National Geographic Online profiles women who covered World War II.
The tall, strikingly beautiful Martha Gellhorn was a talented writer whose philandering husband, Ernest Hemingway, claimed she secretly loved war and was happiest there. She vehemently disagreed, writing powerful anti-war pieces for Collier’s magazine. Always chafing at U.S. Army restrictions, Gellhorn traveled in Italy with Free French troops?more accommodating, unsurprisingly, to women reporters?then bucked the system by arriving on the D-Day invasion beaches as a stowaway. Stripped of her accreditation, she nevertheless used charm and wit, courage and quick feet to keep up with the armies. She accompanied a night combat mission in the skies over Germany, flak bursting around the airplane, and as her marriage dissolved, had a torrid affair with General James Gavin of 82nd Airborne. Her work was fiercely uncompromising. For many, Gellhorn’s dispatches set new standards for narrative frontline journalism. Her volume The Face of War remains as strong an indictment as any penned by the Hemingways of the world.
Here’s a picture of Gellhorn I found here.
