In tandem with the current US and British army war preparations, a media race is taking place be the first to beam the successes of "smart" weapons - and their regretted collateral damage - into our cosy parlours.
Ratings will rise for the successful channels. Reputations will be made for a select few of the latest fatigues-clad journalists, who will pick their way across our screens through the rubble and the bodies in the dusty footsteps of Robert Fisk, Kate Adie, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn.
Their fame, however, is unlikely to outlive that of Dublin's William Howard Russell, who died on February 10th, 1907, and whose epitaph in London's St Paul's Cathedral describes him as "the first and greatest" of war correspondents. "Mr Russell of the Times" became one of the best-known journalists in Victorian Britain. As well as covering the Crimean War, he also reported such key conflicts as the American Civil War, the Indian Mutiny, the Franco-Prussian War and the Zulu War of 1879.
Russell's Crimea reports exposed the privations of ordinary soldiers and the complacency of commanding officers. Even though one British Secretary for War wrote, "I trust the Army will lynch the Times correspondent," Russell was eventually knighted for his services.
William Howard Russell was born in Tallaght, Dublin on March 28th, 1820. He was educated at Rev Geoghegan's Academy in Hume Street and spent two years at Trinity College, before going to London at the age of 21. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, but his main interest lay in journalism.
He reported the 1841 Longford election campaign from the local hospital, where he met the casualties of various political meetings. Impressed by his enterprise and the lucidity of his despatches, editor John Delane quickly offered him a full-time position with the London Times.
First-hand account
Up to the 1850s, there were no special war correspondents. The popular press depended on official dispatches or reports from some of the more literary-minded officers. Russell changed all that with his first-hand account of the 1850 Danish Schleswig-Holstein campaign, but it was his Crimean War eyewitness reporting which made his name.
From Balaclava he wrote: "Never did the painter's eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from the ridge. . .The fleeing vapours still hung around the mountain tops and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of armed men below."
The Irishman was shocked by the conditions of the ordinary soldiers. From Sebastopol, he wrote: "The commonest access of a hospital was wanting; there was not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness - the stench was overpowering . . . men died without the least effort to save them."
His relentless and detailed reports of army mismanagement and incompetence resulted in the downfall of the British prime minister, the Earl of Aberdeen. Russell's observations of the plight of war casualties led to Florence Nightingale's involvement and the establishment of hospitals and proper medical care. His "thin red line" description of soldiers standing firm in the path of the Russian Cavalry passed into British folklore; his account of the charge of the Light Brigade is said to have inspired Tennyson's famous poem about that event.
Russell invariably had to provide his own transport, food, accommodation and make his own arrangements for the dispatch of his reports. Written in the heat of battle, his opinions and criticisms outraged many in the British establishment. Lord Raglan complained that his despatches from Sebastopol revealed much of advantage to the enemy. Though warmly welcomed by President Lincoln, the Irishman's objective accounts angered both sides in the American Civil War and his life was threatened.
Colonial attitudes
His denunciation of "the peculiar institution of slavery" was matched by his criticism of British colonial attitudes. He commented: "What I observe is this - that after an Englishman has been a few years in India, unless he is a man of reflection and education, he forgets altogether the principles of his life, the rules of his religion, and the feelings of his civilisation." According to the Times's editor, it was Russell's critical Indian Mutiny despatches which led to the stopping of the indiscriminate execution of prisoners.
Apart from his war exploits, Russell reported such events as the Duke of Wellington's funeral, the coronation of Czar Alexander II in Moscow, and the wedding of the Prince of Wales. In 1860, he founded the Army and Navy Gazette. Much appreciated for his wit and storytelling, he was a friend of King Edward VII. His literary acquaintances included Dickens and Thackeray, who often reiterated: "I would pay a guinea any day to have Russell dining at my table in the Garrick."
Official honours
Though reviled by many at the time for his uncompromising reports of army mismanagement, Russell was knighted in 1895. When the dust had settled on the various wars, he also received official honours from Austria, France, Turkey, and Greece.
Truth may have been war's first and most consistent casualty, but nothing less would do for the forthright Irishman. A contemporary wrote after his funeral to Lon don's West Brompton cemetery: "None could match his descriptive powers, his tireless energy and particularly his acute perception of the long-term effects of official policies. But his greatest service was the courage and humanity of his reports - he wished only for the truth and that he never failed to provide."
Before he retired from the field, Russell had seen how speedy telegraphic transmission had outpaced and displaced skilful writing and acute judgment. One wonders what he would make of today's instant sitting-room participation in distant conflicts.