Martha Gellhorn, the only woman to report on the D-Day landings from the ground
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
This account drives home the horror and scale of that day that other accounts dont really match. It is always the reporting on the wounded, the innocents and the personal suffering that hits the hardest. This focus on the consequences of all the sacrifice on that day does more to honor the people who did the sacrificing than any story of the glory or tactics or generals ever could. Gellhorn says:
"There has to be a better way to run the world, and we had better see that we get it."
It is never more important than now to remember that. War is horrible. It is our collective responsibility to promote reason, compassion and peace in the hope of preventing as much war as we can. This was a good article.
Agreed, though...
"When the last person who remembers the last great war is dead, the next great war becomes inevitable."
https://apnews.com/article/d-day-france-russia-ukraine-wwii-...
I fear we're entering a risky time.
And to be prepared to fight a war when those things fail against a great evil.
We cant get complacent about these things because thats how we do get WW3. Lets all work to prevent that. Lets give Ukraine what they need to fight. Lets be more strict and hold Israel to a higher standard. Lets strengthen our presence in the south china sea and lets do it visibly and believably.
The only woman at D-Day: What Martha Gellhorn's letters reveal about her - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671660 - Sept 2022 (1 comment)
The Extraordinary Life of Martha Gellhorn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17543650 - July 2018 (3 comments)
It's a pretty even-keeled look at Gellhorn and Hemingway, peeling back the layers of personality and some of the mythos to reveal how they were not always nice people to be around (although, Hemingway does come across as particularly boorish). Gellhorn was incredibly precocious and driven and often hard-headed. The sheer distance she traveled in her life and the things she got up to were almost impossible for your average woman in America to fathom at that time. She probably needed to adopt a near insane sense of self-confidence to go through with some of the things. She had incredible expectations for herself and, unfortunately, the later years of her life never seemed to match what she wanted out of her life and come across as quite depressing. Then again, few birth-to-death biographies have entertaining later years.
They were also unable to keep their marriage working, even though divorce was somewhat scandalous at that time.
Two strong personalities may find it hard to create a strong pair.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/925368.Travels_With_Myse...
Thousands of men died and over 150000 risked their lives (a fair number against their will as military aged men were being drafted at the time).
80 years later, we get a whole article dedicated to one non-combatant female journalist.
Downvote, flag, move on?
I just wish there were more effective tools across the web, (i.e. not just HN) to tackle the people who are trying to cause division by derailing threads with argumentative comments.
As it shouldn't, as her sex is hardly relevant for the story she wrote.
Likewise, it doesn't matter for the story to mention that Gellhorn was arrested by military police for traveling to Normandy without permission after she returned to England. It's interesting for this article, but why should any information surrounding the author be mentioned in her “The Wounded Come Home” piece?
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Unless I'm missing something, the author isn't saying it should have been mentioned; only that it wasn't.
I honestly think I wasn't breaking the guidelines but I think this case really is up to interpretation, and do I understand where you're coming from. My interpretation of the part I quoted was that the author of the article included that second sentence with the intention of it being interpreted as "...but it should have been mentioned". But you're right, that's my reading, nowhere does it say explicitly that that information should have been mentioned.
In any event, just to clarify, I wasn't trying to troll.
You and I came up with different interpretations of this line: "No mention was made of the fact that she was the only female journalist on the ground at Omaha Beach":
Interpretation #1 (yours*): the author thinks the article should have mentioned that, and is perhaps implying something about sexism.
Interpretation #2 (mine): the author just finds it interesting that a striking fact was omitted.
Both our interpretations are plausible—I dare say equally plausible. But the guideline includes a "tie-breaker" for such cases: the word "strongest". This means that when there is more than one plausible interpretation, you should choose the one that makes for the strongest counter-argument to your criticism**.
In this case, #2 is clearly a stronger answer to the criticism "her sex is hardly relevant for the story she wrote" than #1 is, so the tie-breaker would favor #2.
This assumes that the commenter (you in this case) actually thinks of both #1 and #2 in the first place. Often this is not so. But at a meta level the guideline is also saying: "please think of as many interpretations you can and then choose the strongest one etc."
* I might not have phrased this fairly and in that case you can invoke the same guideline against me :)
** This is sometimes called "steelmanning" or "principle of charity".
I think your tie-breaker argument is totally fair which is why I didn't even try to contest it. But now that I'm thinking about it a little bit more, I do see a small issue with the guideline. Namely, for me as a commenter, it is ususally unclear whether my interpretation is indeed the strongest plausible one - for one, because what is "strongest" is, at least to a certain degree, subjective. But also, because it is unlikely that a commenter will ever be in a position to realize all possible interpretations of something they would like to comment on.
But like in this case, I don't have a problem in general with you (or someone else) barging in and flagging one of my comments, as long as it's fair, which in this case I think it was.
The upside of his guideline is that commenters should think twice before hitting the keyboard: is there perhaps an interpretation that I missed? I kinda doubt that that's going to become the new way to interact on the internet, but if it did, it would certainly be an improvement.
In the previous paragraph:
> Unlike his wife, Hemingway never went ashore at Normandy. On June 6, all he could do was watch from a landing craft as American soldiers fought their way onto Omaha Beach.
> Even though Gellhorn scooped Hemingway, his story ran first. “Voyage to Victory,” proclaimed the cover of Collier’s July 22, 1944, issue. The article identified Hemingway as “Collier’s famed war correspondent” and included a photo of the whiskered writer with Allied soldiers.
Only then does the section conclude with the line in question
> No mention was made of the fact that she was the only female journalist on the ground at Omaha Beach.
You can argue that the author just finds these and other facts interesting, and nothing more. I think that is ignoring the clear subtext present in the writing. The author is certainly making the case that she was not given the recognition she deserved; either because of her sex or her proximity to Hemingway. Because the author himself invoked her sex in the final line, I am inclined to think the former.
Publicity? They were happy enough to use her husbands name and image in a previous issue, so it’s not like they’re ethically opposed to doing so.
Even her treatment by military police after arrest was different.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
"I had been sent to Europe to do my job, which was not to report the rear areas or the 'woman’s' angle.”
https://www.military.com/history/how-martha-gellhorn-became-...
Despite the so far unanimous invalidation you are experiencing in this thread, I would say that Martha Gellhorn would have agreed with you
https://www.uso.org/stories/3005-over-200-years-of-service-t...
Women still face horrible discrimination, when it comes to combat deployment and deaths, even today!
There is a war going on right now, look at injury to death ratios. It would be nice to have some nurses around, maybe so many soldiers would not bleed to death!
And 20 years old woman is more physically capable than 60 years old male!
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
It’s not relevant to hackers or startups. Why is a woman to report on d day on hacker news? Because it’s a woman? I can’t figure out what is relevant to this community
Of course, it may not gratify your intellectual curiosity specifically, but no post is interesting to everybody. The goal is more to have a front page with a good probability distribution of interestingness over a wide range of smart readers. If you don't like this post, there are 29 others on the front page, and if you run out of interesting stories there, I recommend the 'past' link in the top bar, which will show you the front pages of previous 24 hour periods, going all the way back.
Journalism isn’t just what is or is not covered but what the focus of a story is.
Don't you see how people might get mad?
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
This particular story emphasizes "woman" partly because that's a key part of the story (it was unusual, against societal roles of the time), and partly because telling these stories now is corrective in multiple ways.
(And maybe also in the headline because that will get more eyeballs on the story, because people want those previously neglected stories, and that inspiration.)
I'm also sick of the stories of forgotten, now resurrected women who were, let's face it, minor players.
However, Gellhorn showed a lot of guts doing what she did. I admire that, too.
"I am a valuable contributor, sharing insights and questions; you are a shameless troll, spewing drivel and aggression."
And its cousins:
"Me? How can you moderate me? This is bias and censorship of the worst order."
and
"Ok, I may have overstepped a little, but the other started it with their obvious abuse. Am I not supposed to defend myself? You obviously must agree with them."
In the case of divisive topics "I" becomes "we", a.k.a. "my side", but the dynamic is basically the same.
All this is human nature so it's kind of hard to do anything about.
These Astounding Relics From the Omaha Beach Battle Tell The Story of D-Day 80 Years Later https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-america... - May 21, 2024
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