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

by Lorissa Rinehart

Overview

"From the beginning of World War II through the early days of Vietnam, groundbreaking female photojournalist and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle chased dangerous assignments her male colleagues wouldn't touch, pioneering a radical style of reporting that focused on the humanity of the oppressed. She documented conditions across Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War. She marched down the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the South Vietnamese Army and across the Sierra Maestra Mountains with Castro. She was the first reporter accredited with the Algerian National Liberation Front, and survived torture in a communist Hungarian prison. She dove out of planes, faked her own kidnapping, and endured the mockery of male associates, before ultimately dying on assignment in Vietnam with the Marines in 1965, the first American female journalist killed while covering combat. Chapelle overcame discrimination both on the battlefield and at home, with much of her work ultimately buried from the public eye--until now. In First to the Front, Lorissa Rinehart uncovers the incredible life and unparalleled achievements of this true pioneer, and the mark she would make on history"--

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798885794107
Publisher:	Gale, A Cengage Group
Publication date:	11/22/2023
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	678
Sales rank:	1,115,889
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Cultural critic and historian LORISSA RINEHART writes about art, war, politics, and the places where these discourses intersect. Her writing has recently appeared in Hyperallergic, Perfect Strangers, and Narratively, among other publications. She holds an MA from NYU in Experimental Humanities and a BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I
1. A World on the Brink of War
2. Trial by Fire, Reporting from Panama
3. The Way Back
4. As Far Forward
5. To the Front
6. Floating City
7. Okinawa
8. The Limit of Human Endurance
9. The War at Home
Part II
10. The Crater of Recent Peace
11. Home Again
12. Incrementalism
13. Naples
14. Iraq
15. Iran
16. India
17. Leaving
18. Starting Again
Part III
19. The Iron Curtain Is a Cornfield
20. Imprisonment
21. Scar Tissue
22. The Algerian Liberation Front
23. Becoming a Perpetual Motion Machine
Part IV
24. Cuba
25. With Her Eyes Wide Open
26. Laos
Part V
27. Guerrilla Warfare
28. The Sea Swallows
29. No Turning Back Now
30. Freedom of the Press
31. Ninety Miles
32. Water War
33. On Patrol with the Marines
Epilogue: Into That Heaven of Freedom
Acknowledgments
Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/10/2023

“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)

Publishers Weekly

"An extraordinary story....Reads like a Hollywood movie." —The Wall Street Journal

"Compelling and detailed...a thrilling adventure story." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Remarkable." —The Christian Science Monitor

"Jam-packed with colorful details and incisive character sketches, this is a vivid reappraisal of a pioneering journalist." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Unforgettable....A valuable, long-overdue tribute to an American woman whose work and commitment to human rights is more relevant than ever." —BookPage (starred review)

"A life brazenly lived and a tale compellingly told....To see war through photojournalist Dickey Chapelle’s eyes is to witness not only battles fought on distant shores, but also those waged at home against individuals who dare to unearth the truth and strive to break free of the limitations others seek to place on them. With gripping, fluid storytelling, this enthralling account of Dickey Chapelle is given well deserved and illuminating new light and life." —Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author of The Girls of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together

"Thanks to Lorissa Rinehart's detailed and heartfelt biography, we now know about the fascinating life of the photojournalist known as Dickey Chapelle....Readers will be pulled into this book and won't want to be let go."
—Tom Clavin, New York Times bestselling author of Lightning Down

"An astonishing story...exquisite. After reading this enthralling book, now, when someone asks, 'What three people from history would you have over for dinner?' My first choice is easy: At the head of the table is the incomparable Dickey Chapelle. Next to her, the other two guests will be fighting for table scraps." —Buddy Levy, author of Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

"From a hospital ship at Iwo Jima to the Ho Chi Mihn trail, a bracing account of a female combat reporter who risked everything to inform the American public." —Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences

"An extraordinary story, told with cinematic flair. Chapelle's groundbreaking career should be studied in every journalism school in the country. Rinehart's vivid prose makes us feel like we're right there with her through all her trials and triumphs." —J. Martin Daughtry, author of Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq

From the Publisher

With a story as gripping as this chronicle of a female war correspondent, narrator Kate Handford wisely stays out of the way. She recounts the life of Dickey Chapelle at a steady pace, expressing emotion where appropriate and regularly pausing to let selected passages sink in. Even though this is a biography, not an autobiography, Handford almost becomes Chapelle, whose career took off when she reported from the front of the Pacific Theater during WWII. Later, she spent weeks in solitary confinement in a Hungarian prison run by the Communist secret police, reported on the Algerian independence movement from the inside, wrote about being in Cuba with Fidel Castro, and died while covering Marines in Vietnam. This biography reveals a significant but largely unknown journalist, and Handford does justice to the work. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2023 - AudioFile