A young reporter wants so badly to be a foreign correspondent that he leaves his job in the U.S. and heads for Scandinavia to try his luck. He encounters a weird, white world and quickly finds himself covering the Cold War between Finland and the Soviet Union, for which he is denounced in Pravda. He finds himself writing for a journalistic giant, The New York Herald-Tribune, but which pays a pittance for his stories. He covers events in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, meeting such people as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a Norwegian war hero, a singer/movie actress, a Prime Minister and a host of other interesting characters. He also meets and marries the girl of his dreams. Then, just as his money is about to run out, he unexpectedly wins a prestigious and lucrative journalism award that brings him back to the U. S. and recognition as a full-ledged foreign correspondent. Told in letters and rememberances, it is a story of suceeding against the odds in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Covering the Cold War and Other Shadows in the Land of the Midnight Sun

The adventures and misadventures of an American reporter in Scandinavia - 1954-1956By Harry Heintzen

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Harry Heintzen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-1171-4

Contents

Part One — 8/5/54 – 10/23/54......................1Part Two — 10/23/54 - 7/8/55............................21Part Three — 1/3/55 – 7/8/55......................45Part Four — 7/8/55 – 12/29/55.....................91Part Five — 1/14/56 - 4/30/56...........................117Part Six — 5/7/56 - to the future 1.....................39

Chapter One

Part One 8/5/54 – 10/23/54

Wherein I visit to New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki; see CDN correspondent Bill Stoneman and Anna Dalier in Paris; renew ties with a Swedish singer/movie actress and a Belgian model; turn down a dubious Stockholm apartment for a hotel room office; make contact with Mac Lindahl of the Swedish-American News Bureau and begin writing for the N.Y. Herald Tribune; take an ice-breaker to Finland and a train ride through Russian-controlled Porkkala; learn the meaning of a Russian helmet in Helsinki; struggle with "two eggs" and the Finnish language; discover a distant "relative" in Stockholm and write first article (on Finland) for a national publication;

I begin with this letter from New York where I had gone to catch a boat for Europe.

* * *

New York August 5, 1954

"Dear Mama and Papa; Lilly and Betty; John and David"

Tomorrow I sail and at this writing I have just finished eating a cake baked by Ersie with "Bon Voyage" on it.

This seems to typify the kind of time I have had here. Ersie and Lou could not have been kinder and I seem to have some initial successes.

(Lou and Ersie Cajoleas, he from New Orleans, a Greek American, and she from Greece. Lou had gone to Tulane with me and was then working on a Doctor of Education degree at Columbia University. Ersie was a dress designer.)

First off, all the Scandinavian people (in their New York press offices) have been most encouraging, giving me names of people to see and all sorts of suggestions. Best of all came from the Norwegians. They are going to do the most, it appears. The director of their information service said he would see to it I got free travel in the country and possibly free hotel space. He also said that the other Scandinavian countries can also provide free travel for me and that the reason the others didn't promise it like he was probably because they don't like to make promises for people on the other side.

So it looks like there is a possibility that I will save a lot on travel.

The meeting with the North American Newspaper Alliance went off well. They don't promise to use what I write, but they will look at anything I send and took considerable pains to see that I knew what they wanted. So it seems they think I have possibilities.

I talked by phone with an agent who handles all types of writing and he said he could use all action-type interview stories I could get for men's magazines. This would consist of interviewing people who have had some adventure and writing it in a first person form ... a sort of "as told to" thing.

At the New York Times travel section, I had more luck. The travel editor was travelling in Europe, but the young reporter who came out to talk to me turned out to be married to a girl from New Orleans and was very helpful. He said they were going to run a few paragraphs about a new motel in Sweden but why didn't I do a feature on it send it back to him. He took me in and showed me what they wanted. I think this looks good.

More luck. I bought a good camera today. One of the photographers on The Picayune told me to look up the chief photographer at King Features Syndicate and ask him to help me find an inexpensive camera. I ended up getting a new $73 Kodak for $51 through a good camera shop. This will be a big help to me providing the one or two pictures that necessarily go with an article. Also, I feel like a kid with a new toy, as it is the first camera I've owned. (It was the simplest of cameras, with zone focusing. Yet months later, it would produce a three-column, by-line picture in the N.Y. Herald Tribune of Finnish troops marching in to the naval base at Porkkala, after the Soviets returned it.)

Lastly, I should re-emphasize how nice Lou and Ersie have been. They have no bed for me, but have improvised one for me on the floor with big sofa cushions. It is very comfortable. More so when I think of the savings it represents.

They will be in New Orleans on the 23 or 24 for two weeks and I have offered Lou the use of the Hudson (My 1949 automobile). Would you ask Moots (my brother George) if he would have Mr. Tony (Anthony Bilich, an automobile mechanic) make the needed adjustments before then? I don't think it will cost but a few dollars.

Right now, Ersie is fixing that hole in my suit pocket I forgot to get to before I left.

So in conclusion, I repeat I've had good luck and hope now that it will be habit forming. Will write you when I get to Paris.

Love Harry

Guess what chaps (my nephews, John and David): I saw a stuffed blowfish in a window – a blowfish as big as a football.

* * *

Paris August 12, 1954

Dear Everyone:

This is my second day in Paris and all is well. We landed yesterday morning and I got to Paris about 11 a.m. by train to be met by Arthur and Peggy Pastore, whom I had known in Vienna (during my 1951 tour of Europe) and who booked my room in their little hotel. They have written a book on European restaurants and one on travel in Mexico and Cuba. He is doing promotional work here for NEWSWEEK. They fixed lunch for me and have been showing me my way around. I pay about $1.75 per night for the room.

In the afternoon I went to 23 Rue de la Paix, where William Stoneman, the correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, has his headquarters and where a New Orleans girl, Anna Dalier, works for a travel agency. He was out but she was in, and later she and one of her boy friends and I had supper and a coffee in a sidewalk café.

(Anna Dalier, who also went to Tulane and who spoke fluent French, had consulted me in New Orleans about a trip she was planning to France. I gave her Bill Stoneman's name. Through him, she found a job with a travel agency in the same building.)

I am writing this at 23 Rue de la Paix after meeting Stoneman and making arrangements for lunch with him tomorrow.

Today or tomorrow I will look up Angela Gregory. (A New Orleans sculptress living and working in Paris.)

The weather is fine and cool and varies from sunny to overcast and just right for a winter suit.

Paris is still beautiful and impressive even on this second look. Those hours I spent with the French record were valuable. I cannot speak much,...