Harold Guard
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I began talking then to the Times of India people, and they found, much to their consternation, that they didn’t have an obituary for President Roosevelt. So I had to sit down and write an obit in the middle of the night. The work I had done with Swan, Culbertson and Fritz, the American stockbrokers in Hong Kong, came in very valuable, and I was able to describe everything that Roosevelt had done in instigating the “New Deal,” and about all the various other things that he had done during his first and second terms as president. All these things came flooding back to me, and I was able to add a little more detail to it, such as that he was the first American president to fly in an aeroplane, and about his polio. From this I managed to put together a respectable obituary. In the meantime, John Hlavacek had gotten things organised, and we had a lot of messenger boys running round to all the newspapers in Bombay delivering the news of President Roosevelt’s death. I am very proud to say that on the following day, nearly all the news in the Times of India was almost solidly United Press news, and most of it was written by Harold Guard.
I think that this sealed the fate of the Associated Press, our greatest American competitors in India, as they were not able to sell their service at all. It was a triumph for the United Press, and it was shortly after this that I got cables from our president Hugh Bailey, as well as Virgil Pinkley, the vice president in Europe, congratulating me on what Bailey called, “an historic coup.” By this time we had gotten things pretty well “ironed-out,” as far as the United Press was concerned, and I thought that it was time to remind Miles Vaughan of the promise he had made me.
I broached the subject with him and he tried to side step it, and said that we still had plenty to do. It was clear to me at this point that he was not going to keep his promise, which made me very angry as I felt that I had delivered my side of our bargain. So I started to make my own plans, and find a way back home to Britain in spite of Miles Vaughan’s reluctance to recognise my achievements. To this day I do not remember exactly how it happened, but somehow I managed to get myself onto an RAF flying boat that was going to back to Britain on April 24th 1945.
I always remember a great feeling of apprehension as we approached home, as they announced in the airplane that we all had to have our vaccination and inoculation certificates ready for the immigration people to inspect. Although I had many vaccinations and inoculations, I did not have any certificates, and so I felt terribly nervous as we landed. I was wearing an American army uniform, and as we went through immigration, a young official saw me and said, “Well there’s no need to ask you if you’ve been inoculated.” He had mistaken me for an American, and so I just said “Sure thing buddy!” I managed to get through, and I was very relieved at last to be back home.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Returning Home
The day after my return, the first thing that I needed to do was to let Marie know that I was in London, and also to present myself at the United Press offices at 30 Bouverie Street. Virgil Pinkley, the vice president, was away in Europe, and the office had been left in charge of man called Clifford Day, a long serving United Press man, who made me very welcome. He was very surprised by my arrival though, and asked me what I was going to do. I had scuttled out of my job in India without letting anyone know, and so it was left to Clifford Day to inform New York of my whereabouts.
I was told that in order to work in Europe I would have to be accredited as a war correspondent for the European theatre, as the war was not yet finished. To do this I had to go around to the various American and British headquarters in London to get all the necessary papers, and this process took me a couple of days. My thumbprints had to be taken, along with my photograph, and everyone seemed to be looking at me rather curiously, as I was dressed in a somewhat strange uniform for the European theatre. In South East Asia and the South West Pacific, the war correspondent’s uniform being worn was quite different from those being worn in Europe, and I was the object of some curiosity. While getting my accreditation sorted out I also saw quite a bit of the city of London, and got an appreciation of the dreadful bombing that it experienced throughout the war.
The first notable event to happen after my arrival was VE Day, the end of the war in Europe, May 8th 1945. I remember wandering out of the office and walking up Fleet Street, and up The Strand into Trafalgar Square. There were hordes of people dancing and shouting and singing, but despite the celebrations and happy scenes, I found myself feeling sad and lonely. I had not shared the same experience as these people, and found it difficult to feel any connection with their joy, especially as I knew that in the Far East the war had not yet finished.
Back in the office I was busy once more, and one of the first jobs that I was given was to improve the communications for our service to India. I knew from experience that India had been suffering from poor radio reception, so I went to see the radio telecommunications people in London, who were very cooperative. After experimenting for a week or so, we found a medium wave radio band, which was ideal for India; although it was slow, it was reliable. The United Press staff christened this transmission as “GDB,” which stood for “Guard’s Dam Buster,” something I found very amusing.
By this time Virgil Pinkley had arrived back in London, and I was very happy to meet him again. He was an extremely nice chap, and I sat with him for quite some time and told him all about my experiences in India. He understood why I would have been keen to get back to Britain, but told me that Miles Vaughan had been sending cables to New York recommending that I be fired from the United Press, because I had run out on my job. Virgil Pinkley was not in favour of this at all, and said that he was going to do everything that he could to dissuade New York from such action. This situation was, of course, terribly unsettling news for me, but was outweighed by hearing that Marie and Pat were to set sail for home and were due to arrive in June.
On 6th August 1945 we received some astounding news in the United Press office. I was sitting at the news desk when suddenly there was a news flash on a teleprinter from New York, saying that the United States had dropped an atom bomb on a place in Japan called Hiroshima. A girl sitting opposite me who worked for one of the sub-editors screamed out, “What does it mean?” Of course that was the question on nearly everyone’s lips, as none of us had any real comprehension of what the atom bomb was. The messages from New York all anticipated that this would lead to an early surrender by the Japanese, though this did not happen until two or three days later when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. An announcement by the Japanese then followed, saying that they were willing to surrender. So the World War was over, and I was asked to write a summary using my Far Eastern experience of the war against the Japanese, and what their surrender would mean.
However, Miles Vaughan was still pressing for my dismissal. Virgil Pinkley would have nothing to do with this at all, but wanted to demonstrate that some action had taken place in regards to my position. The only solution to the problem that he could think of was to send me to Prague in Czechoslovakia, to open up a new office for the United Press and demonstrate that I had been given a new task. I was disappointed by this decision, as Marie and I were by this time just starting to set up a new home in Streatham, but there was nothing I could do about it. So it was that I set off one morning for Prague, late in November 1945.
The whole business was made more complicated, as I had to take with me a huge Hellschreiber shortwave radio receiver that was in a wooden packing case. I was also carrying a package for a man called Walter Kolarz who worked in the United Press office, and who had escaped during the war and had come to London. His mother was still in Prague, and he asked if I would take her a Christmas parcel. So I set off one morning for Prague.
Virgil Pinkley had told me that I would be met in Prague by a United Press war correspondent by the name of Bill Disher, who was still in the Czech capital. The flight to Prague from London was anything but comfortable. I flew in a converted transport plane, and had to sit in what they called “buck
et seats.” I was lumbered with an extraordinary amount of luggage, including the large packing case containing a radio receiver, my own suitecase, a typewriter, and also a fairly large parcel that I had agreed to deliver to Walter Kolarz’s mother. I began to wonder what would happen at the other end if there was nobody there to meet me, which I thought was quite probable, as there had been so many delays taking off due to the fog.
We eventually arrived in Prague, after not too comfortable a journey, in late afternoon. It was bitterly cold on the airfield at Prague, and the sky was dark, grey, and overcast. As I expected, there was nobody there to meet me, and I was dumped on the airfield in Prague with my array of luggage. Eventually Bill Disher arrived at the airport with a car, and piled me and all my baggage into it, and then drove me some miles into Prague.
Bill Disher was an extremely nice young fellow, extremely tall and very handsome, dressed in the uniform of an American war correspondent. He filled me in on the background of the situation in Prague as we drove into the city. From the things he had to tell me, I felt it wasn’t a very encouraging outlook. He told me that he was engaged to a young Czech lady, and that her father had been a general in the Czechoslovakian army who had been forced to live more or less underground during the war years. They had acquired a big Mercedes motor car, and were saving every penny they could, hoping that one day they were going to be able to make a run for it from Czechoslovakia. That didn’t really encourage me at all on my first visit to the country.
I didn’t waste any time, though, in installing a United Press office in Prague. It wasn’t a very difficult job. There were still some newspapers in operation, all very hungry for news, and the editors and staff of these newspapers were very welcoming to me. So my task wasn’t too difficult, and we were able to recruit quite a number of local staff for the new United Press office. I forget the rate of exchange, but the Czech money was in Krowns, and there were about two thousand Krowns to the pound. The cost of renting an office and employing staff seemed to be extremely cheap, and our expenditure wasn’t very high. We were also lucky in finding an expert radio operator, and in no time at all we had our Hellschreiber short wave receiver set up in our rented office in one of the big squares in Prague, and were soon receiving the United Press broadcasts. More than once, though, during those days in setting up the office, I encountered obstructions and annoying delays from government officials who were clearly being oppressed or directed by the Russians.
I enquired among the Czechoslovakian staff that we had working for us the whereabouts of Walter Kolarz’s mother’s house. It was then that I became aware of a strange atmosphere that seemed to overlay the whole city. None of the Czechs seemed to want to tell me where the house was, and none of them were prepared to take me there. Bill Disher didn’t know exactly where it was either. Although he made enquiries, and did manage to find out where the house was located, he didn’t seem ready to show me. He explained that if he did so, and was seen to be in contact with the mother of a Czech who had defected from the country several years before, that he could easily come under suspicion. It was an oppressive atmosphere, and there was something sinister about the whole life of the city. I suppose we people in England can’t fully appreciate this, because we have never been occupied ourselves. The Germans had occupied Czechoslovakia for nearly seven years—they were now being threatened by a Russian occupation, and everybody was fearful.
I often felt like I was being watched, and remember going to a night club where all we did was sit at some rather bare little tables, and drank beer that tasted like it was made from onions. In the centre of the floor there was a circular platform on which a boy and girl on roller skates kept on revolving, and this went on for two or three hours. The entire time, I sat at a table near two Russian soldiers, who very ostensibly unholstered their guns and laid them on the table. I have no idea whether they were interested in me, but it is significant that they sat there as long as I did, and when I got up and moved off, they got up as well.
Nonetheless, I eventually met a Czechoslovakian by the name of Curka who had courage enough to direct me to the house of Walter Kolarz mother’s house, which was in one of the residential outskirts of the city. I had to go alone though, which I did, and when I got there I met a sweet old lady who couldn’t speak a word of English. She was dressed in a black frock, which was trimmed with lace, and she reminded me of “Whistler’s Mother.” I delivered the parcel to her, and she was highly delighted. I then made arrangements to get her out of Prague and on to London where she could be with Walter Kolarz. I can’t tell you the exact details, in case others may be put in danger by doing so, but I can tell you that she went by barge all the way up to Amsterdam, and had to be hidden away the whole time. She eventually reached Walter in London early in 1946, and lived happily with him there for two years.
The time in Prague really seemed to drag. It was very cold, the food was unattractive and unpalatable, and I longed for a cup of tea—the coffee we drank tasted like it had been made from acorns! In my hotel they served what they called a continental breakfast, which consisted of a few crusts of bread and a tiny pot of jam, the taste of which I was uncertain. None of the food was very appetizing, and you couldn’t get anything substantial.
As the days went by I became engrossed in finding an airplane to get back home for Christmas, which would be the first Christmas that Marie and Pat and I would have spent together since 1942. I was looking forward to getting back to our new house, and went to the airport and asked about flights. I was told there would be a flight leaving on 21st December, and so I got all my gear and gifts packed, and prepared to leave Czechoslovakia. By this time the United Press office in Prague was working well, and another American correspondent by the name of Sam Hales had been sent from London to take over as office manager. I was able to hand over to him an office in good working order, and was looking forward to returning to England for Christmas.
December 21st came, and I was out at the airport bright and early, in plenty of time for the flight, only to be told that it had been cancelled on account of fog. Prague is situated in an almost complete circle of mountains, and when it gets foggy it closes in over the city very densely, and flights do become very difficult to get. We were told to report on the following day, but again the flight was called off on account of fog. Again on the succeeding day, 23rd December, the same thing happened, and I was starting to think that I would have to prepare myself for spending Christmas in the very downcast city of Prague. I decided to make the best of the situation and bought a bottle of Slivovica. It is a Czechoslovakian or Balkan drink, a very raw sort of brandy made from plumbs, and sold in long slender bottles.
On the morning of 24th December, I went down to the lobby of the Hotel Adlon, put down my bottle of Slivovica and called for a glass, determined to drown my sorrows. Sitting at a table across from me was Peter Oxford, a young Royal Air Force officer who was looking as miserable as me. I called across to him, “You stuck here for Christmas?” He said, “Looks like it” so I said, “come on and help me with this.” He got another glass and I poured him a big slug of Slivovica, and we both swallowed it and grimaced. It seemed, though, to give him an inspiration, and he said, “Have you got all your gear packed?” I said, “Yes I have,” and he said, “well you stay here and get ready,” and with that he was up and off. After about an hour he was back again, and he said, “Let’s go!” Outside he had a jeep, and we drove out to the airport where there was a Royal Air Force transport plane. The fog was just as thick as ever, but this didn’t deter Peter Oxford, who was a flight lieutenant and the pilot of this RAF transport airplane. So we piled everything aboard including ourselves, and we took off, right through the fog into brilliant sunlight all the way back to London.
After Christmas I went back to the United Press office in London and found that some significant changes had taken place. A lot of the United Press men who had been stationed all over Europe during the war were now returning to London. They includ
ed a lot of famous names, including: Richard Macmillan, who got the OBE for his coverage of the Normandy front during the D-day landings; Jan Yindric, who made a name for himself long before the war had started by reporting on Hitler’s activities, from Munich through the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia; Tosty Russell who was very famous, and who broke the story about King Edward VIII’s romance with Mrs. Wallis Simpson; Ed Beatty, who had been taken prisoner by the Germans; and Walter Cronkite, who became one of the chief correspondents for Columbia’s broadcasting system. In Fleet Street itself there were big names like Drew Middleton of the New York Times, and Joseph Harsh of the Christian Science Monitor, and I felt that I had suddenly been thrown feet first into the most competitive world that I had ever encountered. I might have been one of the “Big Four” in the South West Pacific, but in London I felt that I was one of the lower four hundred!
Harold at his desk in the United Press London office after World War Two. Author collection
In 1946 I found out that General Percival, who commanded the troops in Singapore, had returned to Britain and was now retired and living at a place called Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. He had been completing his official dispatches on the events that had taken place in Singapore and Malaya, which the War Office had been withholding from publication by classifying them as “secret,” and which had caused a great deal of controversy in Parliament and the press. Incidentally, when his dispatches were finally published in 1948, some of the value of the narrative was lost through the War Office declining to reproduce three sketch maps that General Percival had submitted. I wrote to General Percival asking if I could come and see him, and was delighted when I got an invitation for lunch at his home. So I travelled down by train, where he met me at the station and then drove me out to his house in the country, where his wife had prepared a lovely meal for us. After this we sat down and compared our experiences in Malaya and Singapore.