I was away from the front lines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front I wondered if I would sense any change in them.

His first cruise was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Cabot. During the tiff he admitted that his heart was with the infantrymen in Europe but he persevered to report on the Navy's efforts during the invasion of Okinawa. C.

His travel articles about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there were written in a folksy style much like a personal letter to a friend; many were collected in Home Country (1947). By the war he enjoyed a following in some 300 newspapers and was among the best-known American war correspondents in Europe.