DICKEY CHAPELLE UNDER FIRE
Nonfiction
Whiskey-voiced legend ...
DICKEY CHAPELLE UNDER FIRE:
Female War Correspondent Killed in Action
136 pp. Wisconsin Historical Society Press
By John Garofolo
Reviewed by William C. Crawford
Dickey Chapelle was a woman and an intrepid, pioneer combat photographer. In many important ways she was like the Marines that she often followed into battle. She had a nose for the images of war, but her work also captured the human side.
She died in 1965 before Vietnam became a lost cause for American forces. A Marine patrol she joined hit a booby trap south of Chu Lai. Flying shrapnel severed her carotid artery.
Legendary combat photographer Henri Huet caught a poignant image of a chaplain administering last rites to Chapelle on the battlefield.
Huet and other well known photographers would themselves later perish in a helicopter shot down over Laos in the waning days of the War.
Dickey proved herself as a war correspondent during the later years of World War II. She defied military orders in order to shoot stark photos from Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Her correspondent credentials were revoked by the high brass because she refused to behave like a woman and shoot from the safety of the rear echelons. After the wars she and her photographer husband, Tony, covered the massive Allied relief effort to rebuild Europe.
Political revolutionaries in wars around the globe trusted the forthright Wisconsonite by allowing her access to their clandestine operations. She produced startling images of the Castro brothers’ 26 July movement in Cuba. She also embedded with Algerian rebels against the French in North Africa. She often got these dicey assignments only because no male photographer would take the risks.
John Garofolo presents a book that is heavy on photography with a sparse biographical narrative. Chapelle was not a technically oriented shooter. Her images pack a wallop even when her camera settings were a hair off perfect. The urgency of the moment and the message of the image were always paramount in Chapelle’s technique. The visual history of the conflicts she covered are far richer because she was not overly fascinated with her light meter.
Reviewing a volume like this is a bittersweet undertaking. As a former Army photojournalist, I arrived in Nam just a few years after Chapelle died. The legendary combat shooters who trained me still spoke in reverent tones about that “woman Marine who would shoot anywhere.” I have a hollow feeling about not having worked with Dickey. It would have been like flying with Amelia Earhardt.
When Chapelle perished in combat no one ever mentioned that she was a woman. A Marine general lamented that “she was one of us!” The Corps gave a full military funeral in her native Wisconsin and would later name a prestigious service award in her honor.
The Marines then were way ahead of their time. Her toughness under fire mattered more than her damn gender. Today’s women warriors often get little in the way of respect. Chapelle’s story should be an inspiration about how not to take no for an answer.
Today’s male Marines might not appreciate Chapelle at first. She would probably have a lot to say about that. This is a book about a woman in battle who was fully embraced by the Marine Corps. This fact makes her story very important. Her life illustrates the value of opportunity. She created her own chances and died taking advantage of them.
The historical written tour de force of combat photography is Requiem: By The Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina. Dickey Chapelle’s bio there reads, in part, “Whiskey-voiced and brave, Dickey spent most of her adult life in a man’s world. She knew how to parachute out of planes as well as how to fly one. She had adventures in three wars, and was remembered by nearly everyone she met! She was the kind of reporter all women in journalism openly or secretly aspire to be. She was always where the action was!"
No other American woman photographer can be found in the pages of this Requiem. The few other female shooters included were of the communist persuasion. In American combat photography, Chapelle stood alone as a distaff trailblazer. Garofolo’s book finally recognized why her stature looms so large even as women still struggle for military acceptance.
Comments
Post a Comment