Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966) reported on many of the 20th century’s most momentous conflicts and earned the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today we’re talking about the only woman to serve as a war correspondent during the Korean War. Unrelenting in her desire to capture the events of frontline combat, she reported on many of the 20th century’s most momentous conflicts and earned the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Let’s talk about Marguerite Higgins.
Marguerite Higgins was born to Lawrence Daniel Higgins and Marguerite de Goddard on September 3, 1920 in Hong Kong. Marguerite’s father was an American who had joined the French army as an ambulance driver in Paris when the first World War broke out. Her mother was a French local who was in Paris for work. The two met one day during an air-raid —they both took shelter in an underground metro station. Both Lawrence and Marguerite had an adventurous streak, a quality they would eventually pass on to their only daughter. After they wed, Lawrence took a job with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the couple moved to Hong Kong, where they lived for five years. In 1925, the family moved to Lawrence’s native California.
Settling down turned out to be harder for the Higgins family than anticipated. Lawrence became a stock broker, but thanks to the Great Depression, money was tight. Marguerite’s mother taught French at a prestigious all-girls school, where Marguerite was offered a scholarship.
By the age of sixteen, Marguerite decided she wanted to become a journalist and never looked back. In 1937, she enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley and immediately joined the staff of the student newspaper, the Daily Californian. Marguerite was a tenacious journalist from the get go. She worked doggedly for the school paper and was even accused of stealing leads from fellow students -- anything to get the story. She graduated from Berkeley with honors and packed her bags for New York City. She applied for every newspaper in the city for work, but no one was willing to hire a woman fresh out of college. Undaunted, she decided to pursue a masters degree at the Columbia School of Journalism.
While earning her degree, she landed a part time job with the New York Herald Tribune. Amist balancing a part-time job and school, she managed to nab an interview with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the wife of the Nationalist leader of China. The interview was such an impressive get that Marguerite was offered a full time job as a news reporter for the Tribune.
Around this time, Marguerite married Stanley Moore, a philosophy student who shared Marguerite’s politics and intellectual drive. Shortly after they married, Stanley joined the airforce and was sent to Europe. It was the height of World War II and Marguerite was stuck covering stories at home, but longed to be on the front lines in Europe. After petitioning her editor relentlessly, she was given an overseas assignment. The Tribune sent her to London -- which, by chance, is where her husband was stationed. The couple lived together as Marguerite covered bombings, Winston Churchill, the role of women in the war and much more. While her stories flourished, her marriage did not. Within a year, Marguerite and Stanley were formally separated.
Thanks to her fluency in French, Marguerite’s next post was Paris. While she was there, she captured on the ground accounts of war-torn France. But still, she longed to be on the front lines of the action.
In March of 1945, she got her wish. Marguerite joined the U.S. Seventh Army, positioned in Germany, to report first hand on the final weeks of the war. She documented the Americans freeing Polish, French and Russian slave laborers from German concentration camps. She arrived in the Buchenwald concentration camp only hours after it was liberated. She filed stories depicting the mass suffering and devastating deaths in the camp, as well as stories from survivors.
From there, Marguerite partnered up with journalist Peter First from the army newspaper, Stars and Stripes. The two traveled through the German countryside and arrived at the Dachau concentration camp. According to Marguerite's report from the time, and later confirmed by her biographer, Marguerite and Peter were the first two Americans through the gates, marking the formal liberation of the camp.
For her courageous covering of Dachau, Marguerite was awarded the Army’s campaign ribbon “for outstanding and conspicuous service with the armed forces under difficult and hazardous conditions.” She was also given an award by the New York Newspaper Women’s Club for best correspondence.
All in, Marguerite was only a World War II war correspondent for approximately six weeks. Regardless, she made quite the impact.
After the war, she was made the Tribune’s assistant bureau chief in Berlin. From her post, she covered a divided Berlin, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the Nuremberg Trials. In 1947, at only twenty-seven years old, Marguerite was promoted to full bureau chief. She enjoyed a successful career in Berlin throughout the remainder of the 1940s.
In April of 1950, Marguerite was reassigned and became the Tokyo bureau chief for the Tribune. She was not happy about this move. It took her thousands of miles away from mounting tensions in Europe. But on June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea -- launching the United States into a proxy war with Communist China. Within two days, Marguerite was on the front lines of the conflict. From the moment she landed in Seoul, Marguerite was regularly under fire. It was during these early days that she earned the trust of General Douglas MacArther, the commander of the United Nation’s Far East forces.
In addition to being in a live combat environment, Marguerite had to navigate company politics. A few weeks after Marguerite arrived, The New York Herald Tribune sent it’s star reporter, Homer Bigart, to cover the war. Bigart told Marguerite she was no longer needed and might as well head home. But Marguerite wasn’t having it. She ignored him and continued covering the conflict. That is, until she hit another roadblock.
Marguerite was in the midst of combat when she received orders from the U.S. Army to leave Korea at once. The Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker had decided that Korea was no place for a woman. Marguerite intended to argue her case to Lieutenant Walker but was forcibly put on a plane to Tokyo. When she landed, she was greeted with good news. General MacArther wrote a personal message overturning the Lieutenant’s orders. It read:
“Ban on women in Korea lifted. Marguerite Higgins held in highest professional esteem by everyone.”
Marguerite returned to Korea and continued her work as the only female journalist covering the war. She escaped nearly certain death in a nighttime ambush and even volunteered to assist overwhelmed medics when troops were particularly distressed. Marguerite traveled to North Korea and documented the stories of escaped prisoners of war. She also teamed up with Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech for several excursions. While Marguerite often had strained relationships with her male colleagues, who were confused by her ambition and gusto, Beech spoke fondly of Marguerite in his later memoir.
In 1951, Marguerite returned to the United States. She married Major General William Hall, who she’d met while serving as Berlin’s bureau chief. Together, they had two children.
That same year, Marguerite was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Her colleagues in the Korean theater, Homer Bigart and Keyes Beech, also received the honor.
Marguerite went on to write a best selling book, War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent. In 1955, she wrote another book about her travels through the Soviet Union called, Red Plush and Black Bread. That same year she published a book about journalism titled, News is a Singular Thing.
Marguerite never showed signs of slowing down. She visited Vietnam ten times during the Vietnam war and wrote a book on the conflict, Our Vietnam Nightmare. In 1962, she reported on tensions mounting between the United States and Cuba that proved prescient. During Marguerite’s final visit to Vietnam, in 1965, she contracted leishmaniasis a tropical, parasitic disease.
She passed away from the disease on January 3, 1966. She was forty-five years old.
In honor of her exceptional wartime reporting, her body was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.
Tenacious and unrelenting in her ambition, Marguerite Higgins blazed a trail uniquely her own. At a time when American society was uncomfortable with women filling roles typically performed by men, Marguerite refused to take no for an answer and proved her bravery and skill in the face of immense danger.
All month, we’re talking about journalists.
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As always, we’ll be taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday!