The anniversary of Martha Gellhorn's D-Day

She is remembered by many as the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, but Martha Gellhorn was never content to be just Mrs Hemingway. She was a war correspondent during some of the key conflicts of the 20th century, from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam to the Six-Day War in the Middle East. She was also with the 200,000 Allied soldiers who landed on Normandy's beaches on 6 June 1944. Refused permission to join the forces sailing to France, Gellhorn tricked a British official into letting her board a hospital ship. She then locked herself in the toilet until it set off for Normandy:

"Pulling out of the harbor that night, we passed a ship going the same way. The ship was grey against the grey water and the grey sky, and standing on her decks, packed solidly together, khaki, silent and unmoving, were American troops. No one waved and no one called. The crowded grey ship and the empty white ship sailed slowly out of the harbor toward France.

We crossed by daylight, and the morning seemed longer than other mornings. The captain never left the bridge and, all alone and beautifully white, we made our way through the mine-swept channel."

Winston Churchill worried that D-Day would turn into another First Day on the Somme. However, instead of the 20,000 dead that he feared, British casualties on 6 June 1944 totalled 3,000. But each day after that the fighting was every bit as terrible as it had been in Picardy, a generation before. Allied losses in Normandy that summer were 425,000 killed, wounded and missing.

To mark the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, President Barack Obama and Prince Charles will join President Nicolas Sarkozy tomorrow on Omaha Beach — code name for one of the main landing points of what became one of the strategic turning points of World War II. Martha Gellhorn witnessed it and wrote about it, brilliantly, beautifully.