The Washington Post

In Sight

The brilliant photos of the first American female war

photographer killed in action
By May-Ying Lam
December 3, 2015

On Dec. 6, 1956, after midnight, three figures methodically traversed a frost-encrusted

field in Austria. Guided by a compass and saddled with a million dollars’ worth of
penicillin, they were on a humanitarian mission to deliver aid to Hungarian refugees.

But the figure in the middle — at a diminutive 5 feet tall — had an additional purpose. It
was the reason why she had stowed a Minox camera under her coat and wool shirt, stuck
to her flesh by four bandages. The woman was Dickey Chapelle, a female photojournalist
on assignment for Life magazine. Moments later the man in front of her muttered, “I’m
lost,” and an enemy flare blew out the Big Dipper above. A machine gun and three rifles
surrounded them, capturing her and one of her companions.

Chapelle wound up in the custody of the Hungarian secret police and was imprisoned
mostly in solitary for two months, according to Chappelle’s “What’s a Woman Doing
Here? A Reporter’s Report on Herself.” Though the incident jolted her, being on the front
lines was in her blood. That same year she returned to work, photographing Algerian
rebels and, the year after that, Fidel Castro.

At 23, Chapelle got her first taste of war, covering army combat training for Look
magazine in Panama. She spent much of her career photographing historic events from
the Battle of Iwo Jima to the Vietnam War.

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In between wars, Chapelle and her husband, Tony, criss-crossed the Middle East and Asia
as a newly formed relief agency, AVISO (American Voluntary Information Services
Overseas). They lived and worked out of a small, squarish truck for five years.

“You can do anything you want to do if you want to do it so badly you’ll give up everything
else to do it,” she said, according to her biography “Fire in the Wind.” In the end, she gave
every last thing she had — including her life.

On her final trip to Vietnam, Chapelle was with a patrol when a Marine triggered a
tripwire that sent shrapnel flying. A fragment sliced her carotid artery.

In a role reversal, the woman behind the camera became the photograph. Associated Press
photographer Henri Huet, who was also there, captured Chaplain John McNamara as he
signed the cross over her curled body. Her unmistakable pearl earring nestled in her
earlobe. Her bush hat was flung in the grass. Marines — some closer than others, perhaps
unsure of whether she would want privacy or comfort — witnessed her final moment. But
surely they knew one thing: that she died doing what she was born to do.

A retrospective of Dickey Chapelle’s work is featured in “Dickey Chapelle Under Fire:

Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action.” To see
more photos from the Wisconsin Historical Images collection, click here.

More In Sight:

Portraits of valor: World War II veterans from around the world

10 female photographers you should know
Haunting portraits of China’s surviving war veterans