Inappropriate Conduct

War changes and often harms not only its combatants but also its eyewitnesses. The war correspondents whose job it is to get as close as possible to war, report what they see, and survive to tell about it, have a unique job. Neither victims nor killers, they risk injury and death and often struggle against those who would censor their truth. It is a frustrating profession and one that can destroy its best and bravest. This is a story of such a war correspondent who volunteered for one of the most dangerous assignments of World War II. Paul Morton was a reporter for the prominent Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Daily Star. On a mission initiated by the British government, believed to have Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s personal approval, Morton parachuted behind Nazi lines in Northern Italy with the British Army to report on the guerrilla war being fought by Italian partisans against the German occupation. Morton not only reported on the partisans’ war, but to stay alive wound up fighting it as well, pursued by German army units that dwarfed the Italian guerrilla bands. By the time Morton returned to Rome after two months, the British Army, which had originally urged him to take the assignment, refused to distribute his reports to the international press as they originally planned, apparently because of changes in war strategy. The Star “spiked” his stories (newspaper term for rejection) and his career was ruined. His editor fired him, declaring his stories were fraudulent and that he had never been behind the lines in Northern Italy. The Canadian Army cancelled his accreditation based on an incident in the bar of the officer’s mess before his mission, in which he fired a couple of rounds at the wall from a Beretta pistol. Although the Toronto Star published the first of Morton’s accounts from behind the lines, his other eight stories – some 8,000 words – were never published by TheToronto Star or the Combined Allied Press as originally planned. No copies of the articles can now be located, and appear lost to history. It remains a mystery why neither the Toronto Star nor the British and Canadian armies did not publish Morton’s series and treated him in such a cavalier fashion. However, there are clues which will unfold in these chapters. I have tried to discover the truth about Paul Morton for more than ten years, ever since my friend Peter Stursberg, a war correspondent in Italy and a friend of Paul’s told me the story. In many ways I identify with Paul Morton, since I was born Canadian and am a lifelong journalist with a deep respect for soldiers, prone to drinking too much and often not very good at communicating with my bosses. Like Morton, I covered war close-up and to my regret on occasion, out of fear for my life, decided to go into a conflict zone armed. In 1983, I spent two months behind the lines with the leftist guerillas in El Salvador, escaping with my life and a story for Newsweek – only to have the U.S. Embassy there state that I was a liar for reporting on a Salvadoran army massacre of civilians. I’ve spent most of the last 50 years not only thinking about but experiencing the often rocky relationship of governments and armed forces to the press. So, yes, Paul Morton’s experience strongly resonates with me, and made me want to find out why he suffered such an ignominious fate. Morton’s odyssey is an adventure with a cast of fascinating characters played out in the summer and fall of 1944 when defeat of the German Army was still a year away. His story shows the best days of a man’s life destroyed by those he trusted, by historical forces beyond his control, and by the classic tragedy of his own failure to combat the enemy inside himself that left him helpless to battle the lies of colleagues.