The Sound of War: Memoirs of a CBC Correspondent

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

In our TV-dominated world, it is difficult to grasp just how important
radio broadcasting was 50 years ago. Back then, news programs and
popular entertainment on radio commanded the same sort of vast regular
audience as TV does now. The medium came into its own in 1939, becoming
the instant source of crucial news worldwide during the cataclysmic six
years that followed.

Broadcast journalism in World War II is covered admirably and uniquely
in this book. Peter Stursberg spent much of this period as a radio war
correspondent. His is both a personal story and a firsthand commentary
on history in the making. On the fateful September 3, 1939, when he
heard the radio voice of British Prime Minister Chamberlain declare war
against Nazi Germany, Stursberg was still a cub newspaper reporter in
Victoria, B.C. Six years later, he was an internationally known CBC
reporter who had spoken on air from every fighting front in Europe.

What makes his book such a good read is its “Canadian-ness”—it
offers a rare look at World War II through the eyes of one of our own.
Stursberg met many famous Allied leaders, but perhaps more interesting
are his reminiscences of Canadian luminaries, including Prime Minister
King, Defence Minister Ralston, and military leaders like McNaughton,
Simonds, and Crerar. Mention is also made of once-familiar newspaper
luminaries like J.B. McGeechie, Dick Malone, Royd Beamish, and the
eccentric “Hindmarsh of the Star.”

Throughout, the author describes another “war”—the eternal
squabbling in the bureaucratic jungle of the CBC (clearly, little has
changed over the intervening half-century). This account of world
conflict and the politics of broadcast journalism is also an
entertainingly written social history.