War Correspondents: U.S. Writer Wounded During Operation Torch

Leo Disher, United Press, Really Earns His Pay

While With U.S. Forces in North Africa

Leo Disher's story is a rare one. Here he receives a Purple Heart.

Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Introduction:

'The story is a rare one.' And the photo above is rare as well.

In more ways than one, war correspondents like Mr. Disher really earned their keep on many fronts during World War II.

I found the story about this United Press (UP) correspondent in The Winnipeg Tribune (issue dated Wednesday, November 18, 1942), and another about a war correspondent with Reuters (who suffered less harrowing circumstances than Disher), while looking for any details related to the Canadians in Combined Operations who were active aboard Allied landing craft flotillas during the invasion of North Africa, beginning on November 8th.

Readers can link to more News Clippings from Nov. 17 - 19, 1942 (from The Tribune) to learn more about that significant time during WWII.

Disher is at Oran, centre arrow of Center Task Force above. 

Canadians helped unload American troops and supplies,
w Centre Task Force, at Arzeu, right hand arrow.

[Concerning 'Canadians in Combined Ops', I struck gold. But more about that later.]

The news article about Leo Disher explains why he was selected to receive the Purple Heart:

When I came across the above account about the United Press correspondent, it soon became important to me for two reasons.

First, his survival seemed by the slimmest of margins, in my opinion, and when I posted the article on my site at a later date, along with dozens of other items, I felt encouraged to search for further information. And shortly thereafter, at Wikimedia Commons, I learned that Disher "became the first combat reporter awarded the Purple Heart — citing “extraordinary heroism and meritorious performance of duty” for action on a day in November 1942". Rare find indeed, I thought.

Second, back in July, 2018, while initially reading the article in The Tribune, I caught a glimpse of the word 'Navy' out of the corner of my eye, two narrow news columns to the right. And what a find I made - as a result of stopping to read about Disher and his 'Nine Wounds'.

I might have missed this small piece without Disher's Nine Wounds! 

"Taken before he shipped out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sept 2, 1940"

Photo Credit - Kathryn Rollins, Madeline's grand-daughter.

[The small news clipping led to big discoveries about A/B Lloyd G. Campbell, a sailor known to my father and whose name appears in his memoirs. Please link to Editor's Research: Lloyd Campbell, London Ont. for a detailed account of Campbell's lengthy story.]

Also under the heading of "Really Earns His Pay" is another story that comes to us via a detailed eye-witness account "by Charles Wighton, a Reuters correspondent with the Royal Navy on the North African expedition". The hot action involved troop ships that were part of the Eastern Task Force (see above map). Bougie Bay is east of the arrows indicated by the illustrator of that map:

Charles Wighton offered a very descriptive report of the action on that day in North Africa. And more about the writer can be found online, e.g., a few details about the following book he wrote in the early 1960s.

  Photo as found at AbeBooks.

"Reinhard Heydrich was a high ranking German Nazi official during WWII. As the main architect of the Holocaust, he was known to Hitler as 'the man with the iron heart'. He was ambushed in Prague in 1942." As found at AbeBooks.

Wighton also wrote Hitler’s Spies and Saboteurs (Google Books Result).

Disher and Wighton are but two of hundreds of war correspondents we can turn to for eye-witness details related to WWII and actions that concerned Canadian members of the Combined Operations organization. More to follow.

To learn more about several Canadian news writers, please link to War Correspondents: Canadian Writers - Sicily, 1943 (2).

Unattributed Photos GH