldiers were hit by German gunfire, parachuting to the ground, - [Robert] Many dying before they could get out of their harnesses.

Some shot struggling while hanging in their chutes, suspended from trees.

- [Narrator] Reuben parachuted between four trees as he safely hit the ground.

- [Robert] My chute collapsed gently about me, but suddenly I was frightened.

Frightened.

I was terrified.

Someone was firing a machine gun in the next field.

It was the first time I had heard a German burp gun.

- [Narrator] Scattered in the pre-dawn darkness.

Reuben and the Airborne soldiers use clickers to find each other in the enemy fire.

They soon regroup with Airborne General Maxwell Taylor and with 85 soldiers marched on the German held town of Pouppeville.

Its roads and bridges were critical to control for American troops as they moved inland from the sea.

- [Robert] I heard the first burst of fire.

It electrified us and we landed on our faces in the ditches.

- [Narrator] Marching through a field.

General Taylor's troops drew more in enemy fire.

- [Robert] I hadn't moved far when I glanced in the ditch.

Four dead Germans were lying on their stomachs.

Each neatly shot through the head, each still clutching his rifle.

- [Narrator] Reuben's first sight of the war's dead suddenly reminded him of his own mortality.

(intense music) - [Robert] You had a tense feeling that a gambler has betting the last chip of his lost fortune at a roulette table.

Only the last chip on this table was a priceless one.

You were laying your life on the line.

(intense music) (intense music) - [Narrator] Taylor's Airborne troops captured Pouppeville from German troops soon after Reuben filed his first Normandy story.

After spotting a soldier, carrying a box with a simple and effective messaging system the Allies used frequently in World War II.

The soldier's box contained carrier pigeons, - [Robert] I talked him out of a pigeon, scribbled my first story and fastened it to the bird.

The story got through, the first story written from liberated France and it was published throughout the world under the slug by carrier pigeon.

- And he cuddled two little carrier pigeons (intense music) that were trained to go back to England with his copy.

- [Narrator] Beverly Deepe Keever was a war correspondent too, the Vietnam War's longest serving war correspondent.

- He writes on thin cigarette paper, five words (intense music) landed in Normandy, Reuben Reuters.

(intense music) That was the first story out of Normandy on D-Day, air delivered by Reuben's magical birds.

(intense music) - [Don] And here's some more detail on Prime Minister Churchill's second statement of the day.

Is that Allied Airborne troops had captured several strategic bridges in France before they could be blown up and described the landing of Airborne troops on the European continent as an outstanding feat on a scale far larger than anything there has been seen so far in the world.

(intense music) (gentle music) (waves rushing) (gentle music) - [Ernie] It will be some time before we have a really clear picture of what has happened or what is happening at the moment.

You must experience the terrible confusion of warfare and the frantic nightmarish thunder and smoke and bedlam of battle to realize this.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Those are the words of Ernie Pyle, America's most celebrated World War II reporter and his stories published in more than 400 US daily newspapers.

Pyle arrived in Normandy the day after D-Day and described the invasion's aftermath as he walked across Omaha Beach.

(gentle music) - [Ernie] Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks, shell shattered jeeps.

Sad little personal belongings were strewn all over those bitter sands.

After it was over, seemed to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all.

(waves crashing) - [Narrator] On occasion, Robert Reuben shared a tent with Pyle while covering the war.

Reuben, who was a generation younger than Pyle later described the senior correspondent's words to him about war reporting.

- [Robert] He told me that no matter how often you go through it, it's still a miserably exhilarating sort of thing.

And later as battle after battle rolled by, I was to learn it for myself.

You learn how to control yourself, how to take care of yourself, but the pressure of a gamble with your life never loses any of its tensity.

- [Narrator] Pyle and Reuben were among the 180 reporters, photographers, and cameramen initially approved to cover the frontline fighting in Normandy.

(intense music) The war department was supposed to set up press camps for reporters to file their stories by telephone or radio.

Once military sensors approved their copy.

But in the heavy fighting surrounding D-Day, the sensors and the press camps were nowhere to be found.

Reuben shared his frustration in his memoir.

(intense music) - [Robert] Writing a story on my typewriter on the ground in some field, afraid all the time of snipers and constantly having my paper blow away.

Then hiking back several miles to the core headquarters in hope of finding a press officer or someone else to send my copy back for me.

- [Narrator] The Allied printed radio reporters, photographers, and cameramen stories about D-Day were stalled for days in the heavy fighting that followed the invasion.

- [Bill] The artillery peculated the barrage with shrapnel shells.

- [Narrator] Radio reporters, like Bill Downs of CBS news fared better covering a fierce battle between British Marines and German troops near the Normandy town of Caen.

- [Bill] We were only some 200 yards from where the shells were landing and you had an uncontrollable tendency to stuck your head every time a shell came over.

(explosions) - [Narrator] Allied soldiers fighting on the ground in France also depended on the broadcast that their radios could pick up from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

- [Bill] The BBC Home Canada troops are landing the landing all around me.

- [Narrator] The BBC news reports from across the English channel kept Allied soldiers informed and the morale high in the early harrowing days of the Normandy invasion.

- [Bill] Next morning we heard the news.

We heard it from the BBC.

It sounded great.

We'd joined up all along the bridgehead.

There was a solid line, 45 miles of it.

We'd got a foothold.

We were in.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] As a war correspondent Reuben, like the US troops he traveled with risked being shot or bombed by the Germans.

- [Robert] My memories of those days are pretty basic, cold, hungry, dirty, lonesome, and scared.

- Even if you are safe, you don't feel safe and you don't know what's coming next.

- [Narrator] Reuben slept on the ground at night or in a foxhole or with French families who are willing to share their homes, that could be dangerous too.

- [Robert] One night our radio officer crawled out of his parachute and leaned into the window and the bright moonlight to see his watch, a rifle shot cracked through the window beside him.

We all looked up sleepily and uncomfortable.

We picked up our helmets, stuck them on our heads and went back to sleep.

For days we didn't take our boots or clothes off.

- [Mitch] And so essentially they were in the Army and their contribution wasn't to capture Germans or shoot their way through a machine gun nest, but it was to tell a story, an important story because they knew that this was history being made and they were right there and they were telling it.

- [Narrator] Frequently Reuben's reports also mentioned soldiers by their names and hometowns.

Barney Oldfield said the general Eisenhower knew it was an important morale booster.

- And he once told a group of us that he said, I know of no thing, which so improves the morale of the soldier as to see his unit or his own name in print just once.

So this would take out the anonymity.

He he knew that the people who knew him were reading about where he was and he felt that he was no longer unhooked from home and family.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] In Carton Reuben covered US Airborne units battling veteran German troops who had orders from German field Marshall Irwin Rommel to fight the Americans to the death to keep them from controlling a critical strategic highway.

- [Robert] On that highway for two days and two nights raged one of the bitterest and bloodiest battles of the invasion.

There perished almost an entire battalion and some of the cream units of the division.

- [R.G.]

I'm Colonel R.G.

Cole, Lieutenant Colonel R.G.

Cole 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry.

- [Narrator] On June 10th, the strapping 29-year-old lieutenant colonel from San Antonio, Texas.

Home of the Alamo led 250 men from his battalion through German artillery and mortar fire onto the highway, just outside Carentan.

(plane propellers whirling) That's where two German warplanes also opened fire killing and wounding 30 US troops in a matter of seconds.

(western music) At daybreak, Reuben watched from a neighboring hill as Cole's men moved forward again, crossing the Douve River, squeezing through a gated bridge on the other side where sniper machine gunfire coming from dug in German troops, pinned the regimen down, killing and wounded several men.

- [R.G.]

And I thought the only solution was either to withdraw back the bridge and take run a chance of getting everybody killed.

Withdraw to attack this position or just lying in the ditch and be sniper at.

So I called for artillery fire, which I received and issued order for bayonet charge.

(western music) - [Robert] His troops jumped across or waded through canals, chest deep with water and fought their way into German emplacements.

It was a fanatical attack that will long be remembered, particularly by the Germans.

(western music) - [Barney] They know they should get out of there.

(western music) Everything tells 'em they should run, but they don't.

He said they stay and other people see 'em stay and they come back to help 'em.

They're the ones who win the wars.

(western music) - [Narrator] 400 US soldiers were killed and hundreds more wounded in the Ally's attack, it routed the Germans and helped open Carentan's strategic roads for the American troops coming from the beaches of Normandy, for his valor in Carentan Lieutenant Colonel Cole was awarded a congressional medal of honor.

(gentle music) (tank engine roaring) Five days and 17 miles away.

Reuben arrived in the twisted smoking rubble of Montebourg.

An hour after German troops abandoned that liberated city.

He found two wide-eyed children wandering the streets.

(somber music) - [Robert] They and one dog were the only signs of life on the streets.

(somber music) In all that rubble, only two kids stumbling around.

(somber music) (somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Chaos, death, destruction, survival, relief, joy.

Reuben tried to describe the reporting of war and the men and women willing to sacrifice their lives fighting in it.

- How can I tell of the loneliness of a boy with death nearby or the feeling of a man's soul in agony?

I can tell you of the cold at night that lets you sleep, but not rest.

- [Robert] The way your throat closes.

So you can't eat no matter how hungry you are after months of the same canned monotonous rations, how you count the minutes that seem like hours and the days that seem like months until you age 10 years while living a lifetime in two weeks.

- It's a description of what it's like to be in combat.

Unlike most that I have seen or read before.

It's very introspective and revealing and you can almost feel the fear and the emotion and the loneliness that he talks about.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] By August, 1944, US and Ally troops broke through fierce Nazi resistance in Normandy gaining a foothold in Western Europe, an estimated 540,000 soldiers were killed or wounded on both sides of the fighting.

Most were German and many enemy casualties were also caused by French resistance fighters who now openly fought Germany's occupation troops on the streets of Paris.

(gunfire) (french language newsreel) - [Person 4] Paris is fighting, the battle started with handguns remains barehanded enemy sends tanks.

Already they are more injured than victorious.

(intense music) - [Narrator] The Allied liberation of hundreds of French villages, towns and cities was in full swing.

And soon Robert Reuben and hundreds of war correspondents were in a mad race to be the first to report on the liberation of Paris.

- [Robert] Every news service and newspaper had been wiring its correspondents about the importance of the story and getting a first article on the liberation of the great French capitol.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] To get to Paris.

Reporters risked driving around German forces still roaming the French countryside.

Reuben's Reuters colleague and good friend Bill Stringer pictured here with his wife Anne, who was also a fellow war correspondent, decided that he and Reuben would drive different roads to Paris to improve their chances of getting there first.

Reuben's first stop was the just liberated town of Chartres where a mob of town residents greeted him and two other American reporters.

- [Robert] We were pulled bodily out of the jeep, slapped on the backs, hugged and kissed and cheered.

- [Narrator] Blocks away Reuben walked into a walled courtyard where French resistance fighters were holding German war prisoners.

Several French women were there too.

They had been arrested and accused of collaborating with German soldiers who had occupied their city for the past four years.

- [Robert] A long column of women collaborators were having their hair shaved.

(gentle music) It covered the stone yards so deep, our feet scuffled through it as we walked.

Blonde curls, black and red hair stacks of it.

- [Narrator] The public head shavings, markings and beatings were aimed at thousands of women accused of helping or having sexual relations with German occupiers.

(gentle music) The acts of public retribution and humiliation took place in scores of European cities after they were liberated by Allied troops.

- [Beverly] It's a very tough choice, especially if they have children.

If somebody came up for you, if they were hungry, and especially if they had a gun, well of course you'd give them a meal, but if they want more than that, can you say no?

That's that's where it gets dicey.

- [Narrator] Reuben left Chartres days later to file his latest news stories at the Army press headquarters and to rendezvous with colleague Bill Stringer.

- [Robert] As we were driving along, we ran into one of our press officers.

He stopped and chatted a few minutes.

We were ready to leave when the lieutenant called to me, hey, did you hear about your buddy Stringer?

No, what about him?

(gentle music) He was killed yesterday.

(somber music) (tires on dirt crunching) (somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Reuters correspondent Bill Stringer was killed on a Thursday in August on a lonely road 80 miles west of Paris.

(somber music) (somber music) Stringer, photographer Andy Lopez and their Army escort were driving near Verneuil when they saw a badly shot up American Jeep in the middle of the road.

(somber music) - [Robert] Andy Lopez told us later it was deathly quiet.

They slowed down and began to look around just as they drove near the other Jeep.

It happened.

(somber music) There was a blinding explosion as a shell from a German anti-tank gun smashed through the Jeep.

(somber music) Andy hardly had to turn around to know that Bill was dead.

(somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Lopez and the driver escaped through the woods.

It took four days for us troops to recover Stringer's body.

A stunned Reuben struggled to do the reporting job he and his closest friend had done together since D-Day.

He couldn't believe Bill Stringer was gone.

- And Reuben had to pack up his belongings and send them to his wife's and then he tries to write a news story about it and he, (somber music) you can't write a story about something so tragically personal.

(somber music) - [Robert] You're stunned.

The wind's gone out of your belly and there's an ache there instead.

And all the time you just can't believe it happened.

He's here and then suddenly he's gone.

Dust nothing.

(somber music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Bill Stringer's tragic death was no exception.

Sixty-eight other work correspondents and photographers died covering World War II.

(somber music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) Wars like time wait for no one.

(gentle music) Eight days after his friend's death, Reuben reported on the liberation of Paris for as far as his eyes could see.

He watched and heard joyous Parisians who thronged to the parade to welcome and thank their French and American liberators.

(gentle music) - [Robert] The mass screamed from its thousands of gaping mouths and cried from its beautiful eyes, always confusion and always noise, and always love and tears and sound without meaning.

Never again in our lives would I see an organism so huge and passionate and wild and affectionate.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Reuben's Reuters story on the Paris Liberation had a unique twist too.

- [Robert] I'm writing this dispatch in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe during the most amazing battle in history.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The huge gathering in celebratory parade suddenly erupted into a battle.

As barricaded German storm troopers opened fire from a nearby hotel.

Thousands of Parisians dove for cover.

- [Robert] As gaily decorated tanks began to fire on the enemy with civilians at their sides.

The thrilling notes of a French bugle signaled the advance into battle.

(bugle blaring) Women hugged and kissed soldiers as they loaded their guns and then ran for cover against nearby buildings.

As machine gunfire echoed through the streets.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (somber music) - [Narrator] Within hours, the German surrendered.

The Paris celebrations lasted for days as Reuben described the historic event and memorable meetings.

- [Beverly] His memoirs are kind of like a slow motion camera, giving us a granular view of the description and the action in describing how overjoyed the French were that the occupation was ended.

Reuben gives us exquisite vignettes, I thought.

(gentle music) An old man with one arm wheels his bicycle through the crowd, tears running down his face.

- [Robert] He was old and poor and his clothes were ragged.

He didn't say a word all the time we saw him, but as he stood in front of us and stared, tears rolled down his cheeks and his chin kept trembling as he kept from weeping openly.

(gentle music) He grasped my arm with his one good hand and a grip of iron.

He wrapped his short stump around me on the other side and stood there silent but shaking.

The crowd was hushed for a few seconds as they watched and I, with tears in my eyes, could say nothing.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Reuben called the liberation of Paris, exhilarating and set its rollercoaster of human emotions, was more tiring than covering the battles of war.

Soon he was on his way to join US soldiers fighting their way through Belgium and towards the German border.

- [Robert] We all agreed it was a relief to return to the battle.

We were going to the front for a rest.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (tank clanking) - [Narrator] By the end of August, 1944, more than 900 reporters had been accredited to cover the Ally's push across Europe.

An estimated 250 military sensors combed through an average of more than 3 million words, 35,000 still pictures and 100,000 feet of movie film every week.

As the war correspondents sent daily reports on the fighting in Europe to keep millions of readers, listeners, and viewers around the world informed.

Barney Oldfield said the war was also a fight for a free press that made a difference in the morale of the Allied soldiers who were fighting the war.

- And if you didn't have the wonderful press coverage that we were able to maintain at that time, it would've been a far different kind of a war.

- [Narrator] Among the notables were Ernie Pyle, Helen Kirkpatrick, Edward R. Murrow, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Andy Rooney, and hundreds of others who lived, witnessed and reported on the fighting between the Allies and Nazis.

- I think all of them are heroes that aren't ever given a medal or recognized as a medal, because they really do a service.

During World War II it was a black and white war.

I mean, it really was kind of a fight for the nation.

- I'd like to think that they were more conscientious journalists.

Wanting to tell the story, the most important story of the day and getting the word back to the public who'd made so many sacrifices.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] In early September, Reuben and New York Sun correspondent Bill Hines followed the US Army's third armored division as it moved from France into Belgium.

Pockets of retreating German troops were still occupying Belgium's countryside.

Some of them made a surprise attack from a wheat field against the US troops that Robert Reuben was traveling with on the road to Mons.

(guns firing) (rock music) (rock music) - [Robert] If this was a substantial attack, if it were to hit us from both sides, we were in for a bad time.

(rock music) (rock music) - [Narrator] Reuben and newspaper old timers, Hal Denny of the New York Times and Tom Henry of the Washington Star, took shelter in a farmhouse as reinforcing US troops rushed in.

The reporters calmly ate dinner, prepared by the farmhouse owner and watched the furious battle just beyond their kitchen window.

Reuben described the scene.

- [Robert] Once, just as Hal was raising a fork to his mouth.

We saw a large German truck make a mad drive out from behind a haystack less than a quarter mile away.

He was racing parallel to our highway.

(rock music) - [Narrator] Sitting perfectly still.

Reporters watch US forces open fire on the fleeing German truck, which burst into flames.

(rock music) - [Robert] Finally, it stopped and exploded into hundreds of pieces of wreckage.

It's just like a nightclub Hal said as he kept eating.

You have your dinner at the table.

While you can look out there on the stage and watch the floor show.

(rock music) (rock music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Reuben and Bill Hines arrived at Liege the day after American troops ended its four year Nazi occupation.

On that day, the correspondents witnessed two events that reminded them why America's sacrifices in World War II were necessary.

(gentle music) One event involved a young Jewish mother, Reuben said she was hidden in a Catholic nunnery by the Belgian resistance after Nazi soldiers seized her children.

(gentle music) They were among the 1.2 million young Jews murdered by the Nazis many in concentration camp gas chambers.

(gentle music) Reuben himself a Jew watched as the mother returned to see US troops, loading German prisoners onto a truck.

(gentle music) - [Robert] She fell sobbing to the ground and began screaming at the prisoners in German, you butchers, you Nazi swine.

She sobbed over and over, you are the butchers of my babies (gentle music) sobbing and hysterical.

She was picked from the ground by other Belgians and led into a nearby home.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] That evening Reuben and Hines visited the city's war torn Baviere Catholic hospital.

(choir music) The hospital director said his frail elderly patients begged to visit the American war correspondents.

(choir music) The doctor said his patients hadn't seen Americans since German troops invaded.

- [Robert] Into the wards of sick and dying we went and on many white emaciated faces.

We saw a gleam of happiness, an expression of happiness combined with disbelief that made almost every sacrifice seem worthwhile.

They didn't expect to see us and many broke down weeping when we walked in with our American uniforms.

One aged and dying old man grasped Bill around the neck and finally the two had to be separated so violently was the old man sobbing.

(choir music) - [Narrator] Bill Hines described the emotional hospital scene too in his story for the New York Sun.

- [Bill] You will never forget how they tried to hold you and not let you go.

How they tried to say "Thank you" but cried instead.

(choir music) Somehow or other you don't know how you got through for them this has meant so much because you are an American, the first American they have seen.

(choir music) (choir music) (choir music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] On September 12th, the German border town of Roetgen was the first to fall to American troops.

As the US seventh corps rumbled into town.

(gentle music) - [Robert] Probably the first soldier into Germany in our sector was Lieutenant Lewis Burrows of Ogden, Utah.

Who rode in the first of three Jeeps, which led the tanks into town.

- [Narrator] Roetgen with a mix of German and Belgian residents had divided emotions about the US troop arrival.

In one neighborhood, Reuben asked a boy whether most of the people living there were German or Belgian.

The boy drew a mark in the middle of the street.

- [Robert] On this side are Belgians and on that side are Germans said the boy, we looked up and noticed for the first time that flags of liberation were hanging from one side of the street, only the Belgian side.

(gentle music) (tank engine grumbling) (gears cranking) (gentle music) (tank bombing) (gentle music) - [Narrator] After racing across Belgium, there was Allied talk of the German surrender by Christmas of 1944, then came October and the battle of Aachen, Germany.

- [Person 2] War had come to Germany.

(gentle music) It had stopped being a newspaper story about other people's homes (gentle music) - [Narrator] With re-energized German troops defending home soil for the first time, both sides suffered heavy casualties and street battles that destroyed most of the city in a matter of weeks.

(bombs exploding) As the battle of Aachen raged, Reuben got word his younger brother, Gene, the marine aviator, had died when his fighter plane crashed on a training flight 9,000 miles away in California.

(upbeat music) Reuben caught a virus and had to be admitted to an Army field hospital.

(upbeat music) - [Robert] In the mornings I lay on my cot beside the tent, as the days were bright and sunny and saw the beautiful green hills around us that were Germany with their pretty little farmhouses.

At times I wished they weren't so peaceful and untouched.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) At night, I watched the mighty artillery barrage along the front lines with flame flashing into the black night along the entire front, lighting up the sky in a devil's nightmare.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] While hospitalized, Reuben saw thousands of American soldiers wounded and exhausted from the fighting in Aachen and the overwhelmed medics who tried to treat and save them.

(gentle music) - [Robert] The enlisted medics, the unsung heroes of the war who cared for the wounded until they themselves were wounded.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] At times, Reuben said, the fields outside the tent hospital were filled with soldiers suffering from combat exhaustion.

(gentle music) - [Robert] Some of these guys have been wandering around for days without food, fighting all the time for their lives, dirty, wet and cold, and watching their buddies picked off one by one.

(gentle music) Many of these dazed shocked kids were brave, carefree guys before, but they gave out their bodies just couldn't stand it anymore.

(gentle music) (car engine) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Robert Reuben was out of the hospital when the Germans surrendered Aachen in late October, but hope of a German surrender by Christmas was not to be.

(tank engine roaring) - [Person 2] The victory is a grim pause in a city under constant threat of counter attack, the enemy is still strong playing a game of giving a little to take more.

- [Robert] Every day brought the same endless cold and numbness.

The days were getting dark about 5:00 PM and because of the weather, the planes couldn't get up in the air to help the troops like they did before.

And now winter, our first great winter campaign in Europe was testing further the courage of the tired Yanks.

- [Person 2] Some predict there will be nothing much happening in this section of the front.

(guns firing) - [Narrator] It would not be the case as relentless, bitter winter, cold and snow set in.

200,000 German troops and nearly 1000 tanks launched Adolf Hitler's last bid December counter attack against the Americans.

The Battle of the Bulge.

(intense music) Reuben would not be there to see it, to report it, but he had already done his part.

The war in Europe was beginning its final chapter.

(intense music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music) (gentle music) Physically and mentally exhausted in late 1944, Robert Reuben received his orders from Reuters to take leave of the war.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Robert] But never have I so longed for anything as I did for my home and my own country for silence.

Not the silence of death or the silence of danger, (gentle music) but the silence of peace.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Reuben returned home to the US to recuperate, along with time magazine's Bill Walton.

He had reported longer than any other Allied war correspondent in Europe.

(gentle music) - [Robert] But I was away from Dreux and Liege and Aachen and the road to Paris where lies a friend, where lie pieces of Americana and holes by the road.

I was seeing cleanliness and freshness, a white picket fence.

So many little things that seemed so wonderful, so important.

(gentle music) I hoped they wouldn't become commonplace again (gentle music) because if they did, it might mean I would be living my life as always, as if it hadn't been interrupted and I hadn't seen what I had.

(gentle music) And maybe then I'd forget.

(gentle music) I didn't want to forget.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Robert Reuben didn't forget, in May of 1945, he returned to cover Germany's surrender and post-war Allied occupation.

(gentle music) Four months later, Reuben was aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to report and witness Japan's surrender in World War II.

(gentle music) Through it all, Reuben and war correspondents everywhere gave voice to the service members who sacrificed to defend and protect the ideals of freedom.

- I think this just speaks to a dedication to craft that has a guy like Bob Reuben ready to risk it all in speaking for the the man in uniform who's never gonna speak for himself, that's hard to put a price on.

- [Mitch] They were not just storytellers, not just truthsayers, but they were the ones that were actually producing the history that we would read about much later on.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The end to the fighting in Europe and Asia sparked celebrations around the world with the worst cost in estimated 53 million soldiers and citizens killed before the fighting stopped closed one of mankind's darkest chapters.

Robert Reuben's time as a World War correspondent was finally over.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) After the war, Robert Reuben's life took on a different twist.

(cinematic music) (cinematic music) Reuben returned home, played himself in the 1945 movie "GI Joe", based on the real life columns and experiences of his friend and mentor, Ernie Pyle.

- What's in it?

- Oh, nothing much.

He just won the Pulitzer Prize.

That's all.

Poor devil.

Gotta be famous now.

(cinematic music) - [Narrator] "GI Joe's" Hollywood Premier came two months after Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese soldier's machine gun bullet during the Allied Invasion of Okinawa.

(cinematic music) Months before his death, Ernie Pyle sent a letter to Robert Reuben.

Pyle said he was about to leave the US to cover the war against Japan and had reservations about going.

- [Ernie] I am not at all anxious to go, but I've had my little spell at home and the time has come, Ernie Pyle.

♪ The truth is that I don't really wanna leave ♪ ♪♪ ♪ But it's over ♪ ♪♪ (waves crashing) - [Narrator] In 1952, Reuben left his reporting days behind to live and work by the sea in Manhattan Beach, California.

The 33-year-old became the owner and lively host of the Pen and Quill restaurant and nightclub noted for its award-winning prime rib dinners, celebrity visits, and live music that played deep into the night.

♪ Love it wasn't ♪ ♪ worth a lot ♪ ♪ Saying goodbye ♪ Patrons who turned over the Pen and Quill menu read a mini biography of their host, Bob Reuben, who he explained, acquired his gourmet interest and unique recipes during many years of globetrotting, ♪ The trees were all in bloom ♪ As he hobnobbed with guests at the Pen and Quill.

Reuben was writing a memoir that revealed his deepest feelings about a life lived so close to death.

♪ It was Love ♪ - [Robert] You must carry the burden alone and never can you share it or relive it or explain it to someone who hasn't lived it.

A man's heart is awfully heavy sometimes.

♪ It's over ♪ (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Person 1] Funding for this program was provided in part by the Donald and Lorena Meier Foundation, Humanities Nebraska, the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

(gentle music)