Journal: Bible and Spade (Second Run)
Volume: BSPADE 28:4 (Fall 2015)
Article: Egyptian War Correspondents And The Biblical Giants
Author: Rob Sullivan

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BSpade 28:4 (Fall 2015) p. 111

Egyptian War Correspondents And The Biblical Giants

Rob Sullivan

“We Seemed Like Grasshoppers In Our Own Eyes”
Numbers 13:33

The one event that shaped the world more than any other during the last century was World War II. Conservative estimates place the number killed during the conflict as well north of 55,000,000.1 In Europe, the war officially began in September of 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland. Over succeeding months, the German Wehrmacht would sweep through and take Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In May of the 1940, Hitler invaded France. Germany’s Blitzkrieg (German for “lightning war”) tactics overwhelmed the British and French forces. Within six weeks, France was capitulating and Britain was desperately evacuating what remained of its Expeditionary Forces on mainland Europe.

After the fall of France, much of Western Europe lay in Hitler’s hands. For the next year, Great Britain stood largely alone against the might of Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia would not be invaded for another 12 months. The United States would not enter WWII until the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941. During this interim period, the heralded Battle of Britain was fought. In one of the most important air campaigns of all time, the German Luftwaffe tangled with Britain’s Royal Air Force for control of the skies over England. On many a night, German aircraft would rain down bombs on the city of London. With this as a backdrop, the person considered to be the “most distinguished and renowned figure in the history of American broadcast journalism”2 took to the airwaves. Edward R. Murrow, CBS War Correspondent, captivated America’s listening public with his rooftop broadcasts while Britain and Germany’s young men fought for the airspace above London. Some would argue that his broadcasts turned the sentiment of a largely ambivalent American public.

Wikimedia Commons

Edward R. Murrow at work with CBS, 1957.

While a mountain peak of journalism, Murrow is certainly not the first to report from a battlefield or war zone. Battlefield reporting and the work of war correspondents go well back into ancient times. Some of the earliest battlefield reports we have go as far back as Egyptian army exploits in and around the ancient land of Canaan.

One Egyptian document presently housed in the British Museum dates back nearly 3300 years. Referred to as the Anastasi Papyrus, this document appears to b...

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