THE COVERT REPORT/ A Day in the Newsroom: Real Heroes

Soldiers crowd a landing craft on their way to Normandy during the Allied Invasion of Europe, D-Day, June 6, 1944.

I celebrated the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Landing last weekend watching the Foyle’s War episode, “All Clear,” the great British TV show.

I often take time to remember the Greatest Generation by re-reading or re-watching “Patton,” “The Saving of Private Ryan” or “Action in the North Atlantic,” the latter a wonderful film about the U. S. Merchant Marine.

One of my uncles, Johnny Davis, served in the Merchant Marine. He loved ships and the sea. He told me how it was to be sunk by Nazi U-boats. “You’d only want to do it once,” he’d laugh.

“The Germans always struck us at night when it was cold and the water freezing.” The first time for him was “at dark 0230.” He was 19. A year later, on another oiler,  Johnny was torpedoed again — in the early morning hours and icy cold.

Heroes all.

FOR ME, THOUGH, CELEBRATING MEMORIAL DAY, D-Day or other significant events brings to my mind another uncle who survived the infamous Bataan Death March. He was a good newspaperman in the 50s and 60s. He looked like Humphrey Bogart and other the bow-tie wearing reporters of the movies.

Frank J. Fenton was a heckuva reporter. he’d get drunk every now and then, but he always got the story. If he fell “off the wagon” he could still write good stuff.

Once, when he was covering a sensational rape trial in Newport News, my hometown (in the days of the linotype machines), he was calling in his story on deadline at 12:45 PM, phoning from the courthouse down the street.

We were the afternoon paper with an early deadline. I was all of 19 years old, typing as fast as I could with the city editor hanging over my shoulder editing the story. As soon as I typed two paragraphs, he’d rip the copy paper from the typewriter and take it to the composing room.

We got the full story done about 1 o’clock and shortly the paper hit the streets. Unfortunately, there was a terrible gaff. Remember, the story was being sent to the linotype operator in two and three “grafs” with the city editor’s note scribbled at the bottom, “more to come.”

WHEN THE PAPER CAME OFF THE PRESSES, the front page story indeed hot off the press. We were proud and excited.  That is until we read the paragraph describing the woman’s anguished testimony.  It read, “he was attacking me and I kept screaming …

“More … more … more… .”

Ten thousand newspapers hit the streets before the corrected edition was completed.

Obviously, that is sad and funny at the same time. The culprit in this case, was executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for the heinous crime.

Fenton was horrified by the awful error.  The state invited him to be a witness at the execution. He declined.

BUT, BACK TO THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH where Fenton was an army private and  suffered the indignities of war. A few days after the rape story, the literary editor of The Times-Herald, threw a new book to him. My desk was only a few steps away in the sports department. “Hey Fenton, here’s a book for you. How ’bout reviewing it for Sunday’s paper?”

He scanned the book. All of a sudden, the newsroom exploded with fiery words. “Sonuvab—h there’s my picture.”

And there it was, he and two other malnourished GIs with baskets hanging around their necks. A Japanese soldier with a big sword ready to chop off their heads. As he was waiting for the beheading, another Japanese officer stopped the proceeding. To this day no one knew why. Fenton reviewed the book and said, “Every word is true.”

The book is “Knights of Bushido,” written by a British officer, Lord Marshall of Liverpool, who also survived to write about the atrocities of Bataan. It was republished in July 2002.