[HN Gopher] Martha Gellhorn, the only woman to report on the D-D...
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Martha Gellhorn, the only woman to report on the D-Day landings
from the ground
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-06-06 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| ghaff wrote:
| Hemmingway and Gellhorn is a pretty good watch with an emphasis
| on the Spanish Civil War.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| They were certainly two very talented people.
|
| 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.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Caroline Moorehead has a pretty well written biography on her
| called: "Martha Gellhorn: A Life".
|
| 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Few lives have entertaining last years. It stands to reason
| the same is true for biographies based on those lives.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _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)
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| newsclues wrote:
| lol how can we make d-day about women.
| polairscience wrote:
| lol are you really trying to imply that it's not an
| interesting thing that there was a woman on the ground doing
| journalism?
| newsclues wrote:
| No, just remarking on the state of media that tends to
| focus on women or minorities and exclude men.
|
| Journalism isn't just what is or is not covered but what
| the focus of a story is.
| Wherecombinator wrote:
| Ok then let's not recognise her
| newsclues wrote:
| Or, let's focus on the story of the real hero's of D-Day
| instead of trying desperately to make history fit the
| current narrative
| macintux wrote:
| Those stories have been told, and will continue to be
| told, long after we're gone.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and
| flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly.
| It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| 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.
| mightymouse66 wrote:
| Thousands and Thousands of men die, but yea lets focus on the
| first women.
|
| Don't you see how people might get mad?
| seizethecheese wrote:
| In fact, that they highlight that she is the only woman does
| draw attention to the reality that this was a mostly male
| endeavor. I don't see any erasure here, and this is a
| somewhat notable story.
| williamdclt wrote:
| Are you really arguing that men in ww2 aren't talked about?
| I'm didn't bother to count how many entries there are on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films, but
| at a glance it looks like it's >95% about men
| some_random wrote:
| I think this is a bit excessive especially since D-Day is
| such a well covered topic, but I do think it's interesting to
| point out that of the three D-Day/WWII stories that I found
| that were published around June 4th, two of them are stories
| about women.
|
| 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
|
| How a World War II Escape Map Found a Second Use as a Ladies
| Garment https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/air-space-
| museum/2024/0... - June 5, 2024
| neilv wrote:
| This is _one_ story. There are also numerous stories told
| about the men. And we even have a term, "The Greatest
| Generation". Here's a particular story of them, which you
| might not have heard yet.
|
| 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.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I yield to no one in my admiration for the brave men who
| stormed the beach. Most of the coverage we see is about them.
|
| 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.
| Isamu wrote:
| I'm noticing an uptick in HN trolling from newly created
| accounts.
| dang wrote:
| It ebbs and flows. Not the hardest problem to deal with on
| HN by a long shot.
| jqr- wrote:
| Interesting. Can you share what is?
| dang wrote:
| One of them is people's tendency not to be aware of the
| negativity in their own comments (harshness, provocation,
| etc.), while at the same time being super aware of it in
| others. This skew in perception leads to the feeling:
|
| "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.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| " _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._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bloopernova wrote:
| What is the most useful-to-HN-method to remove the derailment
| attempts?
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Yup, and in egregious cases, email hn@ycombinator.com. The
| latter has the downside that it depends on how online we
| happen to be, but the upside of guaranteed message delivery.
| If the email is short and includes a link and a brief
| statement of what's being reported, it's often easy to do
| something quickly, even if it takes us (er, me) longer to
| reply.
| will5421 wrote:
| Was the reporting much different to the men?
| sed3 wrote:
| It is real shame US army did not allowed more women on D-Day.
| There were 17 years old boys on beach, any woman is capable of
| doing such assault!
|
| Women still face horrible discrimination, when it comes to
| combat deployment and deaths, even today!
| hollerith wrote:
| It is unclear whether you are being serious or satirical.
| sed3 wrote:
| Pretty serious.
|
| 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!
| dang wrote:
| Please stop.
| sed3 wrote:
| Please stop discriminating against women!
| sed3 wrote:
| Women are capable of fighting in wars!
| kleiba wrote:
| _> Gellhorn's story ran in the August 5 issue with the headline
| "The Wounded Come Home." No mention was made of the fact that
| she was the only female journalist on the ground at Omaha
| Beach._
|
| 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?
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Why should any information surrounding the author be
| mentioned in her "The Wounded Come Home" piece?
|
| 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.
| sed3 wrote:
| Her sex is quite relevant for her writings. Any man was fair
| target for guns. She wrote from undisturbed safety of her
| privilege.
|
| Even her treatment by military police after arrest was
| different.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| "As a female war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn was not
| allowed to accompany the Allied invasion force .... and so,
| the night before the invasion, she finagled a spot on a
| hospital ship by telling military police she was there to
| interview nurses. Once aboard, Gellhorn found a bathroom,
| locked the door and hid until the ship was on its way to
| France on June 6, 1944."
|
| _" 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
| dang wrote:
| No doubt, but I dare say she'd have agreed with us about
| low-value internet comments too.
| nradov wrote:
| What safety? Hundreds of US servicewomen were killed in
| WWII. Bombs and artillery don't discriminate by gender.
|
| https://www.uso.org/stories/3005-over-200-years-of-
| service-t...
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for trolling and ignoring our
| request to stop.
|
| Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| I think you might be on the wrong side of this guideline
| here:
|
| " _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.
| kleiba wrote:
| Ok, thank you, dang.
|
| 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.
| chewz wrote:
| Travels With Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn is acctually
| one of my favourite books...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/925368.Travels_With_Myse...
| mandevil wrote:
| Looks at small print below the title- 44 comments on something
| that happened 80 years ago, that's weird. Clicks on that link.
| Opens it up, sees six basic comments plus something from dang.
|
| Oh. I see.
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