Dickey Chapelle covered Castro, Cuban revolution

Dickey Chapelle was already a famed World War II correspondent when she got an assignment to interview and photograph the charismatic leader of a revolution.

Which is how the Shorewood native met Fidel Castro.

After covering battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa during World War II, Chapelle traveled to Hungary in 1956 to report on the Hungarian uprising and was imprisoned for 52 days. Other reporting assignments took her to Lebanon, Jordan and Algeria.

In 1958, Chapelle was living in New York when she learned of the 26th of July Movement, made contact with the Cuban underground, and arranged to meet the rebel leaders while on assignment for Reader's Digest. She spent roughly six weeks in Cuba, from late November 1958 until early January 1959, shortly after Castro-led rebels induced President Fulgencio Batista to flee and took over the country.

"She was able to get very tight access to Fidel, (Castro's brother) Raul and their inner circle. Which was pretty extraordinary," said John Garofolo, author of "Dickey Chapelle Under Fire: Photographs by the First American Female War Correspondent Killed in Action." "I believe she was the last American journalist Fidel Castro allowed to have that kind of access at that point in the revolution."

Castro, who ruled Cuba for nearly 50 years, died Nov. 25 at age 90.

When Chapelle returned to Milwaukee in April 1959 to visit her aunt, she stopped at The Milwaukee Journal offices for an interview, which led to a long feature in the April 17, 1959, Green Sheet. Under the headline "Milwaukee Woman Writer, Photographer Faced Death With Rebel Fighters in Cuba," Chapelle recounted the difficulties in reaching the rebel hideouts.

The Green Sheet story appeared two days after Castro arrived in the United States at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Chapelle couldn't identify herself as an American journalist when she flew into Havana because Batista's secret police likely would have arrested her. Instead, she said she was a tourist and, when questioned why she was going to Santiago, she showed the photo of an American Marine she falsely claimed was her husband stationed at Guantanamo Bay. In Santiago, she was escorted into the jungle to meet the rebels.

She spent several weeks with them and witnessed the battle for the village of LaMaya, snapping photos as undermanned rebels fired at Batista's troops. It was during that battle, Chapelle said, that she understood the secret of the revolutionaries' success.

"Remember, these were not seasoned troops. These were only six men with little military training facing 315 Batista men and a B-26 with six machine guns. But they never halted their firing by one second," Chapelle told The Journal. "When the venetian blinds were shot out in front of them, they just moved quickly back into the next room and continued firing from the side windows. I never saw better discipline in my life."

Chapelle snapped photos of Castro exhorting his soldiers but also in reflective, quiet moments.

"She got some candid photos of a behind-the-scenes Fidel. Many of them didn't get used — the ones that were published were the more bombastic ones," said Garofolo. "But she had photos of Fidel in a hammock, drinking tea and wearing glasses, which wasn't pictured very often."

Two days before Christmas, she walked out of rebel-held area to interview Batista but was almost killed by strafing rounds from a B-26. Batista later canceled their interview when he hurriedly left Cuba. Before the Batista government fell, Chapelle predicted in an NBC radio interview to the U.S. from Havana that Castro's forces would win.

Legendary war photographer Dickey Chapelle back in focus

Although initially supportive of the Cuban revolution, Chapelle was shocked to hear of the public trials and firing-squad executions of hundreds of Batista's soldiers and police. As she watched communism take over Cuba in the early 1960s, she began covering the anti-Castro movement in Miami.

"I think she was trying to make amends for really being hoodwinked by Fidel. In some respects, you could argue she was a propaganda arm of the Cuban revolution, which was not her intention," said Garofolo, who is working with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater on a play he's writing about Chapelle.

"She was very enamored with this romantic notion of an honest-to-God liberation movement. She was devastated that she supported something that ended up being the opposite of that," Garofolo said. "But from a historical perspective, she has great photos of a great glimpse of a successful guerrilla war."

After Cuba and Castro, Chapelle continued taking pictures in harm's way. She was in Vietnam covering American troops when she was killed by a land mine in 1965 at age 47.