From Iwo Jima and Okinawa to Europe and ultimately to South Vietnam, photojournalist Dickey Chapelle built a career documenting the world at war. Born Georgette Meyer in Shorewood, Wisconsin in 1919, she nicknamed herself “Dickey” in honor of her favorite explorer, Admiral Richard Byrd. Graduating first in her high school class at age 16, Dickey won a scholarship to MIT to study aeronautical design. But a love affair with a pilot resulted in her being shipped off to Florida to live with her grandparents.
Dickey’s next love affair was with photography. While taking a class with TWA’s publicity photographer Tony Chapelle whom she married, Dickey talked her way into an assignment with National Geographic, covering the US Marines during the Second World War. Despite scant experience she quickly proved herself a courageous and perceptive photojournalist whose pictures soon found their way around the world. Small in stature, dark-haired, and never without her trademark pearl earrings, Dickey took the advice of a mentor who told her to “be the first woman anywhere” and trained with the 101st Airborne Division, becoming the first woman certified as a paratrooper.
In 1956 while covering events in Hungary, she was imprisoned, accused of spying for Russia. It is said that on her way to an interrogation she hid her small camera in a glove and tossed it out the window, thereby saving her own life. Five years later, she made her first trip to Vietnam on assignment for Reader’s Digest. She returned in 1965, covering Marine operations in the area around Chu Lai. Fiercely pro-American, she lost her objectivity as the war went on, but she never lost the respect of the Marines.
On November 4, 1965, Dickey was on patrol with the Marines when the man in front of her stepped on a trip wire. A grenade exploded. She was hit in the neck with shrapnel and did not survive. A Marine escort returned her body for burial, a rare honor for civilians.
Terry Koper, a Marine patrolling less than a mile from where Dickey was hit, recalled her bravery. “She was fearless,” he said. “She was one of us.”
If you have read A Season in Saigon you have met my fictional photographer Danni Chastain. Danni was created as a tribute to Dickey ( I gave Danni the same initials but gave her sapphire studs instead of pearls). My reason for writing this book was to honor the female journalists who risked everything in pursuit of the truth. Their legacy lives on.
