Who was Marguerite Higgins? Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondant played by Megan Fox in Korean War film
She is set to be portrayed on the big screen by Megan Fox in Hollywood film The Battle Of Jangsari
MARGUERITE Higgins was an American reporter and war correspondent famous for covering World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent has now been immortalised on-screen by Megan Fox in the film The Battle Of Jangsari.
Who was Marguerite Higgins?
Born in Hong Kong on 3rd September, 1920, Higgins' father, Lawrence Higgins, was an American working at a shipping company in the Orient.
The family moved back to the states when Marguerite was three.
Higgins was educated at the University of California where she worked on the student newspaper, The Daily Californian.
After Higgins graduated in 1941, she moved to Columbia University where she completed a masters degree in journalism.
The following year Higgins was hired by the New York Tribune, whose editor sent her to London, France and later Germany to cover the war.
It was in Germany that Higgins reported the Allies' invasion of the Nazi extermination camps of Dachau and Buchenwald.
What did she do after World War II?
Marguerite covered the Nuremberg War Trials after the war, and was in 1947 promoted to bureau chief in Berlin.
In 1950, she was sent to South Korea where she reported the fall of the capital, Seoul, to North Korean forces backed by Russia and China.
Midway through the conflict, the New York Tribune sent their top war reporter, Homer Bigart, to South Korea and ordered Higgins to return to Tokyo.
She refused and continued to compete with Bigart to get the best stories.
This became more difficult when all women were banned from the front line. Furious, Higgins eventually persuaded General Douglas MacArthur to allow her to resume her reporting.
Her book War in Korea: A Woman Combat Correspondent, became a bestseller. She won the Pulitzer Prize the same year in 1951.
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How did she die?
Higgins was sent to Vietnam in 1953 where she narrowly escaped injury when photographer Robert Capra was killed when he stepped on a land mine.
She made many visits to Vietnam and her 1965 book Our Vietnam Nightmare documented her concerns about American army involvement in the region.
While there in 1965, she came down with leishmaniasis, a tropical disease. She was brought back to the US but died on 3rd January, 1966.