On the Eastern Front Throughout 1943 Downs delivered intermittent shortwave radio reports on the
CBS World News Roundup and concurrently served as the Russia correspondent for
Newsweek. He stayed at the
Hotel Metropol in Moscow with other Western foreign correspondents along with their secretaries and translators. They faced heavy censorship by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which required correspondents to submit articles and broadcast transcripts for approval. This led to frequent clashes between government officials and foreign correspondents, who were prohibited from filing any reports that might reflect negatively on Moscow. Access to military updates was often limited to official communiqués and articles in government-sanctioned newspapers. Up-to-date maps of the Soviet Union were difficult to obtain, and reporters had trouble gathering basic information from the front lines. Downs and other foreign correspondents entered
Stalingrad days after the Germans surrendered
the battle. He described the scene in a graphic broadcast, saying: "There are sights and smells and sounds in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick at your stomach." Over the next several months, correspondents were gradually given more access to liberated areas, and Downs reported on developments such as the summer
Russian counteroffensive on the
Central Front. They were shown the devastation in
Oryol and
Rzhev soon after the occupying Nazi troops retreated in March 1943. Several weeks after the
Soviet liberation of Kiev on November 6, 1943, Downs,
Bill Lawrence of
The New York Times, and several other American and Russian journalists were escorted by Soviet authorities to the site of the
Babi Yar massacres. They came across bits of human remains and old possessions at the site. The SS had attempted to destroy all evidence in their retreat from Kiev. Downs interviewed survivors of the
Syrets concentration camp who were forced to participate: Many in the press party were skeptical of the Soviet claims at Babi Yar, with Lawrence doubting the sheer scale of it. He later admitted to having "furious arguments" with Downs over how to report the story and wrote that his reluctance to wholly accept the claims resulted from witnessing some colleagues submit unsubstantiated stories. Because of this, their two accounts were markedly different in tone and reflected their own individual perceptions. As late as 1944, some Western journalists remained skeptical of the actual scale of the Nazi mass murders. Downs' descriptions of atrocities at Babi Yar and Rzhev were especially graphic. After returning home from Russia he came across more skepticism and disbelief. He "discovered that not everyone shared his strong feelings for the Russian people and the horrors they had experienced. Some looked at him curiously. Others expressed pity. Still others said he was a liar." In 1944 he received an anonymous postcard calling him a "Russian agent" and threatening his life. Prior to leaving Moscow he provided the English narration for the documentary film
Ukraine in Flames directed by
Alexander Dovzhenko.
On the Western Front , Germany on V-E Day, May 8, 1945 Downs found it difficult readjusting to life after Moscow because of what he had witnessed. However, he returned to Europe in 1944, and during that time came to be considered Murrow's "
Ernie Pyle." Downs earned a reputation among colleagues for ignoring the Murrow Boys' newfound celebrity in favor of accompanying soldiers on the front lines. CBS came to rely on him heavily as a result. At one point he was the only CBS foreign correspondent covering the campaigns of the
First Canadian Army, the
British Second, the
American Ninth, and the
American First. In June 1944 he accompanied the British
50th Infantry Division in their assault on
Gold Beach during the
Normandy landings. Fellow Murrow Boys Larry LeSueur and Charles Collingwood also accompanied the invading forces in separate landing craft en route to
Utah Beach. In the days following the initial landings, war correspondents had trouble setting up
mobile transmitters and were unable to broadcast live for over a week. In the meantime, Collingwood recorded a broadcast on June 6 that aired two days later, while LeSueur's account did not air until June 18. On June 14 Downs managed to find a working transmitter and unwittingly delivered the first live broadcast from the Normandy beachhead to the United States. It was pooled across all networks at 6:30 p.m. Eastern War Time. He was soon embedded with the
21st Army Group, and remained so until the end of the war in Europe. In the following weeks he covered the
Battle for Caen, being one of the first correspondents into the city after its liberation. In mid-August he joined Allied forces on their advance to
liberate Paris, a time during which he described the
Battle of the Falaise Pocket. He was with the Canadian forces who liberated
Dieppe on September 1. In September 1944, Downs covered
Operation Market Garden alongside his former United Press colleague
Walter Cronkite, following the
101st Airborne Division's fight to maintain control of key bridges. On September 24, Downs reported on the assault on the
Waal river crossing during the
Battle of Nijmegen, describing it as "a single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach. A story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal possible." During the
Battle of Arnhem Downs and Cronkite were stranded at the front line near
Eindhoven during a sudden air raid, and were soon separated from one another in a forest during a German air raid. After much searching Cronkite concluded that Downs was likely dead, and he made his way back to Allied territory in Brussels. He discovered Downs at the
Hotel Metropole and angrily asked why he had not looked for him. Downs replied that he had searched for a long time before ultimately realizing that yelling "Cronkite! Cronkite!" sounded like the German word for sickness, and that he figured he would be taken to a Berlin hospital if he kept it up, to which Cronkite laughed. After months of following the Allied advance, he experienced a temporary bout of
battle fatigue after the major defeat at Arnhem. He felt disillusioned by what he saw as indifference among the people at home who seemed to carry on as if nothing happened. To recover, he returned to London and stayed at Murrow's apartment before heading back to the front. He later joined Murrow and several other of the Boys in a visit to the
death camps at
Auschwitz. The experience provoked increasing
anti-German sentiment among the men, including Murrow, who was strongly rebuked by
Richard C. Hottelet for remarking that "there were twenty million Germans too many in the world." By 1945 the Murrow Boys had grown notably more disillusioned after witnessing years of combat, with Bill Downs saying later, "By the time the war ended, all our idealism was gone...Our crusade had been won, but our white horses had been shot out from under us." In March 1945, Downs and correspondents from the other major networks drew lots in Paris to determine who would parachute into Berlin during the first phase of
the battle and deliver the first broadcast in the event that the Western Allies reached the city first. Despite never having jumped from a plane, Downs received the assignment, and the broadcast was to be pooled among all networks. The plans were ultimately canceled upon the Soviet capture of the city. In late March, Downs, Hottelet, and Murrow covered the
crossing of the Rhine from the air. Downs was the first correspondent to broadcast from
Hamburg after its surrender on May 3, 1945. One day later he delivered an eyewitness account of the German
unconditional surrender to
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at
Lüneburg Heath. Downs described the
Spitfires and
Typhoons overhead flying north in pursuit of Germans reportedly attempting to escape to Nazi-occupied Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. As Montgomery approached the German delegates with the surrender papers in hand, he said to reporters out of the corner of his mouth, "This is the moment." Downs received the National Headliner's Club Award for the report. ==Postwar assignments==