Byron Darnton - With The New York Times

With The New York Times

At the New York Times, Darnton was selected to establish the newspaper’s “Review of the Week” section for a time, but in 1939 returned to reporting, and in 1940 began roving assignments that took him around the United States and eventually into the Pacific theater. During that period, he was married to Eleanor Choate and had two sons.

His first overseas assignment was in February 1941, when he was among the first correspondents to leave the United States for Australia. Once there, he took the first opportunity to move to forward bases in New Guinea where the United States 32nd Infantry Division had been designated to be one of the first U.S. units to attack the Japanese. Darnton had served with the 32nd Infantry Division during World War I and was looking forward to reporting its operations in World War II. He was based near Port Moresby and his reporting included his characteristic wit through amusing anecdotes related by servicemen, and discussed the mood of the troops on the ground and their thoughts regarding the war and its future. On October 18, 1942, Darnton was aboard a lugger off the coast Pongani in New Guinea when a B-25 mistook the ships for Japanese vessels and bombed them. Darnton and Lt. A. B. Fahnestock were killed.

His notebook, which was taken from his body by a fellow correspondent and returned to his son, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Darnton in 1976, ended with a question about the bomber that would end his life: “Jap or ours?”

Darnton’s passing was marked by many other journalists and officials, including General Douglas MacArthur, who wired to the Times that “He served with gallantry and devotion at the front and fulfilled the important duties of war correspondent with distinction to himself and The New York Times and with value to his country.” Major General Edwin F. Harding of the 32nd Infantry Division wrote that, "Everyone hereabouts is distressed over the death of Darnton and Fahnestock. I knew Darnton quite well... and considered him one damn good correspondent and swell guy. He was hot to be on the spot for the first contact of American Army ground troops with the Japs. I told him that this would probably be it and gave him permission to go." Darnton was buried with full military honors at an Australian-American cemetery outside Port Moresby.