The One-Man Army Division (1940–1941)

Abstract

A ringing telephone in the middle of the night roused the peacefully sleeping van loon household in nieuw veere on 10 may 1940. Calling from New York was van Loon’s friend Elmer H. Davis, who had a daily radio program on CBS. Davis told van Loon that a few hours before German troops had invaded the Netherlands. The fragmentary news dispatches and Davis’s own unfamiliarity with the country’s geography, made him seek van Loon’help in trying to explain the situation in Holland to the American radio public. In a matter of minutes van Loon was en route to New York where in the remaining hours of the night he worked side by side with Elmer Davis in the studio.¹