Reporting Under Fire (27 page)

Martha Raddatz is appalled at the gap in understanding between the lives of everyday Americans and the soldiers who fight for the United States in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. “We've got a country that doesn't connect with the military … one in five are coming home with mental health issues and the suicide rate is
enormous,”
she told a group of college students and their parents.

She points to the “war weariness” of Americans at home, where returning veterans and their families all too often fall through society's cracks. Multiple deployments—as many as three or four separate combat assignments—result in posttraumatic stress that plagues veterans throughout the ranks, from infantrymen on up to soldiers with stars on their shoulders. “One of the stresses we don't talk about is the stress on the generals, quite frankly,” she said. “The horrible, horrible suicide rate” among the military is “an absolute crisis.”

On a PBS program, Martha explained her concerns further:

Multiple deployments are so underappreciated by the American public. Sometimes they [returning servicemen and women] don't really engage when they come home. They can't …
I
have found that through the years,
frankly. You're going back and forth, and you're in this horrible situation and you can't quite relate … when you come back, with friends or with your family because they weren't there.

Magnify that by a trillion times with these soldiers who are fighting, who are seeing the most horrific things that you can imagine, and then they're expected to come back and drive the minivan.

Martha Raddatz is now chief global correspondent for ABC News. In October 2012, she moderated the vice presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan. The morning after the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013, she tweeted, “A crew from overseas on my plane to Boston to cover the attack. Usually it is me going overseas to cover their attacks.” Follow her on Twitter at
@MarthaRaddatz
.

Y
ou live in a world that moves faster every year. The notion of war correspondents packing typewriters, invading telegraph offices, broadcasting over huge microphones, or developing photographs in bathtubs may seem old-fashioned and irrelevant. Their world isn't your world. Mass communications (when I studied journalism in the 1970s, we mostly called it “the press”)—the mix of daily newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines, and three national broadcast networks—has morphed into a frenzy of social media, the 24-hour news cycle, dying newspapers, and too many bloggers to count or read.

Yet, in the midst of this new, crazy communications medium we call cyberspace (new when you compare the past 15 or 20 years with 250-plus years of American journalism),
thinking
men and women must continue to ask, “What's real? What's not? Whose information do you trust?” Which is precisely what these 16 women asked of themselves and others as they worked as journalists in the field of war. “What's real? What's not? Whose information do you trust?”

If you picked this book up, you may well have an interest in news and current events, war, or history. Maybe you don't—and you read this for an assignment. Either way, there's something I think you should know.

You need to look for the truth.
Throughout your life, whether you're in school, at work, or learning about something for the joy of it, you should ask the same questions these women asked. What's real? What's not? Whose information do you trust? Like any honest reporter, you must question what you read and hear. You must question sources who give you information and take time to think about their motivations and objectives. Good reporters do that. So must you.

—KLH

Chapter 1
: World War I, 1914-1918

Henrietta Goodnough, aka Peggy Hull

“
It was July 4, 1917
…”: Wilda M. Smith,
The Wars of Peggy Hull: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent
(El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1991), 85.

“
wouldn't be caught dead
…”: Ibid., 30.

“
a-shopping
”: Ibid., 36.

‘“
chief stunt
…
is to
‘
have things happen to her
' …”: Ibid., 37.

“
I'm going to learn to shoot a rifle
…”: Ibid., 40.

“
Wherever the army was
…”: Ibid., 52.

“
little girls in red satin
…”: Ibid., 54.

“
Units became separated
…”: Ibid., 57.

“
Won't come back
…”:
Muscogee Times-Democrat
, January 3, 1919.

“
Peggy always dressed
…”: Irene Corbally Kuhn,
Assigned to Adventure
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott, 1938), 159.

“
gray devils
”:
The Wars of Peggy Hull
, 106.

“
undignified
”: Ibid., 110.

“
When we've won
…”:
Assigned to Adventure
, 112.

“P
EGGY
H
ULL,
N
ERVY
W
AR
…”: Ibid., 272.

“
If your only reason
…”:
The Wars of Peggy Hull
, 136.

“
I attended two dances
…”:
Deming Headlight
, January 10, 1919.

“
Siberia is on the threshold
…”:
The Wars of Peggy Hull
, 144.

“
a monarchistically inclined
…”: Ibid., 155.

“
China is worth the struggle
…”: Ibid., 169.

“
Go to work
…”: Ibid., 189.

“
The tenements crumbled
…”: Ibid., 190.

“
crazed fury of a trapped
…”: Robert Spiers Benjamin, ed.,
Eye Witness
(New York: Alliance Book Corporation, 1940), 5, 8.

“
You know
,”
he told her
: Ibid., 13.

“
In a seemingly endless
…”: Ibid., 8.

Louise Bryant, Bessie Beatty, and Rheta Childe Dorr

“
Whenever the firing
…”: Rheta Childe Dorr,
A Woman of Fifty
(New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1928), 339.

“
train deluxe
…”: Bessie Beatty,
The Red Heart of Russia
(New York: Century, 1918), 6.

“
Peace, joy, exultation
…”: Ibid., 17.

“
like a bone between two hungry dogs
”: Ibid., 65.

“
Suddenly my wandering
…”: Ibid., 66.

“
Ras dva tri chetiri
…”: Ibid., 100.

“
soldier girl
”: Ibid.

“
pushed them out
…”: Ibid.

“
I love my gun
…”: Ibid., 105.

“
simply have been
…”:
A Woman of Fifty,
365.

“
All the world knows
…”:
The Red Heart of Russia
, 109.

“
factory men with
…”: Ibid., 209.

“
great red arch
…”: Ibid., 210.

“
go about
”: Louise Bryant,
Six Red Months in Russia: An Observer's Account of Russia Before and During the Proletarian Dictatorship
(New York: George H. Doran, 1918), 267.

“
It is silly to defend
…”: Ibid.

“
To have failed
…”:
The Red Heart of Russia
, 480.

“
I saw a people
…”: Rheta Childe Dorr,
Inside the Russian Revolution
(New York: Arno Press, 1970), 2.

“[
I
]
had not dared
…”:
A Woman of Fifty
, 373.

“
had learned through
…”: Ibid., 380.

“
seemed amused
…”: Ibid., 382.

“
Her fans include
…”:
Time
, September 21, 1942.

Helen Johns Kirtland

“
Mrs. Kirtland is the first
…”:
Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
, August 24, 1918.

“
Bride of L. S. Kirtland
…”:
New York Times
, November 11, 1917.

“
try some photos
”: Quoted in Beverly Brannen, “Helen Johns Kirtland (1890–1979),” biographical essay, Library of Congress.

“
I am first beginning
…”: Ibid.

Chapter 2
: Between World Wars: 1920–1939

Irene Corbally Kuhn

“
Turn the calendar
…”:
Assigned to Adventure
, 432.

“
The girls and boys had
…”: Ibid., 13.

“
craftsman who learned
…”: Ibid., 15.

“
ink-stained company
…”: Ibid., 16.

“
nose for news
”: Ibid., 35.

“
short
,
bright
”: Ibid., 42.

“
the stenographer's delight
…”: Ibid., 63.

“
The war was over
…”: Ibid., 73.

“
grammatical someplace else
”: Ibid., 84.

“
new pert French
…”: Ibid., 99.

“
scorched reminders
…”: Ibid., 110.

“
We became so
…”: Ibid., 148.

“
graphically ghastly
”: Ibid., 115.

“
The standard requirements
…”:
Los Angeles Times
, October 19, 1986.

“
so profound and
…”: Ibid.

“
Work apart
…”:
Assigned to Adventure
, 270.

“
I borrowed my terrified
…”: Ibid.

“
paid for the baby
”: Ibid., 271.

“
Promptly at two
…”: Ibid., 312–13.

“husband dangerously”
:
Assigned to Adventure
, 352

“
Bert had been
…”: Ibid., 354.

“
unknown causes
”: Ibid., 354.

“
tremors of approaching
…”:
Los Angeles Times
, October 19, 1986.

“
I couldn't leave
…”: Irene Corbally Kuhn interview by Robert Cubbedge, November 20, 1969, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA.

“
please relay to San Francisco
”: Doris Weatherford,
American Women During World War II: An Encyclopedia
(New York: Routledge, 2010), 254.

“
It was a sadistic
…”: Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Tea and Ashes” in
Deadline Delayed
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947), 277.

“
victory
[which]
we let
…”: Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Women Don't Belong in Politics,”
The American Mercury
, August 1953, 3–6.

“
Your Child Is
…”:
American Legion
magazine, June 1952.

“
Women Don't Belong
…”:
American Mercury
magazine, August 1953.

“
You Ought to Get
…” :
American Mercury
magazine, November 1954.

Sigrid Schultz

“Berlin, September 1
…”: William Shirer,
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941
(New York, A.A. Knopf, 1941), 193.

“
trotted by his
…”: Sigrid Lillian Schultz,
Germany Will Try It Again
(New York: Neynal and Hitchcock, 1944), ix.

“
whose brain conceived
…”: Ibid., 13.

“
take their orders
…”: Ibid., 1.

“
Germany will try
…”: Ibid.

“
Hitler grabbed my
…”: Julia Edwards,
Women of the World: The Great Foreign Correspondents
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 64.

“
In 1930 I realized
…”:
Germany Will Try It Again
, ix.

“
a treacherous betrayal
…”: Ibid., 126.

“
as if exchanging
…”:
Women of the World
, 66.

“
the newest toast
…”: Nancy Caldwell Sorel,
The Women Who Wrote the War
(New York, Arcade Publishing, 1999), 64.

“
If Hitler says
…”: Ibid.

“
the German people
…”:
Germany Will Try It Again
, 86.

“
women would fight
…”: Ibid., 131.

“
The first picture
…”: Sigrid Schultz, “Angora: Pictorial Records of an SS Experiment,”
Wisconsin Magazine of History
50, no.4 (Summer 1967), 396.

“
the greatest threat
…”, “One Who Warned of the Nazis,”
New York Times
, March 13, 1977.

Dorothy Thompson

“
When I walked into
…”, Dorothy Thompson, “I Saw Hitler,”
Cosmopolitan
, March 1932, 32.

“
He is formless
…”: Ibid., 33.

“
The cleanup was
…”:
Harper's Bazaar
, December 1932, 50.

“
I approach life
…”: Marion K. Sanders,
Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Own Time
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 115–16.

“‘These people are all crazy …'”: Dorothy Thompson, “Goodbye to Germany,”
Harper's Bazaar
, December 1932, 46.

“It was white …”: Ibid., 50.

“Dorothy Thompson Expelled …”: Frederick T. Birchall, “Dorothy Thompson Expelled by Reich for ‘Slur' on Hitler,”
New York Times,
August 26, 1934, 1.