[Annotator's Note: The interview starts with the set up and with Andrew A. Rooney looking through a book while talking to the interviewer until 0:06:05.000.] Andrew A. Rooney was born in Albany, New York of Scottish-Irish parents. His middle name is Aitken which is a big name in Scotland. He had a happy youth. His father traveled a lot, so his mother was the dominant figure in his life. His sister was five years older than him. Rooney attended The Albany Academy [Annotator's Note: in Albany, New York]. He was captain of his football team. He went on to Colgate University [Annotator's Note: in Hamilton, New York]. He edited the college literary magazine. He registered for the draft in Hamilton, New York and was drafted at the end of his junior year and never finished college. That was in 1941. After the war, his father asked if he wanted to return to college. Rooney had served four years in the Army, three of those with the Stars and Stripes [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] and it was an incredible experience. Rooney told his father he would but only to teach. He was drafted in August [Annotator's Note: August 1941], went to Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina] and assumed they would be released in six months. Then Pearl Harbor came [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was married that year. Most of his friends waited to get married. He got married at Fort Bragg.

Andrew A. Rooney was with the 17th Field Artillery [Annotator's Note: 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 13th Field Artillery Brigade] and became editor of their field publication at Fort Bragg [Annotator's Note: Fort Bragg, North Carolina]. Joe McCarthy [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], later became editor of Cosmopolitan [Annotator's Note: American monthly magazine], became editor of Yank magazine [Annotator's Note: Yank, the Army Weekly, 17 June 1942 to 28 December 1945] and Rooney knew him. Rooney was not a good soldier. He wanted to be an officer. He applied for Officers Candidate School and was turned down. Later he was on the range [Annotator's Note: artillery firing range]. They had four 155 howitzers [Annotator's Note: M1 155mm howitzer, towed howitzer, nicknamed Long Tom]. Rooney was the driver of the truck that pulled the gun into place. He would hide the truck and then go back to the gun position. His only role was put the charges in. The lieutenant who had turned Rooney down for Officers Candidate School was vying for the First Lieutenant opening which would go to the most accurate shooter. When he would call for the charge, Rooney would put less, and the shells would fall short, or he would put more, and the shells would go long. Rooney did not get into Officers Candidate School, but that guy did not make First Lieutenant either that day.

The men Andrew A. Rooney was training with [Annotator's Note: in the 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 13th Field Artillery Brigade] was a mixed bag. A lot of them were college students who had been drafted, but there were a great many who had not had jobs and had enlisted. There was a sharp division between those drafted and those enlisted. Rooney was shipped to Camp Blanding [Annotator's Note: Camp Blanding, Clay County, Florida, in March 1942] and then overseas on a huge ship [Annotator's Note: the HMS Orcades, 5 August 1942]. They were in the bowels of the ship in hammocks. He could not stand it. It was an 11 or 12 day trip. He stayed up all night and talked with the people at the wheelhouse. Then he would eat and sleep all day. They landed in Liverpool, England [Annotator's Note: 17 August 1942] and went down to Cornwall [Annotator's Note: Cornwall, England]. At Cornwall, with the 17th Field Artillery, the Army newspaper, the Stars and Stripes [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] was made from a weekly paper to a daily paper. Rooney said he was a newspaper man. He was hired. He was lucky and just barely held on until he learned how to do it. He was assigned to the 8th Air Force which made it easy because there were so many great stories. Walter Cronkite [Annotator's Note: Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr.; American broadcast journalist] was there with United Press, and they became great friends. They would be given a day's advance notice of raids. They would get up early and go Bedford [Annotator's Note: Bedford, England]. There were eight or ten bomb groups near there. They would each go to a different group and interview the people who had been on the raid after the debriefing. He would get to know these boys and he would go looking for them and they would have been shot down. One day he went in, and a young man was lying on his bunk. They would make marks to count their completed missions. They were losing about five percent on each mission. That meant their chances of finishing 25 missions were not too good. This guy had three sets of five and two on his sign. Rooney asked if he had completed 17 missions and the guy said no, that sign was the guy before him who had been shot down. He had just gotten his bunk.

Andrew A. Rooney [Annotator's Note: correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper] and the other newspapermen [Annotator's Note: they would be dubbed "The Writing 69th"], among them, Homer Bigart [Annotator's Note: Homer William Bigart, American journalist], Gladwin Hill [Annotator's Note: Gladwin Hill, American journalist] of the Associated Press, and Cronkite [Annotator's Note: Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr.; American broadcast journalist] were so disturbed by all of the young men being shot down, that they decided it was unfair of them to cover these missions without having flown one. They volunteered and each went with a different group. They got the second raid on Germany at Wilhelmshaven [Annotator's Note: 26 February 1943]. They got together after the raid and traded stories. Rooney had gotten the best story because his plane had been hit. He was up front in the bomb bay and the plexiglass nose had been shot off. It was traumatic for Rooney, and he was scared to death. The bombardier was bleeding but not seriously hurt. At 17,000 feet, the air coming in was 50 degrees below zero. The bombardier tried to plug the hole and took his gloves off. His hands froze and when he hit something chunks of his hands came off. It was a terrible experience, but they made it back. The journalist for the New York Times, Robert Post [Annotator's Note: Robert Perkins Post, American journalist], had been shot down and killed. Rooney had gone overseas in June or July 1942. He went to work for the Stars and Stripes [Annotator's Note: American military newspaper] in September 1942. He began covering the bombing runs in the Fall of 1942. He became aware the invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] was imminent. The correspondents were divided up and could volunteer to go. Rooney was ready to go. He was stupid and did not realize he could get killed. He went on D-4 [Annotator's Note: D-day is the day on which an operation or invasion takes effect. D-plus is the number of days after d-day, 10 June 1944]. He went up to Bristol [Annotator's Note: Bristol, England] and went around England to Normandy. He went in at Utah [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy] which was safer than Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha Beach, Normandy]. He came in near Cherbourg, [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France].

Andrew A. Rooney was covering the 8th Air Force [Annotator's Note: for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper, as a member of "The Writing 69th"] up until ten days before the invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He did almost nothing. They did not have barracks near the ships in Bristol [Annotator's Note: Bristol, England]. He stayed with a British family. He was used to American mass production. The British made great engines for their Spitfires [Annotator's Note: Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft]. He was talking to the British man who was making the engines in an aircraft plant. They started from scratch and two or three guys put the whole engine together, one at a time. [Annotator's Note: A second interviewer asks Rooney what the beach looked like when he landed at Normandy, France on 10 June 1944.] The Germans had moved back. There were no bluffs like there were at Utah Beach [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach, Normandy]. The Germans still had artillery and were dropping shells on the beach. He felt better after getting into the open plain area which was safer. The Stars and Stripes had started printing already and he could get his stories out right away. They started in Carentan [Annotator's Note: Carentan, France]. It got bombed out and they had to move to Saint Mere-Eglise [Annotator's Note: Sainte-Mère-Église, France]. Most of the correspondents were with the main force. Rooney decided to go in the opposite direction. There were two infantry divisions trying to secure Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France] so supplies could come into the beaches. Rooney followed them. He hooked up with Joe Leibling [Annotator's Note: Abbott Joseph "A. J." Liebling, American journalist] of The New Yorker [Annotator's Note: American weekly magazine]. The two of them followed the 2nd [Annotator's Note: 2nd Infantry Division] and 4th Divisions [Annotator's Note: 4th Infantry Division] to Cherbourg. Rooney was young and did not drink yet. The German officers had storehouses of liquor. Rooney had a jeep and he and Joe got several cases of booze. They were sharing a room and had no lights. They were sitting in the dusk and Joe was pouring himself a Calvados [Annotator's Note: apple or pear brandy from Normandy, France], which he called the breakfast of champions. They did not have much to do but talk. One night Joe got drinking and started making a case for dying at the peak of one's obituary value. That fell flat with Rooney at age 22. Joe did die at the peak of his obituary value at age 65 or so [Annotator's Note: 28 December 1963] and was very well known.

After Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France], Andrew A. Rooney [Annotator's Note: correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper] came back to where the Stars and Stripes was publishing and joined the 1st Army Press Camp. They took over a chateau and there would be about 25 correspondents there. They would eat and work in a main room where they had typewriters. They slept in tents outside. Every day they would decide what part of the war they wanted to cover. Rooney got know Ernie Pyle [Annotator's Note: Ernest Taylor Pyle, American journalist and war correspondent] very well and had his own jeep. He was a sergeant. When Rooney went out with another correspondent, they did not have to worry about him writing a story because Rooney's story only appeared in the Stars and Stripes in Europe. So Rooney was a much-desired companion. Ernie Pyle was a favorite and so different from everyone else. They would go up to the front and it was dangerous. Ernie always wanted to go way in the back. Rooney realized how right that was. They came across a battalion who was doing nothing but collecting the weapons and uniforms of the men who had been killed, cleaning them up, and reissuing them. Rooney was so young that he did not even recognize what a great story that was. He learned a lot from Pyle. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Rooney if the journalists were briefed before going in on D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944.] Rooney does not think they were. Rooney is very depressed about how the military handles reporters now with making them get permission to go out. He would go out to a division, grab a couple of soldiers and talk to them. There were two Army officer censors at the press camp. Their only mission was to ensure they were not giving any information to the enemy. Rooney and the journalists knew what war they were fighting and had no interest in giving information to the enemy. The censors did not have much to do. No officer told them what they could or could not do. It is crazy today how the Army tries to control everything about what they are doing or not doing. There were there British and French reporters at the camp. There were also American journalists with the British. There were Canadians as well. They would not be in one camp, and they would move. The longest they were in one was 12 days before the breakout at Saint Lo [Annotator's Note: Operation Cobra, 25 to 31 July 1944; Saint-Lô, France]. After that, the American Army spread out and got behind the Germans, so they retreated. Sometimes the camps would only be for three or four days and that happened right up into Germany.

Andrew A. Rooney [Annotator's Note: correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper] did run across Ernest Hemingway [Annotator's Note: Ernest Miller Hemingway, American author and journalist] but did not have a high opinion of him. He says Hemingway probably did not have a high opinion of him either. Hemingway was bombastic and Rooney felt he was fake. He was brave and did some things that were dangerous, but Rooney could never take him seriously. They were in a hotel and all of the reporters were there from 9th Army, 7th Army, and 1st Army. When they realized the 1st Army was going into Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], they all converged on the 1st Army. Hemingway was there in the hotel in Rambouillet [Annotator's Note: Rambouillet, France] and, to his credit, had been there before the Army got there. He got into a big argument with an AP [Annotator's Note: Associated Press] reporter, Harry Harris who was only about five foot, six inches tall. Hemingway was a big man. Hemingway stormed out and yelled at Harris to come out and fight. The fight never occurred. The next day, the 2nd Infantry Division was going in one way and the French another. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was very conscious of the political ramifications of who got into Paris first. The British wanted to go in. The French wanted to get in. Eisenhower decided to let the French go in and Rooney decided to join the French force. Rooney had his jeep in a line of tanks. At one point, Rooney ran into a field with a stone wall looking to see where the fire from a German 88 [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] was coming from. He looked over and there was Hemingway hiding behind the wall too. That was the closest he ever came to him. Cronkite [Annotator's Note: Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr.; American broadcast journalist] stayed in London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. Cronkite jumped later into Belgium quite late in the war.

Andrew A. Rooney went to the front lines a lot [Annotator's Note: as a correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper]. There were some guys that were scared. It was not considered opprobrious among the others. The guys who were not scared did not look down on the guys who were scared stiff. Rooney ended up with a Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: the Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy]. He was going into a French village with a Chicago newspaperman named Bob Casey [Annotator's Note: Robert Joseph Casey, American journalist]. They started to take fire and pulled over. Rooney walked down to the village and got a great story about a church that had the side knocked down. The major who had led the division into town was killed. The guys put the major in a position of honor up on the rubble of the church. Rooney got back late in the day to where he left Casey. Rooney did not do anything brave that day. He considers bravery doing something to save someone's life at the risk of your own. He just did a dumb thing because he wanted to get a story. He saw a lot of bravery and he saw plenty of stupidity called bravery. It happened quite often that someone would be hit and bleeding to death in a field of fire. Rooney repeatedly saw men get those men back. That is bravery. The medics were heroes. The church was in Saint Lo [Annotator's Note: Saint-Lô, France]. Bob Casey put him in the for the Bronze Star. Rooney is a little embarrassed by it.

Andrew A. Rooney went into Belgium [Annotator's Note: as a correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper]. They had a great press camp at a hotel. He had been overseas for a couple of years. He applied to go back to the United States and was sent back for five weeks in late December [Annotator's Note: December 1944]. He worked at the Stars and Stripes office in New York. The Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] occurred then. Three of the correspondents he was traveling with were killed and the press camp was driven out. He got back five weeks later, and the press camp was back. It was like nothing had ever happened. He was sorry to have missed the Bulge. [Annotator's Note: An interviewer asks Rooney what he thinks of the French people.] The French are a mystery to him. He has always found it interesting that the Germans and French live right next to each other and could not be more different, even as their civilizations rose together. In different directions, the French and the Germans created great civilizations. The French know how to live better than anybody. The Germans are filled with anguish. Rooney has a great fondness for French people that he does not have for the Germans. They would have 10-and-1 rations [Annotator's Note: 10-in-1 food parcel, intended to provide one meal for ten men] and they were great. The French did not have anything like it. Rooney would trade them to the French. They would prepare some of the food for the journalists. They came up with amazing meals. In Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], they established the Stars and Stripes in what had been the Herald Tribune building. They were publishing a million and a half newspapers. Rooney would go often as he could. They had a good distribution system. Rooney loved it and by this time, people knew him. He liked the people. Hal Boyle [Annotator's Note: Harold Vincent "Hal" Boyle] was a great Associated Press correspondent. They were together in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and a man came up and said to Boyle that he must know a lot of interesting people. Boyle said he did and that most of them were other newspapermen.

Andrew A. Rooney [Annotator's Note: as a correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper] entered Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] with the 1st Division [Annotator's Note: 1st Infantry Division, 24 August 1944]. The French took them in and fed them. There were several dead Germans on the bridge when they went in. Rooney abandoned his unit and did quite a few reports for Army radio that day. The following day [Annotator's Note: 25 August 1944] was one of the greatest scenes he has ever seen. De Gaulle [Annotator's Note: French Army General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle; later President of France] came in and made a big thing out of freeing Paris which he did not do. They had a parade from the Arc de Triomphe [Annotator's Note: Arc de Triomphe de I'Etoile, monument in Paris, France] to the Place de la Concorde, which must be the greatest parade route in the world. Rooney was at the Place, and it was lined with French tanks. De Gaulle was about to enter and there was fire from the top of the American embassy building at De Gaulle. All of the French tanks turned and started firing at the building. You can still see the pockmarks on the building. There was major in charge of the Stars and Stripes who had come from the China-Burma-India theater [Annotator's Note: often referred to as the CBI]. He asked Rooney to cover a story. There was a General who had been deposed who was being shipped back disgraced to the south of France. Rooney was asked to go to the CBI so that he could report back what it was like there to the soldiers in Europe who were likely to go invade Japan. Rooney chose to go. He flew to Cairo [Annotator's Note: Cairo, Egypt]. The pilot hit a telephone pole going in. Rooney then went to New Delhi [Annotator's Note: New Delhi, India]. He could not stand the heat. He went over The Hump [Annotator's Note: aerial supply route over the Himalayan Mountains between India and China] in a C-46 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft] into China. He saw graffiti on a seat that read, "this is something you do not see often; two engines mounted on a coffin." They lost a lot of C-46s coming down. Rooney decided to join a mule train going up into the mountains to rescue some soldiers. He was with a correspondent from Harper's Magazine [Annotator's Note: the oldest monthly magazine in America]. They got up there and they were putting helicopters together. No one had thought about the altitude and the helicopters could not take off. Rooney was in China a couple of weeks. He went to North Africa and then back to the United States.

After the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Andrew A. Rooney [Annotator's Note: as a correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, American military newspaper] went to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] in February 1945. They moved into Germany, and he went to Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany]. He did not go to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany]. They started publishing in Frankfurt. Bill Mauldin [Annotator's Note: William Henry "Bill" Mauldin, American editorial cartoonist] came in and they hung out a lot. Rooney liked Bill. He had an opinion of himself but rightfully so. They were not allowed to carry weapons as correspondents. If you did, you were fair game for the Germans. If captured, correspondents were treated fairly well as a high officer. If you had a gun, you were just a prisoner of war. Inevitably, they would pick up a German pistol and he got a couple. He got a motorcycle. [Annotator's Note: An interviewer asks Rooney if there is a story that he wrote that stands out.] He can never answer that question. The parade on the Champs Élysées [Annotator's Note: in Paris, France, 25 August 1944] was something. As a journalist, there was never a time when there were more stories available to write about than in World War 2. However, there are so many stories to write about all the time in the world. It was more dramatic, but he does not feel World War 2 had any effect on him. It did not change his life. The idea that all soldiers are on the front line is a myth. One in twenty is on the line and the rest are doing the dirty work. That is why dad does not want to talk about his war experience. [Annotator's Note: An interviewer asks Rooney what he thinks of Thomas John Brokaw, American television journalist and author, and of "The Greatest Generation", his 1998 book.] Brokaw has a chapter about what Rooney thinks about it. Rooney told him that he does not think that his generation is any greater than any other generation. If any other generation had World War 2 to fight with as clearly a defined bad guy as Adolf Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler], they would rise to the occasion. Rooney did not want to ruin Brokaw's book, but he does not think it is the greatest generation. The war had a huge impact. Hitler was about to take over France. Then there would not be much stopping him from Great Britain. If the Germans had dominated all of Europe and Great Britain, Rooney is not sure we could have moved in there then or impeded the German takeover. [Annotator's Note: An interviewer asks Rooney if he agrees with the current president, George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States, that the march of Democracy in the world is due to World War 2.] If Democracy around the world has resulted from World War 2, then that is a good impact, however he is not so sure that is a fact. [Annotator's Note: The interview closes with some discussions and a request for Rooney to join a conference before Veterans Day.] Rooney does not celebrate Veterans Day [Annotator's Note: annual federal holiday honoring military veterans of American armed forces]. [Annotator's Note: They all look at some things on Rooney's office wall.]