Combat Correspondents: The Baltimore Sun in World War II. Joseph R.L. Sterne. Baltimore, MD: The Maryland Historical Society, 2009. 281 pp.
When historians and World War II history buffs think about World War II correspondents, names such as Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, Hal Boyle, Richard Tregaskis, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, and others come up—journalists and writers who reported for national news organizations and publications. They don’t think of names such as Mark Watson, Lee McCardell, Price Day, and Holbrook Bradley.
These four and many others reported for this country’s metropolitan and regional newspapers, paying special attention to soldiers, sailors, and civilians from their newspaper’s readership areas while also often providing standard coverage of the fighting. They did not necessarily spend the duration of the war at the front, dependent as they were on the financial situation of their papers, as well as the plans and ideas of their editors and publishers.