Dear Subscriber

On Jan. 2, William Henry Chickering, TIME war correspondent in the South Pacific, filed his last dispatch: "It is my hunch that [the Japs at Lingayen] won't react very favorably, may even retreat to the hills and make our initial success easy. . . ." His hunch was right, but he wasn't there to see for himself. On Jan. 6 he was killed by enemy air action in Lingayen Gulf. He was standing on the bridge of a warship; he and the British liaison officer, General Lumsden (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS), were killed at the same moment.

Chickering was only 28--young in years but a seasoned veteran in the range of Pacific battle history which he had covered with General MacArthur, from the dark days of 1942 in New Guinea to the first glowing glimpse of Luzon last week.

Big (6 ft. 4 in.), handsome Bill Chickering was living in Honolulu when World War II began. His book on old Hawaii, Within the Sound of These Waves, was published in 1941. On the recommendation of men who knew him, TIME hired him as its Honolulu man, sent him to cover MacArthur's headquarters in Australia.

The son of a San Francisco attorney, Chickering had traveled in Europe and Asia, had gone to Hotchkiss and Yale. In 1938 he had married Audrey Madden. When the news of her husband's death came, she was living in Piedmont, Calif., with their four-year-old son. Last week she said: "He had to go back to the Pacific. He had seen it start there and it was logical for him to see it end."

Chickering saw at first hand the savage Bougainville campaign and the terror of jungle war. Then he shifted to the Central Pacific, where he went ashore at Kwajalein and watched the mop-up operations. He saw death all around him.

He returned to New York and last September went out once more to follow his old friend MacArthur back to the Philippines. On Leyte he went ashore on "Red Beach" with the assault troops. His luck still held.

As a front-line correspondent who took all the risks and hardships of the combat troops, he was generous, amiable and liked the work. His fellow correspondents all liked him. MacArthur called him "Bill," and last week saluted his "superb service." One of his talents was as a wildly skillful driver of Army jeeps, which his long legs could almost straddle.

He was a tireless reporter, sensitive to the sights, sounds, horror and humor of war. His cables reflected that sensitiveness. In the Kwajalein cleanup his eyes had caught the sight of a dead Jap's bearded waxen face sprinkled with the rubble of a wrecked pillbox, on Leyte the pathos of G.I.s celebrating Christmas by decorating twigs with Christmas wrappings and empty cigaret packs.

He was deeply interested in people. His cables were filled with descriptions of the men he met--the soft-spoken Marine colonel known as "The Brute," the New Zealand major with a fresco of butterflies and birds tattooed on his chest, the scared troops aboard an assault ship with their faces smeared with green camouflage paint and softly singing as H-hour approached.

It was General MacArthur, aboard his flagship, who told LIFE Photographer Carl Mydans of Chickering's death. "Our losses have been small in this operation," MacArthur said, "but you feel them heavily when close friends die."

We on TIME feel our loss of Bill Chickering. He was our first correspondent to die in the full roar of combat. He was also our good friend whom we all respected, admired and liked.

Sincerely,

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