1919–1965
National Geographic | Chu Lai, South Vietnam | November 4, 1965 | Age 47
Her photographs from battlefields across three decades captured both the horror and humanity of war, making her one of the most respected combat correspondents of her generation—until a booby trap in Vietnam made her the first American female reporter killed in action.
The Journalist
Georgette Louise Meyer was something of a prodigy. Born in Milwaukee in 1919, she graduated from high school first in her class at age 16 and immediately enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of only three women admitted to study aeronautical engineering. While her classmates focused on design principles, she spent her time at the Boston Navy Shipyard learning to set turbine blades. She flunked out after two years.
She returned to Wisconsin and got work at a local airfield, photographing planes and writing about them. Her real interest was flying, not designing. But when her mother discovered she was having an affair with one of the pilots, Georgette was sent to live with her grandparents in Coral Gables, Florida.
For someone like her, one thing led seamlessly into another. Living in Florida meant writing press releases for local air shows. An air show assignment in Havana meant witnessing a fatal plane crash. A story about that crash submitted to The New York Times meant catching the attention of an editor at Transcontinental and Western Air—TWA, one of the largest airlines of the time. By her early twenties, she had moved to New York City to work in TWA’s publicity bureau.
It was at TWA that she met Tony Chapelle, a photographer who taught evening classes. She enrolled in his course, learned the fundamentals, and married him in October 1940. They worked together for fifteen years. After their divorce, she legally changed her first name to Dickey, after Admiral Richard Byrd, the polar explorer she had admired since childhood. She kept Tony’s surname. The combination suited her.
The Work
Her ability to find herself in opportune places—or to create opportunities where none existed—landed her at National Geographic. In 1942, she became a war correspondent for World War II, initially assigned to document Marines on training exercises in Panama. By 1945, she had talked her way to the Pacific theater.
Her official assignment was to photograph nurses aboard the USS Samaritan, a hospital ship anchored off Iwo Jima. She was explicitly forbidden from leaving the vessel. She left anyway, catching a ride to shore and spending days documenting the battle. One photograph from Iwo Jima—showing a gravely wounded Marine being carried on a stretcher—became known as “The Dying Marine.” The Marine, Corporal William Fenton, actually survived.
The image established her reputation. She had found her niche: women, aviation, and war. She specialized in getting close to the fighting, in capturing not just the grand sweep of battle but the individual moments—soldiers sharing a drink between firefights, the exhaustion on a medic’s face, or the particular way men moved under fire.
After the war, she kept going. She covered the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule in 1956, photographing refugees with a hidden camera. While trying to deliver penicillin to resistance fighters, she was arrested by Soviet border guards and accused of being a spy. She spent seven weeks in solitary confinement in Budapest’s infamous Fő Street Prison, probably avoiding execution by stuffing her tiny camera into a glove and tossing it out a window during transport to interrogation.
Writer James Michener, who accompanied her on some of those dangerous missions, later recalled: “On the frontier, Dickey and I sometimes went far behind the Russian lines. I was cautious; she was totally fearless. I would draw back from spots of danger; she would always crowd forward. She saved hundreds, maybe. If she were a man, they would have called her a hero.”
Between 1957 and 1962, she covered seven wars in five years. She became known for her signature look: pearl earrings, Harlequin glasses, an Australian bush hat, and military fatigues. Marines called her “tough as nails.” She was barely five feet tall.
Her photographs ranged from horrific battle scenes to intimate moments of soldiers at rest. She understood that war contained both drama and mundanity, and she documented both with the same care. The artistic composition of her work set her apart—she had an eye for finding humanity in chaos, for capturing not just what war looked like but what it felt like to be inside it.
Her motto: “Only you can frighten you.”
The Final Story
When the Vietnam War escalated in the early 1960s, she saw it as the next front in the Cold War struggle against communism. She made repeated trips to Southeast Asia, becoming the first female journalist to parachute with U.S. troops in Vietnam and, later, to photograph an American soldier actively engaged in combat in Vietnam. She spent time with riverine forces, with helicopter crews, and infantry patrols. She marched 200 miles through jungle terrain. She lived on C-rations and slept in the field.
On November 4, 1965, Chapelle was on patrol with a Marine platoon during Operation Black Ferret, a search and destroy mission about 10 miles south of Chu Lai in Quảng Ngãi province. By this point in her career, she was one of the most experienced correspondents covering Vietnam. She had made dozens of trips to the country, spent months in the field, and earned the respect of the troops she accompanied.
The patrol was moving through hostile territory when the lieutenant walking in front of her kicked a tripwire attached to a booby trap containing a mortar shell with a hand grenade rigged to its top. The explosion sent shrapnel flying. A piece of metal hit Chapelle in the neck, severing her carotid artery.
She died within minutes. Photographer Henri Huet, who was also on the patrol, captured her final moments. The image showed Marines gathered around her body, the shock visible on their faces. She was 47 years old.
An honor guard of six Marines escorted her body back to Milwaukee. She was buried on November 12, 1965, at Forest Home Cemetery with full military honors, an unusual tribute for a civilian journalist. The Marines who knew her had insisted.
The Legacy
Chapelle became the first American female reporter killed in action. The milestone was grim but significant—it marked both how far women had come in war journalism and how dangerous the profession had become.
In 1966, Marines erected a memorial near the site of her death. The marker bore a simple message: “She was one of us and we will miss her.”
The Marine Corps League established the Dickey Chapelle Award, presented annually to the woman who has contributed most to the morale, welfare, and well-being of Marines. The award continues to honor her memory decades after her death.
In 2015, the Milwaukee Press Club inducted her into their Hall of Fame on the 50th anniversary of her death. That same year, the Wisconsin Historical Society published “Dickey Chapelle Under Fire,” a collection of 153 photographs spanning her career from World War II to Vietnam.
In 2017, more than half a century after her death, she was named an honorary Marine—formal recognition of what the troops who served alongside her had known all along.
Chapelle paved the way for later generations of female war correspondents. Journalists like Christiane Amanpour, Lynsey Addario, and Marie Colvin followed paths she had helped clear, though the dangers remained. Her willingness to take the same risks as male correspondents, to demand the same access, established that gender had nothing to do with courage or competence.
At the end, she died on patrol with Marines, doing the work she loved, in a war she believed mattered. The cost was high, but she had never expected otherwise, refusing to let fear dictate where she went or what stories she told.
Content included in this publication was generously provided by Freedom Forum which hosted the Journalists Memorial for 18 years to commemorate journalists who died reporting the news.
Freedom Forum is a partner with the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation.