Ian Fyfe (British journalist)
{{Short description|British journalist who died at D-Day}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
{{Use British English|date=December 2024}}
{{infobox person
| image = Ian Fyfe Mirror.jpg
| caption = Fyfe in US Army uniform, {{circa|1944}}
| alt = A young man in military uniform: "US" can be seen on his collars.
| name = Ian Fyfe
| birth_name = Ian Herbert Fyfe
| birth_date = 1918 or 1919
| death_date = 6 June 1944 (aged 24–26)
| occupation = Journalist
| employer = Daily Mirror
| death_cause = Glider crash-landing during D-Day
}}
Ian Herbert Fyfe (1918 or 1919 – 6 June 1944) was a British journalist for the Daily Mirror. He joined the newspaper in 1938 and during the Second World War volunteered for assignment to the airborne landings during the D-Day portion of Operation Overlord. Fyfe's Horsa glider crash-landed in Normandy and he died after being pinned by a Jeep the glider was carrying. Fyfe was the only British journalist to die on D-Day.
Earlier career
Fyfe was Scottish and was born in 1918 or 1919. He joined the staff of the Daily Mirror in 1938 and was a trainee at the same time as Donald Zec who recalled him as "a very good reporter, a very bright chap{{nbsp}}... I admired him – he had a lot of guts". In 1943, Fyfe married a woman called Betty and the couple lived in Croydon.
In 1943, Fyfe had reported on American servicemen spending Christmas in London.{{cite news |author1-first=Tim |author1-last=Luckhurst |author1-link=Tim Luckhurst |title='It'll all be over by next year'{{snd}}how Britain celebrated Christmas in 1943 |url=https://theconversation.com/itll-all-be-over-by-next-year-how-britain-celebrated-christmas-in-1943-219525 |newspaper=The Conversation UK |date=21 December 2023 |access-date=17 November 2024 |language=en-gb |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231221123700/https://theconversation.com/itll-all-be-over-by-next-year-how-britain-celebrated-christmas-in-1943-219525 |archive-date=21 December 2023 |url-status=live}} In January 1944, his report on the civilian victims of a German incendiary bombing in London made the front page of the Daily Mirror.{{cite news |author1-last=Fyfe |author1-first=Ian |author1-link=Ian Fyfe (British journalist) |title=Plucked burning bomb from husband with bare hands |work=Daily Mirror |date=26 January 1944 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-mirror-plucked-burning-bomb-from-h/162430150/ |via=newspapers.com}}
D-Day
Ahead of the Normandy landings, the Daily Mirror asked for volunteers to accompany the invading troops as war correspondents. Fyfe and a colleague, Harry Procter, both volunteered.{{cite book |last1=Procter |first1=Harry |title=The Street of Disillusion |date=1958 |publisher=A. Wingate |page=82 |language=en |oclc=6715370 |ol=7525263W |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.522890/page/82/}} Fyfe was selected because, Procter was told, Fyfe had no children while Procter had four.
Fyfe underwent intensive training with the British Army to prepare him for his role. For a week before D-Day (6 June 1944), he lived on camp with the men of the 9th (Eastern and Home Counties) Parachute Battalion. He was to accompany the men in a Horsa glider due to land in Normandy during the early stages of the invasion.{{cite book |last1=Best |first1=Brian |title=Reporting the Second World War |date=2015 |publisher=Casemate Publishers |isbn=978-1-4738-7066-6 |page=198 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gWHNDwAAQBAJ |language=en |oclc=929625019 |ol=21587448W}} On the night of 5 June, he filed what would be his final report, an account of a service given by the unit's chaplain (who accompanied them in the operation), before the men departed for France. He said that the unit's "morale has never been higher".
File:Albemarle towing a Horsa glider.jpg
Fyfe was assigned to glider Chalk 66, which, as part of Operation Tonga, was to carry soldiers to attack the Merville Gun Battery that threatened Allied vessels off the Sword Beach landing zone. Fyfe boarded Chalk 66 at RAF Harwell in Oxfordshire at 11{{nbsp}}pm on 5 June. Also on board were two glider pilots, a lieutenant, an enlisted paratrooper, and three sappers of the Royal Engineers, and a Jeep. The rope from the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle towing aircraft broke as the glider travelled through low clouds. The glider crash-landed in a swamp near the Merville gun battery and struck either a tree or a German anti-glider pole. Fyfe's body was never recovered and he was listed as missing in action, presumed dead. He was the only British journalist to die on D-Day.
File:9 para btn normandy 1944.jpg
The enlisted paratrooper, Geoff Fuller, survived the impact. He recounted the crash details to an officer investigating the status of Sergant Ockwell, one of the pilots, who was also listed as missing in action. Fuller believed he had been sitting next to Fyfe in the glider. He recalled waking from a period of unconsciousness. He saw Fyfe had been pinned by the Jeep and saw him die within about 10 minutes. Fuller, who had been injured in the crash, managed to crawl to a nearby ditch. He witnessed German troops arrive soon after dawn to machine gun the glider and a later party came to recover the bodies.{{cite news |last1=Lines |first1=Andy |title=D-Day death mystery of Mirror war correspondent step closer to being solved |url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/d-day-death-mystery-mirror-32952460 |access-date=16 November 2024 |work=The Mirror |date=3 June 2024 |language=en}} The attack on Merville Gun Battery went ahead on 6 June. Only 150 of the assigned 600 men arrived to take part in the attack and around half of those who did were killed. The gun battery was taken but many of its crew survived and were back in action by the following day after the paratroopers withdrew. A second attack on 7 June failed to disable it and it remained in operation until August 1944.{{cite book |last1=Reed |first1=Paul |title=Walking D-Day |date=2012 |publisher=Pen and Sword |isbn=978-1-78303-330-0 |pages=45–48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ukdg4m7Osw8C |language=en |ol=17478953W |oclc=854583787}}
Legacy
After Fyfe's death, his wife Betty remarried; she died in the 1990s.{{cite news |author1-last=Greenslade |author1-first=Roy |author1-link=Roy Greenslade |title=Daily Mirror reporter who was the only journalist to die on D-Day |url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/05/daily-mirror-d-day |access-date=16 November 2024 |work=The Guardian |date=5 June 2014 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140605212028/https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/05/daily-mirror-d-day |archive-date=5 June 2014 |url-status=live}} Fyfe's brother, Crystal Palace footballer Alan Fyfe, named his son, born in 1954, after his dead brother.{{cite news |last1=Parry |first1=Tom |title=Nephew of hero journalist who died in WW2 'emotional' as he visits new memorial |url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nephew-hero-journalist-who-died-26833646 |access-date=16 November 2024 |work=The Mirror |date=29 April 2022 |language=en}}
Fyfe's body is possibly one of the unknown burials in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's (CWGC) Ste. Marie Cemetery at Le Havre. He is the only journalist to be named on the Bayeux Memorial at the CWGC's Bayeux War Cemetery.{{cite web |last1=Bellingham |first1=Neil |title=Bearing witness |url=https://www.stbrides.com/bearing-witness/ |website=St Bride's Church |access-date=16 November 2024 |date=29 October 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210920204556/https://www.stbrides.com/bearing-witness/ |archive-date=20 September 2021 |url-status=live}} In addition, Fyfe is the first name to appear on the journalists' memorial, inaugurated opposite Bayeux Cemetery in 2006 and commemorating more than 2,000 journalists killed in war since 1944.{{cite news |last1=Stafford |first1=Robin |title=Bayeux Memorial: Some corner of a foreign field |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bayeux-memorial-some-corner-of-a-foreign-field-793589.html |access-date=17 November 2024 |work=The Independent |date=10 March 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090419174542/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bayeux-memorial-some-corner-of-a-foreign-field-793589.html |archive-date=19 April 2009 |url-status=live}}