Who Was She?

 Who was Martha Gellhorn?

She was a journalist, a novelist, and a top war correspondent who covered most of the 20th century’s major conflicts. She was a hero.

At 24, Gellhorn was hired by FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration) and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and photographer Dorthea Lange in documenting the personal suffering of the Great Depression.

She was on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Martha found her way onto a landing craft serving as a water ambulance. In the process, she became one of the only women, and journalists, to land on June 6, 1944. She waded ashore and worked with the medics to get wounded men back to the hospital ship for treatment. When she got back to the hospital ship, she took time to record the conversations of the wounded soldiers from the beach as they waited to be retrieved from the beach on D-Day—again showing the human spirit in the face of war and devastation. (source) 

She reported firsthand on the liberation of Dachau, the Battle of the Bulge, the Spanish Civil War, the Nuremberg trials, the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Panama.

During World War II, TIME called Martha one of Collier’s star reporters. One reason for that recognition was her tenacious spirit and commitment to tell the stories of ordinary people during the war. She demonstrated incredible strength and perseverance. Through her writing, she was able to show how war’s devastation impacts all parts of life. (source) 

One of the first things her Wikipedia entry tells you though, is that she was the third wife of that trophy hunting misogynist, Ernest Hemingway.  What patriarchal snotwaddle, fer fucks sake!

By the by, their four year marriage blew up because the tiny schwanzed jerk was jealous of her talent and career. He wanted a beautiful, sexy, smart BUT ornamental, stay-at-home wifey-poo NOT a partner who was every bit as talented, courageous, and adventurous as he was.

Their marital troubles climaxed in 1944 when Hemingway stole Martha’s credential from Collier’s and traveled to England to cover the impending Allied invasion at Normandy, in her stead. Desperate to cover the opening of a Second Front in Europe, she eventually crossed the Atlantic in a ship filled with explosives after Hemingway blocked her attempts to get a press credential to take a flight. (source) 

Motherfucker STOLE her press credentials and then blocked her from getting others because he was so fucking insecure, envious and resentful of her brilliance and success. WHAT a midget dicked fucker! All his malicious, scheming weaselshit efforts to sink her career, her passion and she was still on the ground at Normandy. Fuck you, Ernie, you fuck!

Gellhorn was an immensely talented, brave, strong, intelligent, liberated, and complex woman.

…Gellhorn’s last years are a primer on how not to grow old. She was bitter about the state of the world, which remained stupid and unjust. She mourned the happy romantic relationship that had mysteriously eluded her. She was plagued by painful ailments and by knowledge of her lost beauty. She found writing excruciating. Perhaps worst of all, the lifelong reader was losing her sight. In 1998, at the age of 89 and ill with cancer, she swallowed a pill that ended her life, dying in a cream silk nightgown. (source) 

Understandable. Very understandable.

There has to be a better way to run the world and we had better see that we get it.
~ Martha Gellhorn 1908-1998