Kate Webb

For other people named Katherine Webb, seeKatherine Webb (disambiguation).

Kate Webb
Born	Catherine Merrial Webb 24 March 1943 Christchurch,New Zealand
Died	13 May 2007(2007-05-13)(aged 64)
Nationality	New Zealander and Australian
Other names	Highpockets
Occupation	War correspondent
Known for	Held prisoner while reporting onVietnam War
Honours	Kate Webb Prize, and depicted on a $1 stamp

Kate Webb(24 March 1943 – 13 May 2007) was aNew Zealand-bornAustralianwar correspondentforUPIandAgence France-Presse.She earned a reputation for dogged and fearless reporting throughout theVietnam War,and at one point she was held prisoner for weeks by North Vietnamese troops. After the war, she continued to report from global hotspots including Iraq during theGulf War.

Biography

BornCatherine Merrial WebbinChristchurch,New Zealand,Webb moved toCanberra,Australia,with her family while she was still a child. Her father, Leicester Chisholm Webb, was professor of political science at theAustralian National University,and her mother, Caroline Webb, was active in women's organisations.

On 30 March 1958, at the age of 15, Catherine Webb was charged with the murder of Victoria Fenner, the adopted daughter ofFrank Fenner,inCanberra.She supplied a rifle and bullets to Fenner and was present when Fenner shot herself in what was intended as aSuicide pact.After a Children's Court hearing the charge was dropped.

Her parents were killed in a car accident inTasmaniawhen she was 18.

She graduated from theUniversity of Melbourne,then left to work for theSydney Daily Mirror.In 1967, she quit the paper and travelled toSouth Vietnamto cover the escalatingwar.She applied to joinUPI,but theSaigonbureau chief rejected her saying "What the hell would I want a girl for?". She then worked for local South Vietnamese newspapers until Ann Bryan the editor ofOverseas Weeklygave her assignments and arranged herMACVpress accreditation allowing her to cover U.S. military operations.She began receiving assignments from UPI and as a non-U.S. passport holder andFrenchspeaker was assigned to report onJacqueline Kennedy's visit toCambodiain November 1967.

She was the first wire service reporter to reach theU.S. Embassy in Saigonduring theTet offensive.Her reporting ofthe Embassy attackled to her being employed full-time by UPI, initially as agoferfor Dan Southerland.Webb earned a reputation as a hard-drinking, chain-smokingwar correspondent:

In 1969, she began a relationship with aGreen Beretofficer and in late 1969, she accepted his marriage proposal, resigned from UPI and moved with him toFort Braggat the end of this tour in South Vietnam. On her arrival at Fort Bragg, she learned that her fiancé was already married and despite claiming that he would divorce his wife, soon decided to stay with her. Webb received work from UPI inPittsburghstaying there into early 1970. In early May, she covered theKent State shootingsfor UPI. Two weeks later, she was appointed to be deputybureau chiefin the newly established UPI bureau inPhnom Penh,Cambodia.She moved into theHotel Le Royal.

Following the killing of Phnom Penh bureau chief Frank Frosch on 28 October 1970, while coveringOperation Chenla I,Webb was selected to fill his position; she later claimed it was because she spoke French.

In early 1971, she broke the story that Cambodian premierLon Nolhad suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed, a story that was being kept secret by theKhmer Republicgovernment.

On 7 April 1971, she made news herself when she, a Japanese photojournalist Toshiichi Suzuki and Cambodian journalists Tea Kim Heang, Chhim Sarath, Vorn and Charoon were captured byPeople's Army of Vietnamtroops fightingKhmer National Armed Forcesin an operation onHighway 4.On 20 April, official reports claimed that a body discovered was Webb's, andThe New York Timesand other newspapers published obituaries for her.On 1 May Webb and the others were released by the PAVN near where they had been captured, after having endured forced marches, interrogations, andmalaria.She described her experiences in a book calledOn the Other Sidepublished in 1972.

After her release from captivity, she flew to Hong Kong to be treated for malaria and wrote a series of stories about her captivity.After 20 days in Hong Kong, she then flew back to Australia to recuperate but was met by a media frenzy.Given her sudden fame, UPI sent her to Washington DC as their show piece. On her arrival in New York, colleagues became concerned about her health and she was diagnosed with cerebral malaria and put into a medically induced coma. Following her recovery, she insisted on returning to Cambodia arriving in mid-1971; however, her nerves were shattered and UPI posted her to Hong Kong in early 1972.Soon thereafter, she threatened to resign if she did not get a "real job". She was reassigned to thePhilippinesas the UPI bureau chief inManila.She briefly returned to Phnom Penh in July 1973, reporting on the effects of continued U.S. bombing on the country.

As Cambodia and South Vietnam were falling to Khmer Rouge and PAVN offensives in April 1975, she requested that UPI send her back into the war zone, but instead she was sent toClark Air Basewhich was used to support the evacuations ofPhnom PenhandSaigon.She was then reassigned to theUSSBlue RidgetheUnited States Seventh Fleetflagship and command ship for the Saigon evacuation.

After the war, she continued to work as a foreign correspondent for UPI based inSingapore,but quit after being sexually harassed by her Boss. She then moved toJakartawhere she worked in public relations for a hotel and began a long-term relationship with John Stearman, an American oil engineer.

She returned to journalism in 1985 joiningAgence France-Presse(AFP) serving as a correspondent in Iraq during theGulf War,inIndonesiaasTimor-Lestegained independence, and inSouth Korea,where she was the first to report the death ofKim Il Sung.She also reported fromAfghanistan,and later described an incident inKabulas the most frightening in her career. Following the collapse ofMohammad Najibullah'scommunist regime,she was captured by a local warlord and brought to a hotel, where she was brutally beaten and dragged up a flight of stairs by her hair.She finally escaped with the help of two fellow journalists, and hid out on a window ledge in the freezing Afghan winter, while the warlord and his men searched the building for her.She returned to Cambodia in 1993 and made her final visit to Vietnam in 2000.

External videos
Panel discussion featuring Webb onWar Torn,September 24, 2002,C-SPAN

Webb retired to theHunter Regionin 2001. She wrote an essay forWar Torn,a collection of reminiscences by women correspondents in the Vietnam War and taught journalism for a yearOhio University.She died ofbowel canceron 13 May 2007. In 2008, AFP established the Kate Webb Prize, worth €3,000 to €5,000, awarded annually to an Asian correspondent or agency that best exemplified the spirit of Kate Webb.Webb was commemorated on anAustralian postage stampin 2017.

She is survived by a brother, Jeremy Webb, and a sister, Rachel Miller.

External links

• "Fearless reporter in search of truth",Obituary,The Sydney Morning Herald,18 May 2007