Newsman by heritage as well as training and experience is John McCutcheon Raleigh, author, foreign correspondent, and new KMOX news reporter and analyst. Raleigh is heard on KMOX’s “Headline Highlights” broadcast Monday through Saturday, 7:45-8:00 a.m., and Sunday through Friday at 12 noon. The former is sponsored by the Griffin Manufacturing Company and Bond Clothing Company while the noon commentary is presented in behalf of Planter’s Peanuts and Peter Paul, Inc.
Born in Helena, Montana, Raleigh attended Purdue and Columbia Universities, after which he did free-lance magazine articles, short stories and radio scripts, later joining the foreign staff of several prominent newspapers.
When the war broke out, Raleigh went to the front with the German armies, presenting international broadcasts as well as continuing his newspaper reporting. He made a careful study of the German army, its organization, its guarded military secrets, and its weaknesses. One of the reports he later made regarding this military machine was used as a supplementary textbook in military courses in this country.
Raleigh also delved deep into the home life of the German people, learning their problems, the truth about the food stored away, the graft and cruelty, the deeds of the SS, its creed and code in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and in Germany itself. This intensive study resulted in the keen insight into Germany revealed in his book, “Behind the Nazi Front,” and in such magazine articles as the Saturday Evening Post’s “Your Son Will Not Return! Heil Hitler!” and Readers Digest’s “Eye Witness Brutality.” A similar study of events in the Pacific led to another book about that area, “Pacific Blackout,” when Raleigh later went to that theater of operations.
Raleigh was CBS correspondent in Bavaria, Java, as well as head of the United Press Bureau in the Netherlands East Indies. Early in January, 1942, he was assigned to Darwin, Australia, and as the war progressed, his reports emanated regularly from Sidney, Melbourne, and from General MacArthur’s headquarters, to which he was attached.
Raleigh’s news career has carried him to the exciting, event-packed areas of the world. In Europe, he watched the ebb and flow of the battle for Gydnia, entered Warsaw where he met and talked with Hitler, was one of two American correspondents detained by the Gestapo in Munich the day after the Burger Kraukeller (beer hall) explosion there. In Shanghai, he served as a member of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps when the Japanese were starting their pre-war “bombing incidents,” was in Hongkong and Amoy, China; in Manila; in Tarakan, Borneo; Palembang, Sumatra; Singapore, Surabaya, and countless other centers of news activity.
Raleigh’s postwar career centers around an intense study of world developments, built upon the intimate knowledge he has of countries. He is a man who lives his work and consequently is in great demand as a public speaker. In 1945, he spoke before 23 groups ranging from 25,000 people gathered at Wold Chamberlain Field for Army ATC ceremonies, to Rotary Clubs and school graduation exercises.
(Originally published in KMOX Mike 12/1946)