RISKS RUN BY WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue VII, 17 February 1900, Page 300

RISKS RUN BY WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

During' the progress of the war several war correspondents have been killed, while a number have been more or less seriously injured. Any war correspondent worthy of the name, as an English contemporary points out, and more especially any war correspondent who aspires to make a real and lasting success of his chosen risks must face greater dangers than he would ordinarily be called upon to take and to face were he an actual combatant unit of the force to which he may chance to be

attached. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Colonel Pemberton, of the “’rimes,” was thrice warned off the shell-swept battlefield of Sedan, and as often returned to his post of observation. The last venture proved a fatal one for him, for, approaching too near a masked battery, he was almost literally blown to pieces by a well aimed projectile. The fate of poor Howard, the “New York Herald” correspondent at Omdurman, will doubtless be fresh in most people’s memories. Entering the captured city ere our batteries on

the other side of the river had quite done bombarding it, he was struck and killed by a lyddite shell fired from one of our own guns. In the course of the same eventful afternoon, too. Colonel Frank Rhodes, a brother of Cecil of that ilk, was badly wounded in the shoulder.

Long prior, however, to the final overthrow of the dervishes at Omdurman, the Soudan had claimed many victims from among the ranks of the journalistic fraternity. One of the first to fall was the gallant and cheery O’Donovan, of Merv fame, who, as special representative of the “Daily News,” accompanied Hicks Pasha’s army on its last fatal expedition into the wilds of Kordofan. o’Do>novan realised perfectly that, in all human probability, he was going to his death; but he preferred to put duty before even life itself. It must, indeed, have been a march to try the nerves of the strongest. The country through which they passed was a desert. After leaving the Nile, indeed, the ill-fated army met scarcely any living soul; but great flocks of vultures followed them, as if waiting for their prey. Water was hard to get. Food ran short. The capture of a solitary lean and aged cow was hailed as a great event. It must, one

would imagine, Have come almost as a relief when the final onslaught was made, and the last man of the doomed force fell gasping beneath the dervish spears. This was in November, 1883, and a year later Mr Power, of the “Times,” the only “special” who was with Gordon in Khartoum, met w’ith his death. Accompanied by Colonel Stewart and about 40 men, he attempted to ascend the Nile in a small steamer, with the object of opening up communications with the advance guard of Wolseley’s expedition. But owing primarily to the treachery of an Arab pilot, the tiny craft was cast away on an island and all on board massacred. Yet another few short months, and Thomas St. Leger Herbert, of the “Morning Post,” together with his friend and colleague, John Cameron, of the “Standard,” were killed by “snipers” on the evening of the day following the battle of Abu Klea.

These deaths were, it must be admitted, tragic enough; but they were not nearly so tragic or so mysterious as that which overtook the young French journalist, Olivier Pain, who

was despatched by the editor of the “Intransigeant” (M. Henri Rochefort) to the Mahdi’s head-quarters. For a long time no one knew what had become of the foolhardy youth, and our friends .the French did not hesitate to bring certain absurd charges against the British military authorities of having compassed his assassination. It is now known, however, that he actually succeeded in reaching Omdurman ; but, being unable to return, he perished miserably of starvation and exposure. Mr Bowlby, who represented the “Times” in the Chinese “Opium War,” met with an even more dreadful fate. By treachery he. together with several companions, was taken prisoner, carried in chains to Pekin, and immured within the pink walls of the “ Forbidden City.” Exactly what happened after that will probably never be known, and what little is known can never be fully set down in writing. Suffice it to say that the unhappy captives were slowly tortured to death, every hideous and unnatural artifice known to Oriental cruelty being employed in order to prolong their agonies.