History of Normalcy, Part 1: "Girls"

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My wife, Patti Digh, and I have long talked about the history of normalcy—a history of what looks to be “normal”, or standard, or acceptable at one time that became not so over the course of time.  Buying and selling human beings, women and their children being property of her spouse, Chinese immigrants not have (any) legal rights, are three good candidates (among thousands) for this history.  It is an interesting proposition to think about—what things around you, or better yet, what thing you think or say or do, that look good and acceptable today might look embarrassing and unacceptable thirty years hence.  In 1935 one issue might’ve been accepting the codified behavior of treating women as less than equal of men, deserving less in the workplace (if they were in the workplace), less rights in the courts, less deserving of equality in general; by 1965, this viewpoint may have well been in the minority; by 1995 it begins to look fossilized; by 2025 it might well be unbelievable.  What are the issues of 2009 that could be the equivalent of the 1935 issue?

And so the first in th is series:  the October 1951 issue of Life magazine’s article by Carl Mydans (the great and esteemed war and documentary photographer), “Girl War Correspondent”.  It is a sympathetic look at a sharp minority in the American newspaper business:  the female war correspondent.  Or, in this case, the “girl” correspondent. One would hardly refer to Edward Murrow as “the male correspondent Edward R. Murrow”, or “Edward R. Murrow, Boy Correspondent”.  The “girl” in this case was Miss Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966), aged 30.  She was a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, and covered the war, boots on the ground, covering the war in Korea.  Mydans gives a creditable review of Higgins very active and dangerous participation in the war effort.  It was not the intention of the article though to look at where Higgins had been before Korea; particularly, what she had been doing in 1944 and 1945.  AS a matter of fact Higgins was a correspondent for the Herald Tribune in Paris and London in 1944/5, and later sent to Germany in March 1945.  She received a combat ribbon for helping in securing the surrender of SS guards when she witnessed the liberation of Dachau.. Afterward she covered the Nuremberg trials and the Soviet blockade of Berlin.

In spite of all that she was banned from covering the war in Korea.  If not for the personal appeal/demand of Douglas MacArthur (who telegraphed Higgins’superiors at the Herald Tribune “BAN ON WOMEN CORRESPONDENTS IN KOREA HAS BEEN LIFTED. MARGUERITE HIGGINS IS HELD IN HIGHEST PROFESSIONAL ESTEEM BY EVERYONE”) she and all other female correspondents would’ve been kept out of the war. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (in 1951, for Korea), and would go on to cover international affairs, winding up in Vietnam for Newsday in 1963.  As a result of her years of experience she wrote, in 1965 (!), Vietnam U.S. Our  Nightmare: The story of involvement in the Vietnamese tragedy, with thoughts on a future policy New York (Harper and Row).

In spite of it all, given her experience in WWII and her developing coverage in Korea , she was, in October 1951, still a girl. 

Three interesting works on women war correspondents:

Penny Colemans’s Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II

The Women Who Wrote the War by Nancy Caldwell Sorel

War, Women, and the News: How Female Journalists Won the Battle to Cover World War II by Catherine Gourley

Comments

[Rick Hamrick]

John, in researching Penny Coleman, I discovered her valiant efforts to bring to light the tragedy inherent in how our government has treated returning troops suffering from post-traumatic stress injury.

She married a Vietnam vet in 1971 who later committed suicide. It was decades before she began her study of the issue, and her book, "Flashback," published in 2006, was the result. Her testimony before a congressional committee in 2007 is available on Youtube and is compelling to watch.

[it turns out that the author of the book on women covering World War II is actually Penny Colman (no "e" in the last name). She also has written a number of other books, including one on female spies during the Civil War]

[John Ptak]

Oops--thanks for the info on Colman and Coleman, Rick; I appreciate it.