More than 50 years ago, during world War 11, Australian journalist Lorraine Stumm at the age of 25 was assigned as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mirror. Evacuated from Singapore just before it fell to the Japanese, she joined General MacArthur's headquarters in Brisbane and from 1941 until the surrender of Japan, she reported the war as Australia's first accredited woman war correspondent. She was awarded the Asiatic Pacific Service Star by General MacArthur for her services as a war correspondent in New Guinea. Despite the hard conditions and discrimination from some of her male colleagues, she kept the news flowing from New Guinea, the Philippines and Micronesia.

Lorraine was born a romantic and thankfully for those of us who became part of her life, has always remained so. Whether tilting at windmills in her first job as a young reporter on the London Daily Mirror, as a wife and mother prepared to risk all for the sake of her husband and child, as a war correspondent covering the hideous fall out of world conflict, as a first newspaper proprietor, as a beautiful and stylish fashion editor to royal tours, as a boss, and most of all as a friend, she displayed an integrity and generosity of spirit that stamped her life as a special human being. Most romantics are also adventurers and Lorraine was no exception as  her story demonstrates. She thrived on a challenge, was loyal to the point of lunacy to those she befriended and  refused to accept defeat on issues of conviction. Who else would have thrown an ink pot at a formidable editor of the Sydney Daily Mirror and won admiration from the late Sir Frank Packer for her gutsy style?  Life as a correspondent for the London Daily Mirror meant that Lorraine  got to meet a number of film stars, interviewing such greats as Robert Taylor, Maureen O'Sullivan, Gary Cooper and Lionel Barrymore. A highlight for her was talking to George Bernard Shaw on the telephone when Sir James Barrie died and she remembers him saying: "Well, well, so Barries dead, I suppose I'll be next."

One of her most sensational stories was of French air-women, Madame Irene Schmeder who shot her lover as she flew him across the channel because he told her their  romance was finished. After he ditched her, she ditched him by pushing his body out of the plane. Shocked by her crime she crashed the plane which had been given to her by her millionaire husband to mark her success as a pilot in several European air races. The plane came down on a farm in Kent and she was rescued by the farm owner and his family and taken to their home, where a doctor was summoned. While recuperating in Kent, Irene became friendly with the family and kept in touch with them during her trial in France, where she was acquitted by a sympathetic jury on the grounds that it was a "crime passionelle"

A year later the family invited her to their daughter's wedding. The fact leaked out to the press that she was to cross to England by the New Haven Dieppe ferry.  Lorraine was told to charter a plane and fly to Paris immediately, locate Madame Schmeder and bring her to England  so as to get a special story for the London Daily Mirror.  She arrived in France and no one knew who she was for she couldn't speak French. Off she went, located Irene Schmeder and of course she didn't tell her she was a English journalist or else the French woman would have run a mile. Posing  as a friend of the English family, Lorraine then  had to keep Irene  away from the 'snooping press'. She entertained Irene for five days, sightseeing and dining in Paris, spending lavishly her newspaper's money and spiriting her across the English channel scooping her colleagues with a front page article. 

Above: Lorraine Stumm with Madame Irene Schemeder flying from Paris to Croyden

But it was the images of world 11 that shaped her life even more than in the most obvious ways of losing her first husband, Wing Commander Harley Sturm, of fleeing the fall of Singapore with her baby daughter and of meeting her second husband, Major Alan Parker, in the Pacific theatre. Her experiences and taste of danger and sacrifice were the well spring of her own courage and love. Lorraine planned to write about her experiences, but post war and a widow she was forced instead to get a job on the Sydney Daily Telegraph rising to become women's editor of the Sydney Sun newspaper  to support herself and her child. It was only on her retirement that she sat down and remembered her war experiences for a fellow journalist who compiled a biography of six famous Australian war time journalists under the title "A Handful of Hacks". "I Saw Too Much" was a natural follow on from this book. Images of World War II and her experiences shaped her life; she was a feminist who remained feminine and a supporter of anti discrimination and equal opportunity for women before those words became categories.

During the American occupation of Japan she reported for London and Australian newspapers and was the first person to interview a survivor of Hiroshima. Even though Lorraine had experienced air raids in Singapore and a dangerous voyage across the Indian ocean to Sri Lanka to join her air force husband who had been stationed in India, New Guinea she admits was a shock." I remember walking down a dusty track, feeling dazed by the heat and the noise, when coming towards me was a correspondent colleague,  and later author George Johnston. He asked me how it was all going. "It's all a bit overwhelming suddenly finding yourself in the theatre of war," I told him. He nodded sympathetically, " I know, it's a case of, I saw too much."

In 1949 Lorraine went to the Gold Coast to publish her own newspaper,  the first free newspaper there. In a Womens Day article written in 1950, it was claimed that Lorraine had made newspaper history when she launched her own newspaper, the South Coast Express which serviced what is now Queensland's Gold Coast. She was not only the owner/editor of a new free weekly newspaper, but did the work single handedly  of 10 men.

Sean O'Shea was commissioned by Lorraine to create the original art for the front cover of her book. Lorraine felt Sean's distinctive and original style would make her book relevant to a younger audience, as well as older readers. She was keen to inspire young women to reach for the limit of what they are capable of and not be held back by convention. In Australia in 1941 women journalists were not allowed by the army to go into theatre of war. The English accreditation got her to the war zones and General MacArthur had no such restrictions. Sean's interpretation of her haunting, thoughtful face, she felt, gave her book the right tone.

"I had many wonderful conversations with Lorraine while she was writing her book so I came to understand the anguish and the excitement she experienced during those six years as a war correspondent," says Sean."The image is a dry point etching of a face, which is my interpretation of her at that time. I remember well her saying: "Now that I live with my memories it seems right to record what I saw during those tumultuous years."

 I Saw Too Much is available from the Australian War Memorial Bookshop in Canberra and is now in library around Australia collection.

Author: Lorraine  Stumm.

Comment

My mother Lorraine spoke to me often about writing "I Saw Too Much" during my school years. She held important editorial positions on two leading Sydney newspapers and founded her own free newspaper on Queensland's Gold Coast. Her work gave her little time to contemplate writing a memoir, so it wasn't until she retired that she found the time and the inclination. Her account is factual because she was at heart a reporter who found it hard to incorporate her personal feelings into her stories. Still the book gives a wonderful insight into her bravery during those years and her determination to be close to her husband whom she was not to know would die at the age of 29 after six short years of marriage. I am proud of her achievements when put in the context of her time and the conservative middle class background from which she sprung.  The image that Sean created of my mother's beautiful face hangs in the main guest area of my Bed and Breakfast farm stay in Hannam Vale, NSW. My daughter and I now have a collection of his original art from wood cuts, through pastels to oils and each one is arresting, imaginative and a pleasure to experience. The Sufi dancer, a large four part work, hangs in the hall of my holiday cottage and brings gasps from visitors every time they see it. For sheer imagination it is hard to beat and the execution is perfect. I believe the truly clever thing about Sean's art is his ability to translate his imagination onto canvas with emotion and originality.  I have watched the reaction of visitors to his works, a number of which hang in my homestead and without fail every one comments on their creativity. The image Sean has created for my mother's book always gives  me a sense of calm as I reflect on its beauty.

Sheridan Stumm  2009

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