This Saturday, June 6, will be the 76th anniversary of D-Day, the battle that would come to represent the beginning of the end of World War II.
There was just one woman, a war correspondent, on the beaches at Normandy that day the allied forces liberated Western Europe from Nazi Germany: the singular Martha Gellhorn. Author Janet Somerville traces Gellhorn’s extraordinary life in her book Yours, For Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love and War.
"Since 1937, Martha had been a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine. She knew about the Allied invasion, that there was a plan to cover the Allied invasion of Normandy, and she was determined to cover that," Somerville said.
The problem was, her very famous husband at the time, Ernest Hemingway, pulled the rug out from under her professionally.
"Hemingway had gone to New York, introduced himself to her editor at Collier’s and said ‘I’ll be your war correspondent.’ And he took her accreditation papers. Which was a bit of a problem," said Somerville.
Each publication could send just one correspondent. But Gellhorn was resourceful and clever. She found herself passage on a munitions ship from New York that would get her to Europe. She was the only woman and the only civilian aboard that ship, which landed in Liverpool. Then, she just needed to get to Normandy.
"She lied to a military police officer down by a hospital ship, said she was going to interview nurses about the 'woman’s angle,' and they let her on, because, as she said, no one gave a hoot about the woman’s angle. It served as the perfect forged passport for her," said Somerville.
Once on board the hospital ship, Gellhorn locked herself into a bathroom until they sailed. When the ship docked in Normandy, she waded ashore through waist-deep water with some of the medical officers.
"She became the only woman and the only war correspondent to be actually on the beaches at Normandy, evacuating the wounded."
Though she was there as a journalist to write about the event, she couldn’t help but tend to the wounded soldiers. She had an uncanny ability, Somerville says, to focus on what needed to be done. So when she saw that the wounded were hungry and thirsty, she set to work.
"She just took it in her stride and found somebody who could bring teapots to tip into their mouths,if they couldn't hold a glass. She just took charge and made sure that they got something," Somerville said.
She also managed to be one of many correspondents who wrote about D Day.
"The incredible thing about D-Day is that accredited correspondents produced 700,000 words of text, just about D-Day," Somerville said. "Martha was one of them. She had a piece called 'Over and Back' that Collier’s published."
Gellhorn went on to report into her old age, from all corners of the globe. She filed her last piece, about the murdered street children of Salvador, Brazil, more than 50 years after D-Day, when she was 87 years old.
Yours, For Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love and War, 1930-1949 by Janet Somerville is available at the link above, or wherever you buy your books.
