Wartime Wednesday: Reporting the War

Wartime Wednesday: Reporting the War

Stephen Crane and a woman most
scholars believe is Cora Stewart Taylor

In 1897, Randolph Hearst's New York Journal appointed reporter Cora Stewart Taylor as "the first woman war correspondent" to cover the Greco-Turkish war with her common-law husband, the writer Stephen Crane. A highly unusual move considering that female journalists were tasked with covering the four Fs: food, fashion, furnishings, and family.

Then the Great War (WWI) came and with it an explosion of print media. The industry now had a platform, and women began to seek opportunities to break into the quintessential male profession of war reporting.

The military, however, had its own goals. It used the accreditation process as its first line of control over war correspondents, and the War Department refused outright to accredit women. Nevertheless, several women, despite being untrained as journalists, were sent to Europe to cover "the woman's side of the war." The Saturday Evening Post's editor, whose main readership was two million middle-class women, believed that there was a woman's point of view or "woman's angle." He also maintained that, "The big story of a war is never at the front. It is in the hospitals and in the homes."

Then came WWII.

Once again, the military used the accreditation process to determine who could and couldn't cover the war. A lengthy process that required background checks on the application as well as his or her family, weeded out many candidates. According to Life photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, "By the time you are accredited you have no secrets from the War Department and neither do your ancestors."

Accreditation acted as a contract: The Army or Navy transported correspondents into war zones, fed and sheltered them, and sent their dispatches home. In return, correspondents followed military law and censorship. Correspondents who defied rules lost credentials.

Nearly every commander in the Allied forces refused to allow women near combat. They feared women breaking under pressure (a fate that befell some men), balking at the lack of women's latrines, or influencing soldiers to take risks to protect them.

Needless to say, this frustrated most of the female reporters:

Journalist Martha Gellhorn (Ernest Hemingway's third wife) is considered by many to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She said, "I have too frequently received the impression that women war correspondents were an irritating nuisance. I wish to point out that none of us would have our jobs unless we knew how to do them and this curious condescending treatment is as ridiculous as it is undignified."

Journalist Dickey Chapelle who received accreditation to the Pacific Fleet and given the nominal rank of lieutenant commander said, "I want to go as far forward as you will let me." This attitude got her all the way to Iwo Jima. Later, she got an assignment to photograph the use of whole blood in saving lives. Chapelle saw action after she talked her way into land-based hospitals, following the blood. She was found, arrested, and evicted...after having gotten her story.

Martha Gellhorn's career lasted sixty years, and she covered nearly ever major event that occurred during that time. In order to reach the beach and report on the D-Day invasion, she sneaked aboard a hospital ship and hid in the bathroom during the entire voyage then impersonated a stretcher bearer. She got the story, but lost her credentials. Her response? "I followed the war wherever I could reach it."

By the end of the war, of the nearly 2,000 accredited war correspondents in WWII, 127 were women.

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About The Widow & The War Correspondent:

Are a new life and new love possible in a country devastated by war?

Barely married before she’s widowed after Pearl Harbor three years ago, journalist Cora Strealer travels to England where she’s assigned to work with United Press’s top reporter who thinks the last place for a woman is on the front lines. Can she change his opinion before D-Day? Or will she have to choose her job over her heart?

A sought-after journalist, Van Toppel deserves his pick of assignments, which is why he can’t determine the bureau chief’s motive for saddling him with a cub reporter. Unfortunately, the beautiful rookie is no puff piece. Can he get her off his beat without making headlines…or losing his heart?

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Traveling Tuesday: St. Malo, France

 Traveling Tuesday: St. Malo, France

Thanks to a big “oops” on the part of the military, Vogue war correspondent Lee Miller scored her first major scoop in St. Malo, France.

Located on the English Channel coastline of northwestern France in Brittany, St. Malo is a walled port city that was founded in the first century by the Romans. Filled with medieval castles and Gothic cathedrals, the city was notorious throughout its history for being the home of French privateers and pirates. Often referred to as the brightest jewel on the Emerald Coast of Brittany, a cultural region that was once its own independent then duchy before united with the Kingdom of France, St. Malo is now a major tourist destination.

But in 1944, it was decimated by American shelling and bombing and British naval gunfire. Inaccurate intelligence reports indicated there were thousands of Axis troops and countless armaments within the city walls. According to an interview with St. Malo resident, Heloise, two citizens found their way to the American commander and informed him there were approximately seventy-five Germans in the city. More importantly, there were hundreds of civilians who could not get out because the Germans had locked the gates.

However, the report was not believed, and the assault began. After two full weeks of attack, only 182 of the original 865 buildings still stood.

Women war correspondents were typically prohibited from the front line, and even if they received permission to go, very few military leaders would transport them into combat zones. However, Lee had been told the fighting was over, so she arrived in historical city only to find herself in the midst of the assault. Hiding in a German dugout under the ramparts, she escaped with her life to write about the “sordid ugly destruction they {the Germans} had conjured up in the once beautiful town.”

When she was discovered by the Allied commanders she was promptly arrested, but still managed to get her article submitted to Vogue. Filled with shocking photographs and copy, the piece was a gritty, realistic eyewitness to the war.

Have you ever heard of St. Malo?

Wartime Wednesday: Those Who Have Gone Before

Wartime Wednesday: Those Who Have Gone Before

As men headed overseas or moved into the defense jobs during WWII, a void was created in every industry from agriculture to manufacturing. Initially, employers were reluctant to hire women, instead using prisoners of war, interned Japanese-Americans, and males too old or too young to go into the armed forces. Eventually, companies realized that without using women, production goals would never be met.

However, there was one industry that seemed to have no shortage of men: journalism. Nearly every newspaper and magazine in the U.S. from tiny weekly periodicals to national publications employed a man who covered the conflict on location. In order to be allowed in a war zone, a reporter had to be accredited. Accreditation was a long, tedious process, but by the end of the war over 1,473 men and 127 women had achieved that coveted status.

Martha Gellhorn and
then husband Hemingway

Despite their approval, many female correspondents faced scorn, derision, and opposition in the form of refusal to transport them to the front, as was part of the “deal” of being accredited. Instead, they had to coerce, bribe, or charm their way onto jeeps, trucks, or ships. Collier’s journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote in a letter to military authorities, “I have too frequently received the impression that women war correspondents were an irritating nuisance. I wish to point out that none of us would have our jobs unless we knew how to do them, and this curious condescending treatment is as ridiculous as it is undignified.”

Dickey Chappelle

Unable to get to Normandy on D-Day any other way, Gellhorn stowed away on a hospital ship. When told by one hard-nosed general that he didn’t want his Marines to have to pull up their pants because she was around Dickey Chappelle responded, “That won’t bother me one bit. My object is to cover the war.” And ex-fashion photographer Lee Miller managed to make her way to Dachau where she captured pictures of the camp’s liberation. These women the other 124 correspondents exhibited grit and grace to get the job done.

My forthcoming release, Under Fire, features War Correspondent/Amateur Sleuth Ruth Brown. It is my hope that her story will honor those correspondents who forged the trail for future generations of women who can now choose to do or be anything they want.