A.B.C. Whipple

At Life, Whipple helped edit the memoirs of General Douglas MacArthur and Winston Churchill. He also worked closely with such authors as James Jones, Walter Lord and Rachel Carson. Whipple was later a writer, editor of Life's International Editions and executive editor of Time-Life Books. He retired in 1975.

Whipple was a Washington correspondent for Life Magazine in 1943, assigned to the new Pentagon, when photographer George Strock returned from New Guinea in January 1943 with photographs that included an image of three dead American soldiers on a beach during the Battle of Buna-Gona. The photograph could not be published because the U.S Office of Censorship only permitted the media to publish images of blanket-covered bodies and flag-draped coffins of dead U.S. soldiers. for fear of “damaging morale on the home front.” “I went from army captain to major to colonel to general,” Whipple recalled, “until I wound up in the office of an Assistant Secretary of the Air Corps, who decided, ‘This has to go to the White House.’”

Elmer Davis, Director of the United States Office of War Information, felt the censorship rules should be loosened. He persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to lift the restrictions on images of dead soldiers. Life finally published Strock's photograph on September 20, 1943. Strock's image was the first photograph to depict American soldiers dead on the battlefield. It was accompanied by a full page editorial explaining why the editors felt the image merited publication.

Addison Beecher Colvin ("Cal") Whipple (July 15, 1918 – March 17, 2013) was an American journalist, editor, historian and author. He was born in Glens Falls, New York, on July 15, 1918, and spent most of his childhood in Suffield, Connecticut. He graduated from the Loomis School, from Yale University in 1940 and received an M.A. from Harvard University before being hired by Life Magazine. He had many positions at Time/Life and wrote a number of books about maritime history.