Iron and Ink

War Correspondents don’t have it easy. They must work full-time as a journalist while dealing with the harsh realities of war. War Correspondents are faced with difficulties every day, from active threats on their life, to experiencing hellish conditions, and surviving in unfamiliar territory, just so they can report on what is going on for the people who cannot be there to witness it. Going to war is a prominently masculine space still in 2025. Women are still not treated as equals in the services, and journalists are not special in that regard. This blog investigates a very brief history of some of the first women journalists and their accomplishments. Highlighting their work and contributions to the media to display the skills they brought to table and prove that they were just as good as their male coworkers and counterparts. These women had to face the same terrible conditions, sometimes fighting to gain the right to, and deliver stories just as good as the men reporting on the same conflicts. Women correspondents today face some of the same challenges.

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"Who were the women war reporters? With the exception of nineteen year old Dorothy Lawrence, they generally came from the higher social classes and were well educated. They were financially independent and had established professional careers in journalism, literature, travel writing and photography. Often they were politically active as suffragists, pacifists and social reformers. Frequently, they broke with the social conventions of their times, when women were expected to become housewives and raise children." -Stephanie Seul in Myriad Faces of Female War Reporting During The First World-war.

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Another journalist worth mentioning is Dorothy Lawrence, a journalist as well as a veteran. Stephanie Seul said, "In November 1917 the New Zealand Free Lance called her one of the longest serving war correspondents of the First World War," solidify her place in history. She's also known for dressing up as a man to trick the British army into letting her serve according to spartacus-educational.com.

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Marie Colvin Memorial Foundation

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For a more modern female War correspondent, we have Marie Colvin. The Marie Colvin Memorial Foundation details Colvin's long portfolio in the war journalism space. They detail her having a special interest in covering the Middle East, a specific event where she saved over 1,500 people, and tells the story of how she lost her eye to shrapnel from an RPG.

They also share in detail the events leading up to her death while covering the Syrian war in Homs. According to the foundation, she was covering civilian deaths on major news networks, and was with other correspondents when she died.

"Marie was killed when the makeshift media center where she and several other journalists were staying was bombed by Syrian rocket fire. The attack also killed acclaimed French photographer, Rémi Ochlik, and injured British photographer Paul Conroy, Syrian translator Wael al-Omar, and French journalist Edith Bouvier."

A list of journalists killed during the Syrian civil war has her name along side other correspondents who lost their lives to that conflict.

In her obituary hosted on The Guardian it says, "Marie Colvin, who has been killed by a shell in Syria aged 56, was a fearless but never foolhardy war correspondent who believed passionately in the need to report on conflicts from the frontline. In a career spanning 30 years, she covered wars from around the world for the Sunday Times and was renowned for her compassionate, clear writing. She was committed to reporting on the realities of war, especially the effects on civilians."

Colvin was mourned far and wide after her death. She serves as an inspiration for war correspondent's who want to cause real change and save lives, as well as a reminder the job is dangerous. She not only lost her eye earlier in her career, but sacrificed her life to try to get help for the people of Syria later.

The Marie Colvin Memorial Foundation says it, "was established to honor Marie’s legacy by supporting what she believed in and represented – the power of journalism to make a positive difference in the world and address the injustice of violence inflicted on innocent victims of war."

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War and fashion photographer Toni Frissel's "Portrait of Tuskegee airman Edward M. Thomas, standing" hosted on The Library of Congress' website.

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In "Martha Gellhorn: Eyewitness to War" the author paints a sophisticated picture of Gellhorn as a successful war correspondent and author. Detailing her history living in the White House with her friend First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, meeting her husband Ernest Hemingway, and extensively devoting herself to being a journalist.

That devotion is what that article angles as a reason for Hemingway and Gellhorn's marital issues. It even details a letter that she received while working as a war correspondent from Hemingway, “Are you a war correspondent or a wife in my bed?” which prompted her to end her work early and return home to find her husband in an affair.

The breakdown of why or how they break up doesn't steal the show, though, because the consequences following the divorce landed Gellhorn on the beach in time to cover D-Day.

It wasn't easy, as the article explains, "She rushed to the southern British coastline and discovered a hospital ship. She gained access to the ship by lying to the military police saying that she was supposed to interview the nurses on board, and she then stowed away in a bathroom for the journey across the English Channel," which shows the lengths Gellhorn would go to do her job.

This paid off by her getting exclusive interviews from service men in the battle. The article explains, "When she got back to the hospital ship, she took time to record the conversations of the wounded soldiers from the beach as they waited to be retrieved from the beach on D-Day - again showing the human spirit in the face of war and devastation," which is a good way of explaining Gellhorn's reporting style and stories she leaned towards.

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The National World War Two Museum

Lee Miller was one of the first journalists to capture anything to do with the horrors of concentration camps at the end of WWII.

She had arrived with US soldiers at the camp of Buchenwald, where they were sent to help free everyone,

According to The National World War Two Museum in a profile of Miller, when the armies who were sent to help arrived there, they weren't prepared for the 21,000 prisoners who were left starving and actively dying in front of them, nor the conditions from the camp.

She was able to take this photo of the first set of remains leaving the camp in Germany, that shows a mix of prisoners and soldiers carrying them.

Miller's coverage of the camp wasn't only of her own observations inside the camp, but also from the social interactions happening after arriving after the liberation.

She shared this about the experience when General Patton made locals in the area visit the camps to see the acts of their people in Vogue:

“The tourists invited by General Patton fainted all over the place, although some remained arrogant. Even after the place was ninety-five percent cleaned up, soldiers who are used to battle casualties lying in ditches for weeks are sick and miserable at what they see here.”

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Top Photo: Women war correspondents in the European theater. From left: Mary Welsh, Dixie Tighe, Kathleen Harriman, Helen Kirkpatrick, Lee Miller, and Tanie Long. National Archives, NAID: 276537001.

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U.S. Army, press censorship in World War I

Fort Huachuca, Arizona - When military intelligence became a full-fledged member of the War Department's General Staff, it took on a number

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WWII brought a new wave of positions in and out of the military for women to take part of. But war journalism was something few women had been involved in until this time. Journalisminaction.org breaks down how this came to change, explaining, “Women were called upon to fill the vacant jobs in factories and businesses, and as war correspondents.” It is widely known women fulfilled emptying roles left by deployed soldiers, but less known is they took up journalism jobs that were not accessible to them before.  

This change in the rules led to people all over the world hearing and seeing what women made or reported on. They used all the same kinds of mediums as men, “Female journalists in print, photography, and radio made important contributions to the war effort by informing citizens at home and highlighting the human devastation of the conflict,” and added to the conversation just the same, but weren’t given access to everything. 

These woman war journalists were banned from more extreme combat zones and violent situations. One journalist who refused to listen to these orders was May Craig. May Craig covered the “V-bomb raids in London and the liberation of Paris,” as well as campaigned for women to share the same rights as men, as noted by Journalisminaction.org. She was also a member of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Press Conference Association.  

Her contributions to journalism and women's rights has not been forgotten. The Library of Congress describes her efforts, "The former suffragist also spearheaded countless initiatives to raise the professional status of female news correspondents in the corridors of official power and the capital press corps," and has a collection of pictures of her working and examples of some of her work displayed on their website.