By the time twenty-four -year -old New Zealand native Kate Webb arrived in Saigon in 1967 she had already weathered an accusation of murder, and the loss of both her parents in a car crash. As a reporter at the Sydney (Australia) Daily Mirror she soon tired of routine stories and, like many of her female counterparts who wound up in Vietnam on what she termed “a quest for truth” applied for a job at UPI. As she recounted later, the Saigon bureau chief dismissed her, asking, “What the hell would I want a girl for?”
Kate soon showed him why: She was the first wire service reporter to cover the North Vietnamese’s attack on the US Embassy in Saigon at the start of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Her reporting finally landed her that job at UPI.
Kate got her start at Ann Bryan’s Overseas Weekly. Ann arranged for Kate’s MACV credentials which allowed her to cover US military operations, and Kate soon became a favorite among the American troops. In total, she spent nearly seven years in Vietnam and in Cambodia, eventually becoming a bureau chief there.
On April 7, 1971, Kate and her driver, along with a Japanese photographer called “Suzuki”, an interpreter, and a Cambodian newspaper cartoonist were caught in the crossfire in a battle between the Viet Cong and Cambodians loyal to the Americans. They hid in a narrow ditch, then made their way through a blazing, rat-infested jungle, seeking escape. A day and a half later the VC captured them, beginning a three-week ordeal Kate recounted in a long piece published in the New York Times just days after her release.
“Nine of the 24 days we spent walking with our guards, a bobbing column of shadows in the jungles of southern Cambodia….Our hands went up as we suddenly encountered the muzzles of two AK-47 assault rifles at 11:30 am on a Viet Cong trail…Tied individually and roped together in a human chain we begin walking in the afternoon of our capture….” She described the interrogations by captors who were “an odd mixture of toughness and thoughtfulness” who were homesick and listened incessantly to Radio Hanoi.
The significance of this experience isn’t so much that she was captured and lived to read her own premature obituary in the papers, but that she put a human face on the enemy.
In 2002, Kate, along with Ann Bryan Mariano, and several other female reporters who had worked in Vietnam published a book about their experiences. Kate was among those on a panel for an episode of C-Span’s Book TV. Each woman was asked to share one memory or experience that they found most poignant. When it was Kate’s turn, she spoke of a day when she witnessed a napalm attack on a small village. “The children left their fields and slid from the backs of their water buffalo and ran toward the napalm, laughing with joy at all the pretty colors.”
After Vietnam, Kate reported from other wars, including in Afghanistan, and taught journalism for a year at Ohio University. Following her death the Kate Webb award was established to honor a journalist or an agency who best embodies her spirit. In 2017, Australia honored her with a postage stamp.
Kate’s experiences in Saigon as a rookie reporter for Ann Bryan and her capture by the VC informed A SEASON IN SAIGON, my novel about the women who overcame great odds to tell the stories of the war that became a turning point for America and defined an entire generation.
Next week: A Death in Chu Lai
