DearTIME-Reader:

AS TIME'S domestic correspondents ->> reported the U.S.'s orderly process of decision by ballots for this issue, teams of our reporters and photographers in Middle Europe and the Middle East covered the grim struggles of other peoples to force decision by bullets. To bring you the latest developments in these momentous events, Foreign News Editor Thomas Griffith, just returned from Egypt, and National Affairs Editor Louis Banks kept their sections open from 48 to 65 hours beyond the usual Sunday-night closing deadline.

First tipoff to what was afoot in the Middle East came to our Israel Correspondent Monica Dehn one evening when she went shopping. Milling about her neighborhood grocery in Jerusalem were grim-faced men customers in brand-new uniforms. That was enough for Monica, who pointed up Israel's tough intentions as early as last January in her reports for our Ben-Gurion cover story. She found safe shelter for her two small children outside Tel Aviv and moved into base position at the Hotel Dan in time to become a war correspondent.

Soon she was joined by George de Carvalho from our Rome office. Other TIME staffers streamed out of our European bureaus heading for the Middle East. Among them were Paris Bureau Chief Frank White and Rafael Steinberg from London, who went to Cyprus to join the British-French forces. John

Mecklin opened an Arab listening post in Beirut. Keith Wheeler and Abu Said were in second-front position at Amman, Jordan.

In Middle Europe, a seven-man TIME-LIFE team, including Vienna Correspondent Edgar Clark and Paris' Tim Foote, who was later wounded (see PRESS), covered the fighting in Budapest, relaying their reports through Bonn Bureau Chief James Bell, who operated out of Clark's basement in Vienna. Our team was "adopted" by the then high-spirited rebels, about whom Bell cabled: "They were extraordinarily brave and cooperative people who wanted the West to get the full story. They led our reporters into battles, got them the best observation points, guarded them against ambush, even shared their food (thin soup, goose fat and bread)." When Russians captured our Bonn office's 1956 Ford (see cut) and consigned it to a tank pool, the friendly rebels recovered it undamaged with its valuable load of camera equipment intact.

By the time Russian reinforcements stormed into Hungary. Clark was our only staffer left in the capital and, with outside communication cut off, he made for the Austrian frontier to get his story out. Clark and a convoy of U.S. legation dependents were stopped by Mongol-manned Red tanks at the border, held there for two days and then allowed to cross.

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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