Wisconsin Historical Society
The pioneering photographer grew up in Shorewood.
Fifty years ago, Dickey Chapelle, a Wisconsin native with pixie glasses, pearl earrings and military fatigues, died in Vietnam.
Chapelle was already something of a legend: She was the first female war correspondent killed in action — anywhere.
It’s surprising that we’ve had to wait until now for an extensive survey of her work to be published: Author John Garofolo has redressed that problem with his new book, Dickey Chapelle Under Fire: Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
Garofolo is a California-based Iraq War veteran who has been working on a screenplay about Chapelle. Although both an autobiography and a biography exist, he was surprised to find no book highlighting her photographs. The Wisconsin Historical Society houses the Dickey Chapelle Archives, including 20,000 of her photos.
Dickey Chapelle Under Fire resembles a coffee table book, but it is not a pleasant read — nor is it intended to be.
Some of Chapelle’s photos are beautiful, many are brutal: a firing squad, a Red Cross worker, nurses, makeshift hospitals, airfields, aircraft, foxholes, refugees, battlefields before — and battlefields after. The wounded were a special interest of Chapelle’s.
It’s difficult today to feel the shock that 1940s readers must have experienced when looking at the work of Chapelle and other war photographers. World War II was the first U.S. war in which photos were circulated by mass media. At last, in our homes, we saw our soldiers bleed.
Chapelle was born in 1919 and grew up in Shorewood, just outside Milwaukee. She graduated from high school at 16 and enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied aeronautical design. (She never let go of that interest; two of her five books, one for young readers, dealt with aviation.)
She returned to Milwaukee for practical air experience, and eventually became a photographer for now-defunct Trans World Airlines (TWA). She then joined National Geographic and launched her pioneering career as a war correspondent.
To get her shots, Chapelle evaded snipers and jumped with paratroopers. Impressed by her bravery, the Marines adopted her, honoring her as they have few civilians. Her assignments continued, and she traversed the globe: Austria, Cuba (where she photographed Castro), India, Iwo Jima, Guam, Laos, Lebanon, Okinawa and Puerto Rico.
She was killed in Vietnam while on patrol with Marines. The soldier in front of her tripped a booby trap. As Chapelle bled to death and a chaplain gave her last rites, she was photographed by Henri Huet of the Associated Press. She was only 46.
Dickey Chapelle Under Fire is a long overdue appreciation of one of the most important journalists of the 20th century.
