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By Root 746 0

activities during that period of the war when there was no fighting in Europe except that in the air; the paper literally was an Air Force trade journal. As such it had to know its business. The air story often ran for 1,500 words and included a meticulous report of heavy and medium bomber missions, their targets, and the background down to the number of tons that target already had absorbed, fighter-bomber sorties, strafings, aerial minelaying and just about everything else. The roundup was so capably handled that most London papers and American news bureaus there waited for it before writing their final stories of the night, sometime along about 11:30 p.m.

The Times, from the first day of war, had begun its air story with a simple introductory sentence and then had printed verbatim the RAF communique, later adding whatever the Americans might have done. Its air editor finally got around not only to the S&S treatment of the story, but one evening broke down enough over a glass of mild-andbitter to confess that he was “finding actually more enjoyment these days in treating the subject in your ah American manner. With some reservations, of course, some reservations.”

In the London office of The Stars and Stripes; Rooney, standing in back, looks over Bud Hutton’s shoulder

The air war, then, accounted for the reproductions of diving fighters, burning bombers and formations that covered part of the walls of the Stars and Stripes office. The rest of the walls were covered with a miscellany of items stuck up haphazardly with paste. The pictures were predominantly “cheesecake,” the trade term of Sergeant Ben Price, the Des Moines picture editor, for choice items from his stack of Hollywood girls more or less out of bathing suits.

From the walls the Times could have—and probably did—draw its own image of things to come after that first month. The Times people were very obliging, but they first began to realize they were in for real trouble the day the switchboard operator heard a voice from S&S make a request.

“Would you please tell the department in charge of knocking down walls that we would like to have the wall knocked down between our two offices?” the voice asked.

The operator, not realizing how surprised she was for a minute, said she would. Fifteen minutes or so later, two grayed men in overalls came into the city room, crowbars, sledges, hammers and saws over their shoulders. The Desk was a little taken aback, but pointed, and they dutifully knocked down the wall that time, the blitz and generations of Times men had left standing. That made the S&S offices in the building into one large room.

It was about thirty feet wide and twice as long. As you came in at one of two doors—the other was bolted shut and carried a nostalgically huge poster of a dish of American ice cream—there was a small rectangular niche about five feet deep and six feet wide at your left. There, for some reason, the light switch had been placed conveniently behind a desk and a heavy wooden cabinet. On the far side of the room was the Desk.

The city editor, through whom came all stories other than those from the newswires, sat on one side of the double desk. With the aid of the five telephones in front of him he sent reporters out to cover this largest local news beat in the world—the whole British Isles, the seas around them and the flak-filled sky all the way to Berlin.

The news editor, who handled all the wire copy, the news from home and the stories from other war fronts, sat across from him. Six other desks of varying sizes and states of disrepair were scattered around the room.

On a small shelf, nailed to the wall between the two windows, was the complete office library. There were eight books: a Jane’s Fighting Ships; a Webster’s dictionary; a Tacoma, Washington, telephone book; a 1939 World Almanac; Jane’s Aircraft of the World; a French-EnglishGerman dictionary; an Official Officers’ Guide Book; and a volume entitled The Fox of Peapack. Over the library, for handy reference, someone had scribbled in foot-high black crayon letters “IT