During the Second World War she become a war correspondent photojournalist for National Geographic. In 1942 she spent time with the Marines who were on training courses in Panama. After the war, Dickey Chapelle covered all the major wars and rebellions. This included the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, where she was captured and jailed for seven weeks. This was followed by spells in Algeria and Lebanon. She later wrote in What's A Woman Doing Here?: A Reporter's Report on Herself (1962): "I had become an interpreter of violence. I'd covered three revolutions in three years - Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon.... I minded the larger truths that the revolutions had failed. Hungary had fallen to the tanks. Brother still fought brother in Algeria. Rioting continued in Lebanon. But men continued to hope and fight for a better world."

In the summer of 1958 she was sent by The Reader's Digest to cover the uprising against Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. On 8th March, 1964, 3,500 US marines arrived in South Vietnam. They were the first "official" US combat troops to be sent to the country. Chapelle was one of the few reporters who went with the US Army on search and destroy missions. It was in Vietnam that her life ended as a result of a tripwire boobytrap. 

Voices On-line Exhibition contains several chapters from Chapelle's book, What's a Woman Doing Here? and key photographs from World War II, Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam.  The exhibit ends with a Resources section that highlights Chapelle's own writing and recommended writing about women war correspondents.