She was decorated for her reporting from Chechnya, where she was pinned down by fire from Russian aircraft and troops. Finding her last relatively sensible line of retreat cut off by paratroopers, she escaped over an icy mountain path into Georgia, but after four perilous days' journey found herself stranded.

Colleagues, including her then husband, Patrick Bishop, the author and a former Telegraph journalist, realised she was in trouble and contacted the American embassy in Tblisi which duly sent a helicopter to rescue her.

In their citation, the judges of the British Press awards said: “Her escape from Chechnya was a superb adventure, grippingly told. It was one of the great adventure stories of all time, they should make it into a film.”

The same could be said of many of her exploits. In East Timor in 1999 she was credited with helping save the lives of 1,500 refugees stranded in a United Nations compound in Dili which was under siege by the Indonesian army in the wake of a referendum that chose independence from Jakarta’s rule.

It was an episode in her career I personally remember well. I was evacuated from Dili with what turned out to be a serious illness, along with most of the other remaining journalists. Ms Colvin and two Dutch female journalists however defiantly stayed behind and shamed the United Nations – whose chief bureaucrat wanted to leave the territory - into staying.

Together the journalists and the UN staff acted as a shield for the refugees. Within a few weeks external pressure forced the government to allow the evacuation to Australia of all the refugees shortly afterwards soon an international peacekeeping force arrived.

Colourful, engaging and with a thirst for life, Ms Colvin's ability to get to places no one else dared to approach was legendary and it was typical that her final dispatch came as the only Western reporter in the besieged Syrian city Homs.

In 2001 she became the first Western journalist in many years to gain access Tamil Tiger strongholds in northern Sri Lanka. But on her return to government-controlled areas her party came under fire. She was wounded by shrapnel, causing her to lose the use of her left eye and forcing her from then on to wear a distinctive, piratical eye patch that seemed an appropriate emblem of her courage.

Lying in a Manhattan hospital bed where surgeons had saved the eye itself by re-attaching the retina, she demonstrated the dedication for which her editors were always grateful, bashing out a 3,500-word account of her ordeal.

Richard Ellis, a former colleague at the Sunday Times who is now executive director, editorial at the Telegraph Media Group, paid rich tribute.

“She was one of the most charming and delightful war correspondents you will ever come across. She had amazing tenacity and bravery and I was always in awe of the way she came back from the injuries she suffered in Sri Lanka.”

John Burns, the veteran New York Times foreign correspondent, said she was "one of the most respected and celebrated reporters on Fleet Street".

He added: "She always remained, in important ways, a liberal American, with the keen sensibilities, including a burning passion for the plight of the afflicted, that were part of her birthright. She was, of course, absolutely fearless, though she knew the dangers well."

Alan Philps, a former Telegraph foreign correspondent now editing the World Today, the magazine of the Chatham House think tank, said: “What she brought to journalism was being a great eyewitness and being incredibly brave. It was a role she settled into and she never saw another form of journalism she wanted to do, but that meant she sacrificed everything for the job.”

Her unyielding dedication to reporting from every possible hotspot took a toll on her private life. She was not the type to have children. Her first marriage to Mr Bishop ended in divorce, while her second husband, the Bolivian-born journalist and writer Juan Carlos Gumucio, shot himself dead in 2002.

Her great escape from war zones was sailing, a hobby that she spent more and more time pursuing in recent years.

In 2010 at a Fleet Street service for fallen British journalists, she gave a moving evocation of the war-corresponding trade.

"We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?

"Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price," she said, using words whose poignancy has only been fully and tragically revealed now.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9098180/Marie-Colvin-killed-in-Syria-life-and-times-of-distinguished-war-correspondent.html