The absolute steadfast and resolute courage shown by Sky’s Alex Crawford is to be praised, admired and recognized.

Not knowing what lay ahead, Alex travelled with the rebels and marched to Tripoli. The scenes shown on Sky news, of her giving a live link as rebel fighters tried to draw out snipers was like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. In that same feed, a fighter was struck by a sniper’s bullet and dropped right at the reporter’s feet.

But it was not only Alex who risked her neck to bring us reports from Tripoli. There was also an intrepid camera man who followed her every move, turned his back to gunfire to film the feeds and stuck his head right into the mix to get the same view that the Libyan fighters had. It was sheer unadulterated courage and a sense of duty which has rarely been seen.

But Alex Crawford comes from a long line of reporters and journalists who have gone over and above the call of duty in trying to bring us the best reports from warzones. Perhaps, the Grandaddy of them all was Winston Churchill.

In 1899, Winston Churchill headed to South Africa as a correspondent for the Morning Post to cover the Boer War between British and Dutch settlers. He was captured by enemy Boer soldiers and along with the other prisoners was imprisoned in Pretoria. When the prison guards turned their backs on Churchill, he took the opportunity to climb over the prison wall. Wearing a brown flannel suit with £75 and four slabs of chocolate in his pocket, Churchill walked through the night in hopes of finding the Delagoa Bay Railway. He jumped onto a train and hid among soft sacks covered in coal dust. Leaving the train before daybreak, Churchill continued on his escape and was eventually spirited back to British lines.

Another journalist who will live long in the memory and was immortalized in the film We Were Soldiers was Joe Galloway. During the Vietnam War, Galloway served three tours, beginning in early 1965. He was decorated for rescuing wounded American soldiers under heavy enemy fire during the battle at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley and was the only civilian awarded the Bronze Star by the United States Army during that war. The book he wrote about those experiences was turned into the above mentioned film. He later wrote a sequel.

Another war correspondent who went over and above the call of duty was Max Hastings. Working for the evening standard, Hastings wrestled for a long time with feelings of inadequacy after he had earned his Para Wings, but never cut the grade as a military officer. He turned his hand to war reporting and in the days of typewriters and telexes, he managed to get scoop after scoop, covering a total of 11 conflicts. His biggest moment arrived when after two weeks of ‘Yomping’ across the Falklands and digging foxholes to sleep in, he became the first person to enter a liberated Port Stanley.

These are but just a few of the amazing people who have found it in themselves to enter a conflict zone and bring the news back to the world. It is their extra-ordinary sense of duty and absolute hunger for the story (and a good dose of irrationality) that allows us to know what is happening. Some have given up their lives in doing so.