on the country. As Cambodia and South Vietnam were falling to Khmer Rouge and PAVN offensives in April 1975, she requested that UPI send her back into the war zone, but instead she was sent to Clark Air Base which was used to support the evacuations of Phnom Penh and Saigon. She was then reassigned to the the United States Seventh Fleet flagship and command ship for the Saigon evacuation. After the war, she continued to work as a foreign correspondent for UPI based in Singapore, but quit after being sexually harassed by her boss. She then moved to Jakarta where she worked in public relations for a hotel and began a long-term relationship with John Stearman, an American oil engineer. She returned to journalism in 1985 joining Agence France-Presse (AFP) serving as a correspondent in Iraq during the Gulf War, in Indonesia as Timor-Leste gained independence, and in South Korea, where she was the first to report the death of Kim Il Song. She also reported from Afghanistan, and later described an incident in Kabul as the most frightening in her career. Following the collapse of Mohammad Najibullah's communist regime, she was captured by a local warlord and brought to a hotel, where she was brutally beaten and dragged up a flight of stairs by her hair. She finally escaped with the help of two fellow journalists, and hid out on a window ledge in the freezing Afghan winter, while the warlord and his men searched the building for her. She returned to Cambodia in 1993 and made her final visit to Vietnam in 2000. Webb retired to the Hunter Region in 2001. She wrote an essay for War Torn, a collection of reminiscences by women correspondents in the Vietnam War and taught journalism for a year Ohio University. She died of bowel cancer on 13 May 2007. In 2008, AFP established the Kate Webb Prize, worth €3,000 to €5,000, awarded annually to an Asian correspondent or agency that best exemplified the spirit of Kate Webb. Webb was commemorated on an Australian postage stamp in 2017. She is survived by a brother, Jeremy Webb, and a sister, Rachel Miller. References External links "Fearless reporter in search of truth", Obituary, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 2007 1943 births 2007 deaths Australian reporters and correspondents Australian war correspondents Women war correspondents War correspondents of the Vietnam War University of Melbourne