Third Scoop from First Front

Scoops are as rare as kulaks in wartime Russia. Two dozen U.S. and British correspondents cover Europe's First Front, but in its 18 months of war there have been only three clear beats. The third came last week.

Correspondents live circumscribed routine lives in Moscow, have their most excitement trying to beat each other to the wire. After breakfast (tea, toast, and cold sausage, cold fish, occasionally an omelet), in their dimly lit, chill rooms at Moscow's squat Metropole Hotel each morning, they hurriedly compose stories culled from four Moscow papers--Pravda, Red Star, Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda. They get their stories reviewed by Russia's sharp censors, then they race to the cable office. For a time Reuters' Harold King had the edge because he hired a motorcyclist. Nowadays U.P. and A.P., employing two fawn-fast girl runners, Venus and Zena, usually win. But mere speed is not enough for the real scoops. They come as reward, or as lightning surprise.

Chicago Daily News's alert, emotional Leland Stowe had the first. Last summer Correspondent Stowe won the Kremlin's gratitude by carrying a torch for aid to Russia. He was rewarded by a journalistic triumph--permission to visit the Rhzev front, west of Moscow.

Second scooper was Associated Pressman Henry C. Cassidy. Late in September, at the insistence of his Manhattan bosses, he wrote to Stalin asking for an interview, expected no results. But several days later he was roused by a midnight call from the Foreign Office. Cassidy rushed over, was amazed to find a letter from Stalin: "Dear Gospodin (Mr.) Cassidy: Owing to the pressure of work ... I shall confine myself to a brief written answer. . . ." This was the famed letter in which Stalin called for Second Front aid.

Scoop No. 3 went to stocky, balding United Pressman Henry Shapiro, who has covered Russia longer than any other U.S. correspondent (six years) and has an advantage over others because, Russian-born he speaks and reads Russian fluently, so that he does not have to rely on interpreters.

About three weeks ago U.P.'s Moscow dispatches began coming through signed by Shapiro's assistant, Meyer Handler (once in U.P.'s Paris office); Shapiro had disappeared. Last week, when he returned to Moscow and feverishly began cabling copy, the U.S. found out where he had gone--to Stalingrad, to become the first U.S. or British correspondent to eyewitness the Volga city's battered battlefields. How he got the break, Shapiro did not explain, but in his delayed and heavily-censored dispatches, datelined "With the Red Army on the Stalingrad Front," he predicted that Stalingrad would soon be entirely freed.

Best dispatch was an interview with a Red general, who told of Russian tricks in Stalingrad. Sample: "A man should not be afraid to take a position in the immediate neighborhood of the enemy. . . . Artillery and aviation hit their own troops if the distance between trenches is 20 to 40 meters. As soon as German planes appear over Stalingrad our artillery opens fire and the Germans send up rockets signaling: 'Don't hit our own troops.' We give exactly the same signal, and then the devil himself couldn't tell where or how to bomb."

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