The Press: Casualties

Since World War II's start in 1939, ten U.S. foreign correspondents have lost their lives overseas, more than 30 have been wounded. Latest to die: Associated Pressman Edward Henry ("Harry") Crockett, 31, a New Yorker and father of two.

In 1939 Newsman Crockett scored his first big beat: in a small lobster boat he sailed 15 rough miles out in the Atlantic, to get the first details of the sinking of the submarine Squalus off Portsmouth, N.H.

He worked in A.P.'s New York Bureau when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. He immediately asked for a foreign assignment, was sent to the Middle East. When A.P.'s Larry Allen was taken prisoner by the Italians last September, Crockett took over Allen's assignment with the British Mediterranean fleet.

Said an A.P. dispatch last week: "[He] was fatally wounded in the torpedoing of a British naval vessel and . . . was buried at sea. . . . No other details . . . were released."