Into The Fray, book review

“Into The Fray” by Tom Mascaro

Into The Fray:  How NBC’s Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News
By Tom Mascaro
ISBN #978-1-59797-557-5, $29.95

Into The Fray vividly recounts the characters and experiences that helped create a unique, colorful documentary film crew based at the Washington bureau of NBC News.  From the Kennedy era through the Reagan years, the journalists covered wars, rebellions, the Central Intelligence Agency, covert actions, the Pentagon, military preparedness, and world and American cultures.While the above excerpt from the book’s foreword  by Drew Pearson might not give goose bumps, don’t be fooled.  This is a darn good read!

For we Marines who grew up during this period and served in  virtually every “clime and place” mentioned, the book explains many of the reasons why we were there risking life and limb.  You will meet World War II Marine combat correspondent Stuart Schulberg, son of Los Angeles movie royalty, and Ted Yates, who cut his journalistic teeth on the Camp Lejeune Globe in the early 1950s, you will be right at home.

Others will help establish the Washington unit as the pre-eminent producer of documentary news of the day.  You’ll meet Mike Wallace who became a great friend of Yates and who would be getting his start in television.  Chet Huntley and David Brinkley are shown in their early years.

Yates, however, becomes our star player.  He cut his journalism teeth as a teenager in Florida, then caught on in New York with the old Tex McQuery and Jinx Falkenberg radio show.  With Korea looming, he fulfilled his two year military obligation  as a combat correspondent on the Camp Lejeune GLOBE newspaper staff.  Into The Fray also dutifully informs readers how and why the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents program came into being in 1942 when the Corps first reached into the civilian newsrooms to obtain qualified reporter/correspondents to cover the Pacific war.

At the end of his hitch, Yates heads back to New York where his previous radio show beginnings pay off.  Along the way he meets and becomes great friends with  Wallace.  Keep in mind, this is the early-to-mid-1950s and television is still that little one-eyed box in the corner of the living room.  There are only 450 television stations and only sixty-four percent of Americans own a television set.

Wallace is hired by the Dumont Television network to anchor the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news on Channel Five in New York.  The station hires Yates to be the news director and, after initial successes, Yates suggests to Wallace that instead of repeating the news on 11 p.m. cast why not do an interview-type program? Thus, Night Beat was born rocketing Wallace into interview fame and a winning an Emmy for Yates who then moves over toe NBC.

Many successes follow establishing Yates as a serious student of documentary television.  Yet he still hungers for adventure and wonders if he could face the dangers of a combat correspondent.  He would soon find out.

During the Santo Domingo crisis in April 1965, Yates and his NBC crew were soon in the midst of things. This would become a defining moment for Yates as a “combat correspondent.”  He was finally able to employ his Marine training under fire.

The Belgian Congo would follow and Yates and his writer-partner Bob Rogers would meet with legendary mercenary Maj. “Mad Mike” Hoare, skipper of the famed 5 Commando.  What followed would result in Yates and his crew being in the wrong place at the wrong time and an erroneous report he was being held for ransom.

Prior to and during Vietnam Yates would be hailed as the ace of network documentary news.  His team would produce Vietnam:  It’s a Mad, Mad War.  Other great documentaries would involve Laos and Cambodia.

Yates again faced fire doing a “standup” broadcast in Jerusalem on June 5, 1967, the first day of the Six Day War.  This time his luck ran out.  He was hit in the head and died following surgery the following day.

Tom Mascaro’s style makes fact read like fiction.  It’s a  book you will not want to put down.

(Editor’s note: Jack Paxton is a retired Mustang captain and executive director of the United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association.)