About Evelyn Irons
Evelyn Graham Irons (17 June 1900 – 3 April 2000) was a Scottish journalist, the first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre. == Early life == Irons was born in Govan, Glasgow to Joseph Jones Irons, a stockbroker, and Edith Mary Latta or Irons. She graduated from Somerville College, Oxford. == Career == Irons's career in journalism began at the Daily Mail, where the editor assigned her to the beauty page even though she herself had never worn makeup. She was ultimately fired for "looking unfashionable". At the Evening Standard she edited the "women's interest" pages, but when World War II broke out she informed the news editor "From now on I'm working for you." Though General Montgomery objected to women reporters on the battlefield, she gained the support of French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and became one of the first journalists to reach liberated Paris. She was the first woman journalist to reach Hitler's Eagle's Nest after its capture; after climbing there through the snow she helped herself to a bottle of Hitler's "excellent Rhine wine". Irons travelled to the United States in 1952 to cover the presidential election and stayed on afterward, settling near Brewster, New York. In 1954 she broke a news embargo on the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán by hiring a mule to take her to Chiquimula while other journalists, forbidden to cross the border, waited in a bar in Honduras. She became the first reporter to reach the headquarters of the Provisional Government; a reporter for a rival paper received a telegram from his editor ordering him to "offget arse onget donkey".
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