Late last night I read about D-Day in The Glory And The Dream by William Manchester and then this morning found this waiting for me in my email news feed. A great read!
For much of the remainder of the war. Hemingway reported on the American advance to Paris, and Gellhorn wrote from the liberated Dachau concentration camp.
“We have all seen the dead like bundles lying on all the roads of half the earth, but nowhere was there anything like this,” she wrote from Dachau on June of 1945. “Nothing about war was ever as insanely wicked as these starved and outraged naked, nameless dead.”
Hemingway had a more swashbuckling style and preference for vivid descriptions of the action as it unfolded. Gellhorn’s focus was darker, and she paid more attention to the casualties of war. There was a final twist to their D-Day showdown, however. No one ever saw Hemingway get out of the landing craft, and, despite clearly implying that he went ashore from his D-Day report, some scholars believe he never actually made it onto the beach.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 