Career edit
Eager to become a war correspondent, Higgins persuaded the management of the New York Herald Tribune to send her to Europe, after working for them for two years, in 1944. After being stationed in London and Paris, she was reassigned to Germany in March 1945. She witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and received a U.S. Army campaign ribbon for her assistance during the surrender by its S.S. guards. She later covered the Nuremberg war trials and the Soviet Union's blockade of Berlin.[1]
In 1950, Higgins was named chief of the Tribune's Tokyo bureau. Shortly after her arrival in Japan, war broke out in Korea, she came to the country as one of the first reporters on the spot. On 28 June, Higgins and three of her colleagues witnessed the Hangang Bridge bombing, and were trapped on the north bank of Han River as a result. After crossing the river by raft and came to the U.S. military HQ in Suwon on the next day, she was quickly ordered out of the country by General Walton Walker, who argued that women did not belong at the front and the military had no time to worry about making separate accommodations for them. Higgins made a personal appeal to Walker's superior officer, General Douglas MacArthur, who subsequently sent a telegram to the Herald Tribune stating: Ban on women correspondents in Korea has been lifted. Marguerite Higgins is held in highest professional esteem by everyone.[2]
Regarding her presence at the battle of the Chosin Reservoir: "One additional problem General Smith had to solve was getting rid of Maggie Higgins, the New York Herald Tribune correspondent who had somehow finagled a ride up to Koto-ri and insisted on marching out to Hungnam with the troops. Smith put his foot down and provided her with an armed escort aboard the next plane out. In her zest for getting a Pulitzer prize or at least a scoop, it never entered her mind that in going up by plane, she deprived the division of an equal weight in supplies or another rifleman, and in having to be forced out by plane, she was taking the place of a medical evacuee."[3]
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This was a major breakthrough for all female war correspondents. As a result of her reporting from Korea, Higgins shared with five male war correspondents the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.[4] In 1952, she married William Evans Hall, a U.S. Air Force Major General, whom she met while Bureau Chief in Berlin. Their first daughter, born in 1953, died five days after a premature birth. In 1958, she gave birth to a son and in 1959, a daughter.[1]
Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev, and Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1955, she established and was chief of the Tribune's Moscow bureau. In 1963, she joined Newsday and was assigned to cover Vietnam, "visited hundreds of villages", interviewed most of the major figures, and wrote a book entitled Our Vietnam Nightmare.[5]
On September 2, 2010, South Korea posthumously awarded Order of Diplomatic Service Merit (Korean: 수교훈장), one of its highest honors, to Marguerite Higgins. In a ceremony in the capital, her daughter and grandson accepted the Heunginjang, a national medal. The award cites Higgins' bravery in publicizing South Korea's struggle for survival in the early 1950s.[6]
- ^ a b "Biographical History". Marguerite Higgins Papers. Syracuse University. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
- ^ "Last Word", TIME, July 31, 1950.
- ^ Benis, Frank M., Naval History and Heritage Command, archived from the original on 2012-12-12
{{citation}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ "International Reporting". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-12-02.
- ^ Higgins, back jacket.
- ^ "US War Correspondent Posthumously Awarded National Medal in Seoul". Arirang News. 2010-09-02.