Summary Information
Harold Boyle Papers
1942-1974
U.S. Mss 144AF; PH 4320
3.2 c.f. (8 archives boxes) and 12 photographs
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of Boyle, a columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent who covered World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam conflict for the Associated Press. Primarily documenting his activities as a war correspondent, 1942-1945 and 1950-1951, the collection offers correspondence, press dispatches, and other writings. Although the majority of Boyle's columns and dispatches focus on the life of the ordinary soldier in the European theater, he also commented repeatedly on Generals Omar N. Bradley and George S. Patton, Jr.. Correspondence includes reader mail, three dozen letters from Boyle to his wife written during World War II, and an edited version of other wartime letters. References to Ernie Pyle, Don Whitehead, J. Wes Gallagher, and other correspondents may be found throughout the section. Also present are 40 tablets of handwritten notes related to interviews and some biographical material.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-us0144af ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
Harold V. “Hal” Boyle was one of this century's best known and most popular journalists. For almost thirty years his syndicated columns were among the most widely distributed features within the Associated Press system. As a correspondent who covered World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, Boyle's renown was second only to Ernie Pyle, and in 1945 the excellence of his day-to-day coverage of World War II earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
Boyle was born February 21, 1911, in Kansas City, Missouri. He began his career in journalism in 1928 as a copy boy for the Kansas City Star. In 1932 he graduated from the school of journalism of the University of Missouri, his scholastic ability earning him a year of graduate study in English at that same institution. In 1933 Boyle began his long career with the Associated Press, and he moved rapidly through a succession of increasingly responsible positions in the bureau offices in Columbia, Kansas City, and St. Louis, Missouri. In 1937 the AP promoted him to night city editor in the New York City office. That same year Boyle married Mary Frances Young who was later to become almost as famous as her husband through his columns.
After the United States entered World War II, Boyle requested overseas duty, and in the fall of 1942, the AP designated him to accompany the North African invasion forces. Boyle waded ashore under fire on November 8, 1942. This was, however, only the first of many times he was to be in physical danger in the course of his efforts to report the news.
In addition to his responsibilities for reporting the news (he frequently issued one dozen bulletins per day) Boyle also wrote a daily column entitled “Leaves from a War Correspondent's Notebook.” A highly popular feature, this column viewed the war from the point of view of the ordinary G.I. In 1943 Boyle accompanied the U.S. troops to Sicily and participated in the Italian campaign. During the spring of 1944 he returned to the United States to serve as technical advisor and to play himself in the film, The Story of G.I. Joe. Although he was not permitted to observe the D-Day landing, Boyle joined the Allied forces several weeks later and subsequently carried a major burden in reporting the final months of the European war for the Associated Press.
After VE Day the AP sent Boyle to the Pacific where he arrived in time to witness the surrender ceremony on the Missouri. His trip home was an extended journey that took him through the Far East to India, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany and finally the United States in order to record his observations of the post-war world. By 1947 Boyle had returned to New York where he continued to develop the format of his column, by then known as “The Poor Man's Philosopher.” So popular was this column to become that ultimately it was carried by more dailies than any other column in the country.
Boyle volunteered for overseas duty during the Korean conflict, once again reporting spot news and continuing his human interest column. The column attracted a wide audience and was so influential that in December, 1951, General Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur's intelligence chief, cited Boyle as one of six correspondents responsible for widespread “misunderstandings and prejudices” about the war. With this exception, however, reaction to Boyle's column was almost unanimously favorable. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, in 1951 Boyle received the VFW's Omar N. Bradley award for contributions to national security and the Overseas Press Club's award for journalistic excellence, many other civic and journalistic honors, and his columns were frequently reprinted.
Boyle retired because of illness in March, 1974, and died on April 1, 1974.
Scope and Content Note
The Harold V. Boyle Papers are useful primarily for the light they shed on Boyle's activities as a correspondent during World War II and the Korean War. The collection also contains good material relating to his career during the immediate post-World War II years, but documentation of the remainder of Boyle's career as a syndicated columnist is only fragmentary. The collection consists chiefly of correspondence, speeches and writings, and notes. There are also small amounts of biographical material, financial records, official memoranda, and photographs.
BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL includes newspaper clippings which mention Boyle and several published letters to the editor concerning his columns.
The CORRESPONDENCE is somewhat disappointing with regard to both its amount and unbalanced content. While there is only a limited amount of important personal correspondence (principally for the war years), other periods are documented solely by relatively larger amounts of reader mail.
Included with the World War II era correspondence are three dozen letters to Mrs. Boyle from her husband which are full of gossipy news about his activities and those of other correspondents including Ernie Pyle, Don Whitehead and Wes Gallagher. Information on this period is supplemented by an unpublished manuscript of Boyle letters written in 1942 and 1943 and edited by John Tebbel. No letters included in this manuscript are to be found with the original correspondence. The letters dating from the Korean War era constitute a small amount of the total correspondence, and there is only one lengthy letter from Boyle. Of some interest are the frequent letters from Mrs. Boyle to her husband which contain news about AP employees. Scattered throughout the correspondence are letters to and from other correspondents and AP officials such as Ed Kennedy, J. Frank Starzel, William Lawrence, Bem Price, John Evans, and William Corley. Comments from Sid Caesar, General Courtney Hodges and Ethel Merman are included with the reader mail Boyle received. Only a limited number of his replies to this mail are to be found in the collection.
The bulk of the collection consists of Boyle's SPEECHES and WRITINGS which are divided into four categories: Columns, News, Magazine Articles, and Speeches and Interviews. Carbons of the stories drafted by Boyle during World War II and the Korean War comprise the sections News and Columns. In a few cases the draft copy he submitted to the military censor is included.
The news dispatches are arranged chronologically and identified by means of telegraphy format. Most releases were dated by Boyle with a two part number. For example, the date 7/5 refers to the seventh of May. In addition, most releases are identified with a five digit number. When the first digit is a zero, the release is one page in length; when the first digit is the number one, the release contains more than one page and the first part of the five digit number on each page corresponds to that page's sequence within the release. The last four numbers refer to the military time at which the release was sent. This number, which remains constant throughout a release, facilitates understanding of the manner in which the particulars of a news event were learned. It is not clear what portion of Boyle's total news output is represented in this collection, but where possible, obvious gaps within the run of original press dispatches have been supplemented with teletype versions of the missing stories.
During his career Boyle wrote several column series which changed in title although the human interest content remained similar. During the African campaign he began his famous column, “Leaves from a War Correspondent's Notebook.” After his transfer to the Pacific, he began a new series entitled “Marco Polo Abroad,” which documented his travels through the post-war world. After he returned to the United States in 1946 Boyle recorded his domestic travels in a column sometimes referred to as “Marco Polo at Home.” This series ended about July, 1947, when Boyle began “The Poor Man's Philosopher.” Except for the revival of the correspondent's notebook format during the Korean conflict, this column continued until his retirement. With the above exception, the column series, as well as several sub-series instituted during World War II, are arranged in chronological order.
Boyle was somewhat inconsistent about dating his columns, frequently identifying a column solely by its order within a series or subseries. These two devices have been combined in order to arrange the columns in each series into a close approximation of chronological order. The researcher is warned, however, that because Boyle sometimes wrote more than one column per day and because of gaps, the columns do not mesh together perfectly. Where possible, teletype copies (which were primarily dated according to when the column was to appear in print rather than when it was written) have been inserted to fill gaps within the run of original dispatches. Of “The Poor Man's Philosopher,” only the columns written before June, 1948, are dated; the remainder, which constitute only a fraction of Boyle's total career output, are undated and arranged alphabetically by subject.
The majority of Boyle's wartime columns focused on the life of the ordinary soldier, but the collection also includes interesting opinions about Generals George S. Patton, Jr., and Omar N. Bradley whom Boyle observed closely. A similar interest in the life of the ordinary citizen characterized Boyle's peacetime columns, but he also interviewed prominent individuals upon occasion. The subject file “People” inclues columns on Harry Truman, the Duke of Windsor, Milton Berle, and Arthur Miller.
Also included with the column materials is a file of miscellaneous feature articles chiefly dating from the World War II period which were not part of Boyle's regular column series.
The section SPEECHES and WRITINGS also includes a file of scripts from several radio interviews, speeches chiefly on military matters, and one folder of articles published in various magazines.
FINANCIAL RECORDS constitute one folder of expense account statements submitted to the AP during World War II and the Korean War and an incomplete run of salary check receipts, 1951-1953.
The section OFFICIAL MEMORANDA is a small file of instructions from the War Department regarding the status of war correspondents and some instructions from the AP to its correspondents.
NOTES include 40 tablets containing interview notes and column ideas. All of these notebooks are unidentified and undated, although they appear to relate chiefly to the World War II period. Also included is a small amount of unbound notes, also unidentified and undated. All of these materials are handwritten and difficult to decipher.
The PHOTOGRAPHS in the collection include images of a man (possibly Boyle) at a typewriter, and soldiers drinking, eating, and smoking in a cargo plane.
Administrative/Restriction Information
Presented by Tracy Ann Boyle, Putney, Vermont, December 18, 1974. Accession Number: MCHC74-115
Processed by Carolyn Mattern, November 19, 1976.
Contents List
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U.S. Mss 144AF
Box
1
Folder
1
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Biographical Material, 1942-1974
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Correspondence
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Box
1
Folder
2-5
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Correspondence, 1942-1969
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Box
1
Folder
5-6
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Edited correspondence, Tebbel manuscript, ca. 1945
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Speeches and Writings
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News releases,
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Box
2
Folder
1-11
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1942, November - 1944, December
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Box
3
Folder
1-4
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1945, January - December
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Box
3
Folder
5
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1946-1947
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Box
3
Folder
6-7
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1950, July - 1951, January
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Box
3
Folder
8
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News fragments, n.d.
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Column releases,
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“Leaves from a Correspondent's Notebook,”
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Box
4
Folder
1
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1942, November - 1943, October (unnumbered series)
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Box
4
Folder
2-3
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1943, September - 1944, February (#3-114)
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Box
4
Folder
4
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1944, May - September (#1 -?)
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Box
4
Folder
5-6
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1944, September - 1945, June (#2-99/200-278)
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“Marco Polo Abroad,”
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Box
4
Folder
7
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1945, ca. July - December (#-115)
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Box
5
Folder
1
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1946, January -ca. May (116-265)
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Box
5
Folder
2-3
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“Marco Polo at Home,” 1946, November- 1947, July
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“Poor Man's Philosopher,”
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Box
5
Folder
4
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1947, July - 1948, June
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Subject file, n.d.
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Box
5
Folder
5
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Aging
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Box
5
Folder
6
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Boyle's Life
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Box
5
Folder
7
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Entertainment
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Box
5
Folder
8
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General Philosophy
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Box
5
Folder
9
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Holidays
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Box
5
Folder
10
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Humor
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Box
6
Folder
1
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Korea
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Box
6
Folder
2
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Mailbag Bulletins
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Box
6
Folder
3
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Military
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Box
6
Folder
4
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Office Matters
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Box
6
Folder
5
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People
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Box
6
Folder
6
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Politics
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Box
6
Folder
7
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Travel
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Box
6
Folder
8
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Urban Life
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Box
6
Folder
9
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Women & Marriage
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Box
6
Folder
10
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World Affairs
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Box
6
Folder
11
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Youth
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Box
6
Folder
12-14
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“Correspondent's Notebook- Korea,” 1950, July - 1951, January
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Box
7
Folder
1-2
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Miscellaneous Special Features, 1942, November - 1946
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Box
7
Folder
3
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Column fragments
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Box
7
Folder
4
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Magazine Articles, 1944, 1951
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Box
7
Folder
5
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Speeches and Interviews, 1944-1953
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Box
7
Folder
6
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Notes, n.d.
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Box
7
Folder
7
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Financial Records, 1942-1953
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Box
7
Folder
8
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Official Memoranda, 1944-1951
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Notes
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Box
8
Folder
1-12
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Notebooks, n.d.
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Box
8
Folder
13
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Unbound notes, n.d.
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PH 4320
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Series: Photographs
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