Reporting Under Fire

Martha Gellhorn jumped at the chance to take a flight from Hong Kong to Lashio, at the foot of the Burma Road, to report firsthand for Collier's Weekly on the conflict between China and Japan. When she boarded the "small tatty plane" she was handed "a rough brown blanket and a brown paper bag for throwing up." Reporting Under Fire tells readers about women who, like Gellhorn, risked their lives to bring back scoops from the front lines. Sigrid Schultz broadcast news via radio from Berlin on the eve of the Second World War, and was the first to report that Hitler was planning a pact with the Russians. Margaret Bourke-White rode with Patton's Third Army and brought back the first horrific photos of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Marguerite Higgins typed stories while riding in the front seat of an American jeep that was fleeing the North Korean Army. These 16 remarkable profiles illuminate not only the inherent danger in these reporters' jobs, but also their struggle to have these jobs at all. Without exception, these war correspondents share a singular ambition: to answer an inner call driving them to witness war firsthand, and to share what they learn via words or images. Kerrie Logan Hollihan is the author of Rightfully Ours, Elizabeth I, The People's Queen, Theodore Roosevelt for Kids, and Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids, and has written for Boy's Life and Bird Watcher's Digest. She lives in Blue Ash, Ohio.