[Editor's note: this article originally appeared in the November 1944 issue of BLUE BOOK.]
By S. J. Woolf
I was not surprised that Bill Makin had been killed. I traveled about with him in France and knew the chances he would take to get a story.
Perhaps it was because we were somewhat older than most of the other correspondents, and that all three of us had been through the last war, that Makin, MacGowan and I hitched up together. I first met them in a small camp in England, and we three crossed together on the same LST.
In France, Makin and I had adjoining cots in the same tent, and it was there I got to know him. He was a quiet, reserved chap with a subtle sense of humor and a keen insight into human nature. We were both after the same kind of material--stories rather than news. He hated basing his pieces on handouts from headquarters as much as I did. We both wanted to see rather than be told what to write about. The result was that we usually went out together in the same jeep.
On many occasions we accidentally got beyond our own lines, and it was only luck that he was not hit before. It as a standing joke between us that our trip was a failure if we did not draw enemy fire.
But Makin was no daredevil swashbuckler. He was not that type. His one quality which stands out in my memory was his consideration for others. One day we were on our way to Beaumont Hague. The town had just been taken, but German snipers still lurked in shot-up houses. As we drew near, it was clear that our jeep driver was losing his nerve. He was continually asking if we did not want to turn back. Finally, Makin said: "Yes." This was unlike him. Never before had I known him to hesitate about reaching our objective.
That night in the tent I asked him why he had done this. "Didn't you notice that the youngster who was driving us was afraid?" he said. "I hate to make anyone uncomfortable."
It is hard for me to realize that he is gone. I keep thinking of our trips together, of our lunches in Carentan and Bayeux, of our bedtime repasts of Normandy cheese and wine left by the Germans when they beat a hasty retreat from liberated towns.
Makin is dead, but for me he is still hunched up in his British uniform in a jeep, a smile on his thin lips, a twinkle in his dark eyes, and I can still hear him saying in his soft voice: "Let's drive on a few hundred yards farther."
William Makin was a student in Paris when the first World War broke out, and he served in the British Army until he was wounded and gassed at Battle of the Somme in 1916. Afterward he went to India as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He won his journalistic spurs by his report of the so-called Amristar Massacre; and sitting in Rudyard Kipling's old newspaper office in Allahadad, he made his first attempts in writing fiction. More journeys as a correspondent followed--through Burma and Malaya to China, then to Africa. In 1931 he went to Portugal to experience his third revolution--and within two hours of his arrival in Lisbon received a bullet through his neck.
The following year William Makin sent his first stories to BLUE BOOK, and for many years they have been a frequent feature of our pages...At the outbreak of this war he joined up at once, and served for the most part as an intelligence officer in the Near East until after the close of the African campaign.
- submitted to The Pulp Rack by Peter Ruber
Links:
You'll find two more articles about William Makin from the pages of Blue Book here at The Pulp Rack. You can read "William J. Makin" by clicking here. You can read "William Makin: A Memoir" by clicking here.
"William J. Makin: A Bibliography in Progress" appears elsewhere on The Pulp Rack. Click here to see the listing.
Posted by ds at April 15, 2003 11:22 PM
