First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent

“Dickey Chapelle should be a household name,” writes historian and cultural critic Rinehart in her entertaining debut, a biography of the first American female journalist to be killed in combat. Born Georgette Louise Meyer in 1918, Chapelle went from a job promoting a Miami air show to working for an airline’s publicity department, then selling her photographs to National Geographic on assignment during WWII. Posted to Iwo Jima, she documented the travails and triumphs of U.S. Marines to encourage Americans to donate blood. After the war, she toured Europe to study the impact of the Marshall Plan, then went on assignment, mostly for Reader’s Digest, in various hot spots around the world. She embedded with the Algerian Revolutionary Army, was arrested by Soviet border guards and spent five weeks in solitary confinement while covering the Hungarian Revolution, “patrolled the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the Cambodian border” with the Vietnamese Airborne Brigade in 1961, marched with the Cuban Revolutionary Army, and was killed by shrapnel in 1965 while on patrol with a Marine platoon in Vietnam. Throughout her career, Chapelle endured and overcame mockery and misogyny, and became a fierce critic of “press censorship and counterproductive military tactics.” Jam-packed with colorful details and incisive character sketches, this is a vivid reappraisal of a pioneering journalist. (July)