David Richardson

Dave Richardson - YANK Staff Correspondent - March 9, 1943 edition.

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WASHINGTON, DC 26 September 2004 - As a boy, David Richardson loved to write and to tell stories.So he became a foreign correspondent and told stories about some of the most important events of the 20th Century.

Now 88 years old, Richardson lives in a quiet neighborhood in the nation's capital.And he tells stories about a journalistic career that spanned four decades and five continents.

"I started as a kid working at a little newspaper" in New Jersey, Richardson said during a recent interview at his home a few blocks from American University."I found a lot of fun in covering events, sports events and other things and just telling people what happened."

In 1940 he graduated from Indiana University and a year later was inducted into the U.S. Army.He soon became the first correspondent in the Southwest Pacific for Yank, The Army Weekly, a wartime magazine by and for enlisted men of all services.

"I was the most decorated combat correspondent on Yank," Richardson said of the large format magazine that reached 12 million readers around the world."I covered 11 different battles, air, land and sea."

Armydays.jpgRichardson spent much of the war in the Southwest Pacific.
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For his role in the Marauder campaign, Richardson was awarded the Army's Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, Combat Infantryman's Badge and President Unit Citation, plus a civilian journalist honor, the Valor Medal of the National Headliners Club.

After the war, Richardson decided to stay abroad.The prospect of telling stories from far-off, and peaceful, places re-awakened his childhood desire to inform.

"I think the American public wondered what was going to happen in the world," he said.
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Richardson stayed abroad for 25 years as a civilian correspondent, first for Time and Life Magazines in India, Germany, Britain the Middle East and Mexico.He later worked for U.S. News & World Report as chief correspondent in South America, and chief correspondent for Europe.

Through it all, Richardson said he felt a sense of mission.

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography," Richardson said, adding that foreign correspondence is just as important in peacetime as in wartime.

"I felt that a foreign correspondent covering this world must do what he could to explain to people what happened between wars," he said."There were great changes taking place and they were going to affect everybody in our country, sooner or later, economically, politically and every other way, and that was what I thought was my job.To tell them about the world, the world as I found it."

As might be expected, Richardson is a purist when it comes to foreign correspondence and to journalism.

"I think a good journalist is, in a way, an idealist in a sense," he said."He's doing this for a purpose.He's not doing it just for fun.He loves to do it, but he's doing it hoping people will read what he says, hoping they'll understand."

Richardson retired in 1982 but he still wants to understand.He reads four newspapers a day and, as might be expected, is not a big fan of the "info-tainment" industry that bombards Americans every day.

"I want to see the news," he said.
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Especially after 9/11, Richardson says.Information from abroad is critical for America and for Americans.

"It's a small world today," he said."It's a global village.

Dave Richardson - YANK Staff Correspondent - March 9, 1943 edition.

Highly impressed with the devotion and bravery of the combat medics serving in the New Guinea campaign, Yank correspondent Dave Richardson wrote this short article, praising the daring do of four medics in particular: