The Press: The Road to Naples

“Along the road of death we are driving to the plain of Naples. . . . The worst is over.”

So Scottish-born, 40-year-old Alexander B. Austin began his dispatch one day last week to the London Daily Herald. He filed it, climbed into a jeep with three other British correspondents: stocky, thirtyish William J. Munday of the London News Chronicle; mild-mannered, 38-year-old Stewart Sale of Reuters; Basil Gingell of the British Exchange Telegraph agency.

They pushed westward toward Pompeii’s poppy-splashed, bomb-battered ruins so fast they finally were in the van of the American Fifth Army. At Scafati where a group of American correspondents were also out in front of the troops, they were held up by a rear-guarding German tank.

The tank suddenly wheeled and fired. In the blinding explosion Alexander Austin and two of his friends came to the end of the road of death. When the smoke and dust had cleared, only Basil Gingell was alive.

Britain’s list of war correspondents killed in action had risen to ten. U.S. correspondent casualties had already reached a more impressive total: 13 dead, three missing and presumed dead, 67 wounded. With these figures before him, General Dwight Eisenhower issued a peremptory order: hereafter correspondents will stop driving ahead of advanced combat troops.