A Stricken Field

Typically Martha Gellhorn gets second billing to her ex-husband Ernest Hemingway. I was pleased that this Virago Modern Classics edition didn't even mention him in her bio. Instead the focused on her record as a war reporter. In that category she was a trail-blazer. She covered five wars: Spain, Finland, China, WWII and Java. If you're not familiar with all those Google it.

"A train whistle blew and a little procession of people straggled and stumbled through the crowd, herded by soldiers. The soldiers were not shoving them—but they were keeping them moving. All the faces looked stupid with exhaustion; the eyes searching around the room, for nothing, were empty even of questions or of fear. They were like old bundles of gray cloth. They had no tickets; the soldiers herded them down a platform and they were lost in the smoke, and the crowd closed behind them."

But it's a bit vexing that her style is so similar to Hemingway. They both embraced that spare, and understated style. The passage above is one of a few where she ran long enough to use a semicolon. But while they may have influenced each other (a topic neither author's biographers want to entertain) it is just as likely they were equally influenced by their mutual experience as news-writers. regardless she remains under-appreciated.