FIGHTING WORDS: The War Correspondents of World War Two

by Richard Collier ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 1990

A quick-step march through the ranks of print and broadcast journalists who reported WW II from the Allies' side. Collier (The Rainbow People, The Road to Pearl Harbor, etc.) spent a couple of years in Burma, logging the ""small change of war,"" bomb damage, civilian morale, and black-market rates. In the main, however, he's a remarkably unobtrusive presence in the kaleidoscopic narrative, which ranges from the bated boredom of 1939's sitz krieg through the postatomic drama of V-J-Day. While thousands of correspondents and photographers from dozens of nations covered the global conflict, the author focuses on the Americans and British who made names for themselves in the Pacific as well as European theaters. For example, he touches without dwelling on the experiences of, among others, Clare Boothe, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Alan Moorehead, Quentin Reynolds, Eric Sevaraid, and Richard Tregaskis. Otherwise celebrated by-liners like Erskine Caldwell and Ernest Hemingway make cameo appearances as well. Along his roughly chronological way, Collier comments knowledgeably on a wealth of important stories that were either suppressed by military censors or soft-pedaled by home-front editors. Cases in point include the scope of the Dunkirk evacuation, the extent of the damage inflicted on London by Luftwaffe raids, the nature of the threat posed by kamikazes during the Philippines campaign, and the true horrors of such Nazi death camps as Bergen-Belsen. Without detracting from the bravery of those who slogged through combat zones, the author spins some grand yarns about the foibles of freewheeling war correspondents. Virtually all seemed to believe the best available creature comforts were only their due, and some few of the less intrepid engaged in a dubious practice dubbed magic carpeting, i.e., accepting an official press briefing as gospel and then using a glamorous dateline (say, Arnhem or Cologne) on one's dispatch, though filing from a secure rear area. Fine nostalgic fare for older readers and a rousing primer for members of the TV generation on how very well newspaper, magazine, and radio reporters performed under fire.

Pub Date: March 19, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION