Timothy Gay "Assignment to Hell"

A panel of journalists and authors will discuss the book, Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A.J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle.

Reservations are required for this event and may be made at [email protected] or by calling 202-662-7523. This event is free for NPC members, $5.00 for all non-members. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. Proceeds benefit the National Press Club Journalism Institute. No outside books will be permitted.

Panelists include:

• Timothy Gay, author, Assignment to Hell


• Walter (Chip) Cronkite III, son of Walter Cronkite


• Tim Wendel, former Gannett/USA Today reporter and editor


• David Maraniss, associate editor at The Washington Post and two time Pulitzer Prize winner

In February 1943, a group of journalists—including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney—clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the sixty-four bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. “I think I’m going to say,” mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell.”

Assignment to Hell tells the powerful and poignant story of the war against Hitler through the eyes of five intrepid reporters. Crisscrossing battlefields, they formed a journalistic band of brothers, repeatedly placing themselves in harm’s way to bring the war home for anxious American readers.