Sixty years ago May 7, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies at a schoolhouse in Reims, France, officially ending the war in Europe the next day.
Stars and Stripes staff reporter Charles Kiley, my father, was the pool reporter covering the negotiations for the worldwide press, and his contribution to history will finally be recognized at the Surrender Museum there.
A panel representing the 2,147-word report filed to the Stars and Stripes, a picture of my father standing with Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, his war correspondent credential and his uniform jacket will be added to the permanent collection of the museum, which has for decades preserved the map room — where negotiations and the actual surrender signing took place — just as it was in 1945. It is the first French and English-translation exhibit to be made part of the permanent collection.
I first visited the Museum in September 2000 on a business trip to France. I grew up looking at my father’s World War II scrapbook, full of the Signal Corps photographs taken at the surrender, his Stars and Stripes clips, pictures of him and his colleagues, patches and telegrams.
That scrapbook and my father’s stories, both written and oral, drove me into journalism. So, I admit to being disappointed that not only was his report not represented in the museum, but also that only three or four pieces in the museum were in English.
I was determined to help make the museum more inviting to English-speaking visitors. Marc Bouxin, director of the V-E Day Museum in Reims, says he is in the process of renovating all the exhibits with English translations, though not in time for this year’s 60th anniversary ceremonies.
Because I do not speak French, I worked to get my father’s exhibit installed through someone who does, and found an ideal person. Jean-Yves Simon is principal of the College le Dinandier Villedieu les Poeles in Normandy. Last year, he published a book, “The Stars and Stripes, Normandy 1944,” which chronicles the role of Stripes reporters during the Normandy invasion and the establishment of the paper’s continental edition. I spent D-Day weekend in Normandy last year with Simon, and represented my father and his Stars and Stripes colleagues during a gathering and dedication of the book.
My father was the first Stripes reporter ashore at Normandy, on D-Day plus 3, not counting Stripes reporters Phil Bucknell and G.K. Hodenfield, who jumped with the paratroops. Until a printing plant could be secured to publish the paper on the Continent, my father wrote and produced a single-sheet “Beachhead Edition,” which he turned out on a mimeograph machine at Omaha and Utah Beaches.
The paper was distributed to forward troops along with food and ammunition. My father was then among the handful of Stripes staffers who established the continental edition of the paper on July 4, 1944, in Cherbourg after seeing their first office in Carentan mortared to pieces by the Germans.
After working from Cherbourg, Paris and Liège, my father was called on by the paper in April 1945 to cover Eisenhower for the remainder of the war. This was quite a step for a sportswriter from Jersey City, N.J., who entered the Army as a draftee rifle carrier.
While camped in Northern Ireland as part of the 1st Infantry Division, which was preparing to invade North Africa, he sent a couple of stories, one about a troop visit from Al Jolson, to the then-weekly London edition of Stars and Stripes. The paper ran them, and when it went daily in September 1942, the editors requested that my father be transferred to London.
By April 1945, while anticipating the end of the war and covering Eisenhower’s visits to concentration camps among other stories, my father had endured the death of his mother back in Jersey City, as well as his brother’s death in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. But he also had found a wife. While on leave in 1944, he married my mother, Billee Gray, whom he had met prior to shipping out from Camp Croft, S.C., in early 1942.
When my father got the assignment to cover Eisenhower, replacing Stripes reporter Jules Grad, he wrote to my mother: “I met Gen. Eisenhower this morning, by way of introducing me and saying goodbye to Jules. We saluted, he shook hands, told us to sit down and then talked for 15 minutes or so. The General told Jules he was glad to have had him with him, wished him luck and told me he’d be ‘seein’’ me. He was watching for a call from Churchill, he said, so we shook hands again and made our exit. The General looked tired around the eyes, but I expect he should.”
On April 28, a little more than a week before the actual surrender, a news wire reported from an international peace conference in San Francisco that the Germans had agreed to surrender terms. My father, thinking he had missed the story of his life, was ushered into Eisenhower’s private quarters around 3 a.m. to check. Eisenhower, bemused, said, “I’d like to think I would know.”
He phoned Winston Churchill to make sure he hadn’t missed something. He hadn’t.
When the day finally came on May 8, a little of my father’s thunder was stolen by an overanxious Associated Press reporter, who broke the embargo on the surrender news established by Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force staff. AP reporter Ed Kennedy heisted some brief fame. But it’s my father’s Stars and Stripes report, cited by historians such as Martin Gilbert in “The Day The War Ended: May 8, 1945—Victory in Europe,” that’s the definitive account of the hours leading up to the surrender and the actual signing.
On the morning of May 8, he wrote to my mother: “I was the only correspondent here all Saturday and yesterday. Eighteen correspondents and radio men came up from Paris at 7 o’clock last night. As representative of the combined press and radio, I had to cover for everybody until they got here. All during the preliminary negotiations between the Germans and Gen. [Walter Bedell] Smith, Chief of Staff to Gen. Ike, I was in a room adjacent to Gen. Smith’s office.
“I have some of my stuff written but I want a little sleep before I continue. I’ll do about 2,000 words for the combined press and radio for those who weren’t there and want to use it. I’ve tried to cover everything down to a rustle of paper during the last couple of days. I only hope I haven’t missed anything important.”
When my father died, his obituary headline in the Newark Star Ledger called him a “witness to war.” That’s just how he saw himself. And he would only want that people thought he did a good job.
David Kiley is an editor for Businessweek.
To view or download the 60th Anniversary of V-E day special section (in PDF format), click here. To go to Stripes’ World War II page, featuring coverage of anniversary events and stories, cartoons and photos from our our archives, click here.
