I discovered this book by Iris Carpenter after just finishing The Correspondents, by Judith Mackrell. Whereas The Correspondents was published in 2022 and does a fine job of documenting the lives of six women correspondents during WWII, No Woman's World was contemporaneous with the war and was published shortly thereafter in January 1946. Although the topics and experiences of the women in both books is somewhat similar, the contrast in writing style and content is sometimes radically different.
Iris Carpenter became a front-line war correspondent during the preparations for D-Day and landed on the Normandy beaches on day four of D-Day. Women were generally forbidden to advance with their male counterparts, so Iris was initially reporting miles back from the front lines. Some of her early reporting covered field medical hospitals, which were deemed safer for women journalists. However, at times these temporary hospitals were closer to the front lines than the even the male correspondents were allowed, so her experience was very much on the edge of engagement with the enemy. She eventually had full access with the men and reported on all aspects of the war.
The Correspondents detailed the lives of six women prior to the war, during WWII, and their history after the war, and because it necessarily is focused on their lives, the book's description of the war itself is limited. In contrast, Iris Carpenter's account relies directly on her notes, interviews, and observations of the war up to the liberation of concentration camps, the forced slave camps involved with war production, and the final liberation of Berlin. She gives a first-had account of the progress of the war, documenting the movements of all Allied armies, the strategies of their generals, and the German defensive efforts. Her account of the Battle of the Bulge is particularly revealing and emotionally engaging. Throughout her accounts, the horror of war is revealed in vivid detail. Her writing reflects the urgency of publishing after slogging day-after-day in her Jeep across muddy roads cratered by artillery and covered with broken bodies and the discarded equipment of war. At times the editing seems hurried, almost in stream-of-thought mode, but there are many beautifully written sections that give immediacy to her experience. Overall, her book is highly recommended.
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