Downs and other foreign correspondents entered Stalingrad days after the Germans surrendered the battle. He described the scene in a graphic broadcast, saying: "There are sights and smells and sounds in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick at your stomach." Over the next several months, correspondents were gradually given more access to liberated areas, and Downs reported on developments such as the summer Russian counteroffensive on the Central Front. They were shown the devastation in Oryol and Rzhev soon after the occupying Nazi troops retreated in March 1943.