The Press: The Inside Story

• Share

Six months after the Houston Post's Cub Reporter Franklin Reed, 21, began covering Houston's draft boards for the Post in 1950, he was himself classified 1-A. City Editor Harry M. Johnston, 32, and a veteran of World War II, was delighted; the classification was just the thing to make Reporter Reed's daily column of draft news seem more authentic. But when weeks passed and Reed was not inducted, City Editor Johnston came to the conclusion that the column was growing monotonous. At Johnston's urging, earnest Reporter Reed asked his board for immediate induction, only to be told that he would have to wait his turn. No man to be intimidated by a bureaucratic decision, City Editor Johnston called up the state draft boss at Austin and got Reporter Reed called to duty forthwith.

At Fort Sam Houston and Camp Cooke, Calif., Reed kept his readers Posted on the daily life of a recruit by scrawling out his column in longhand at night or spending 20¢ to use the service club typewriter. "You'd be surprised how firma the terra is when you hit it suddenly, while running at full steam and carrying a lot of equipment . . . The cardinal rule brought to bear upon the soldier in the field is as follows: 'If you can't eat it, drink it, or carry it with you, bury it.' This is known as field sanitation." Of K.P. duty, Reed wrote: "There's only one thing worse than pulling [it] a first time, and that's pulling it a second time . . ." Of the Manual of Arms: "I have learned to do just about everything with my rifle except shoot the doggone thing." Occasionally, Reed gave advice to future recruits, e.g., "Don't volunteer for anything. I've said this before as a civilian, and as a soldier I can't emphasize it too much." For hundreds of Houston parents, Reed came to typify their own servicemen sons; they flooded him with pies, cakes, homemade candy, books. When he wrote wistfully that he wished he had "a teaspoonful of Texas soil to put under my pillow at night," he got nearly a truckload, packed in small envelopes. But when Reed was home on a furlough, City Editor Johnston diplomatically asked him when he thought he might be going overseas.

"You Take That Back." Private Reed was shipped to Japan with the 40th Infantry Division, and he began to joke about being shipped to Korea, much as he had joked about being drafted. But in January 1952, when his division was sent to Korea, Reed realized that he was in for something more than a newspaper assignment. As a combat correspondent, he not only quickly found himself under fire, but for a month got cut off entirely from the Post. The censors, who had no precedent to go by, stopped his mailed columns, and the Army took a dim view of a soldier's holding an outside job. It ordered him to quit writing. Not until Post Publisher Oveta Gulp Hobby, World War II commander of the WACs, intervened with old Army friends in Washington did Reed get permission to resume.