INDEPTH: VE-DAY
War correspondent
The National | May 6, 2005
Reporter: Alison Smith
Producer: Bob Weiers
From The National May 3, 2005
This is Peter Stursberg reporting to the CBC from Holland. Now that the news blackout has been lifted...
 Peter Stursberg
Think about the recent news coverage from war zones. The images are often enough to tell the story,
Go back in time during the Second World War when news coverage relied heavily on voices. Radio was already in its golden age. Canadians tuned in, as they did when a Toronto announcer told how the city began to celebrate as soon as the news came that the war was ending.
News of final victory in Europe came to Toronto a few minutes ago, and we got down here to the City Hall as fast as we possibly could. We arrived just as a large crowd of cheering people waving flags and shouting, people in uniform, and people in their motorcars on Toronto's busy Bay Street keeping their hands on the horn in order to do something in the way of sirens to greet the victory.
It was just the listener and the reporter's voice.
Peter Stursberg was one of those journalists. He witnessed first-hand the victory in Europe. He reported for the CBC from the front lines, and in doing so, he formed an unbreakable connection with Canadians during an unforgettable time.
Throughout the war, people listened on radio as world leaders spoke. They heard from them again on VE-Day. King George VI talked about the end of the war in Europe.
“But at this hour when the dreadful shadow of war has passed far from our towns and homes, we may at least make one call for thanksgiving...” the King said.
The bulletins were fast and furious.
We interrupt this program to bring you special news from the CBC News service. The Ministry of Information announced that tomorrow will be treated as VE-Day. We repeat that the Ministry of Information from London announced that tomorrow will be treated as VE-Day. The program is now resumed.
But that announcement did nothing to stop the celebrating in cities around the world the days before the official VE-Day.
That night's news roundup on CBC Radio began with this line from announcer Wilson Woodside...
Good evening. There isn't much left to say about VE-Day except that never did a war have so many. It seems looking back that every day since we arrived at San Francisco has been a VE-Day. And, of course, the real truth is that the German war has ended piecemeal and is still not absolutely finished.
As liberation came to the people in Holland, CBC war correspondent Peter Stursberg was in the middle of it all.
 Stursberg in the Second World War
Stursberg lives in Vancouver now. He's 91 years old. Looking back, he says those broadcasts helped CBC Radio News come of age.
”Up to then the CBC didn't have a great audience, but as the CBC had the only war correspondents, they got a tremendous audience,” Stursberg says. “So the CBC really benefited enormously from our war coverage and became established as the national broadcaster.”
The reports by the war correspondents made them into stars, something Stursberg was surprised to discover when the CBC sent him on a cross-Canada speaking tour.
“There were very big turnouts,” Stursberg says. “In fact, in Chilliwack just around here, they closed the shops in order to hear me, which is an indication of how important the reporting of the war was. I must have spoken 30 times across Canada, and there were very big turnouts, and everyone wanted to hear about the coverage of the war, and I gave the same speech 30 times. You know, I didn't have to look at my script at the end.”
It was the CBC’s portable equipment that Stursberg says made all the difference. Technology that neither the BBC nor the Americans could match.
“One American reporter had a portable recording unit. It was a disc recorder, and it weighed about 20 or 30 pounds, and its fidelity was absolutely hopeless. I mean, gunfire sounded like a pea dropping on deck, but it was good enough for voice but not for sound,” Stursberg says.
Broadcasting the sound of war wasn't the only innovation. Stursberg also did one of the only live reports from the front line during the war.
“Just before we entered Rome, they moved a transmitter up to the outskirts of Rome, and they set aside half an hour for the networks,” he says. “So I had, you know, five minutes I think, which meant that I could do a two- or three-minute report, and I did this report, and it went over live, you see. This wasn't a recording. I felt, you know, I was talking into a barrel. And I wondered whether anyone ever heard me, but we did get through, and that was the only live report I ever did.”
 The Dutch were starving
“When I was travelling with an Associated Press correspondent, and we were given a hint that there was going to be an important conference and to be at Nijmegen Airport at 10 o'clock the next morning, and we were there,” Stursberg says. “We saw, getting out of a plane, General Bedell Smith, who was [Allied Commander Dwight] Eisenhower's number 2, and a number of other generals including a Russian general.
“They got into staff cars and took off, and we followed them, and we were very lucky because the MPs on their motorbikes made us part of the convoy, and this was a good thing because we took off at great speed after we got over Nijmegen Bridge. And we followed the generals into the schoolhouse on the edge of ‘Fortress Holland’ and were fortunate that there was a glass panel in the classroom where the meeting was going on. So we could watch...”
This is Peter Stursberg reporting to the CBC from Holland. Now that the news blackout has been lifted, I can tell you the full story of the extraordinary conference which resulted in the agreement on feeding the starving Dutch. I was at this dramatic meeting.
You know it was the first full-dress meeting between the Allies and the Nazis in this war. As a matter of fact, Ned Nordness from the Associated Press and myself were the only correspondents to enter the schoolhouse of the little Dutch village on the Grebbe Line and see friend and foe sitting around some rough wooden tables talking instead of fighting.
That news blackout turned out to be costly for Stursberg.
“We had the scoop, though, of seeing this first meeting of the Allies and the Germans, first ever meeting,” he wrote. “So we wrote our stories, but the censors delayed their release until April the 30th, and that was the day that Hitler committed suicide. So our story, while it was, you know, while it got front page treatment didn't get the biggest treatment.”
But there was no denying big treatment for Stursberg's report on the liberation.
Let me describe our triumphal drive to the Dutch capital. From our starting point on the Grebbe Line through the towns and villages, we passed cheering crowds almost hysterical with joy. The people were pinched and pale from lack of food, but they had enough energy to mob us in a way that left Bill and I rather bedraggled. We were showered with flowers and confetti. Whenever our jeep stopped, people climbed onboard until we had between 40 and 50 on the car and the trailer.
“They have never forgotten the fact that the Canadians liberated Holland, and as I told you, they were wild with joy when we arrived there, and that they threw flowers because it was tulip time, and sometimes they threw the bulbs, which, you know, a well aimed bulb could really hit you. And these are my German medals ….”
Surviving the dangers of tulip bulbs, not to mention bullets and bombs, left Stursberg with many memories and souvenirs, from war medals to these, collected on a trip to Berlin just after the war ended:
 Peter Stursberg, sound engineer Art Holmes and a librarian in the CBC London bureau
For Canadians on the home front, reports by the war correspondents were a lifeline, something that now the correspondents themselves know better than they ever did then.
“All the coverage of the war was by radio, by voices, and that's why, you know, people remember my voice and remember the voices of Matt Halton and others who covered the war,” Stursberg says. “In a sense, I think it made them feel that they were much closer to events than reading about it in the newspapers.”
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May 8, 1945 was a day to celebrate. It was VE-Day, the long-awaited moment when the Allied forces triumphed over Nazi Germany to claim victory in Europe. But the joy brought by news of peace was dampened by the memory of fallen comrades and the ongoing war in the Pacific. From the liberation of Holland through the German surrender, celebrations in Canada and the servicemen's return, CBC Archives follows Canadians as the war ends in Europe.
» Victory! The Last Days of the War in Europe
» Countdown to victory
from CBC Archives
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