Ben Robertson was a journalist, author and war correspondent during World War II. He attended Clemson Agricultural College(now Clemson University) and graduated in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. He then went to the University of Missouri and received a degree in journalism in 1926.

His professional career in journalism began with a short stint at the News and Courier in Charleston. His first major job after graduating was at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. In 1927 he went to Australia to work for The News in Adelaide. From 1929 to 1934 he reported for the New York Herald Tribune, after which he went to work for the Associated Press in New York and London. In 1935 he went to the United Press and also sent stories to the Anderson Independent in South Carolina. In 1937 Ben Robertson returned to AP and also did disaster relief work for the American Red Cross during the Ohio River flood of 1937.

His work as a war correspondent began in 1940 covering England for the New York paper PM. He worked with Edward R. Murrow covering The Blitz of London. In most of 1942 he roved for PM and the Chicago Sun in the Pacific, Asia and North Africa. In the later part of the year he returned to the Herald Tribune and was on his way to head its London bureau when he was killed in a plane crash in Portugal in 1943.

In his short life, Ben Robertson published three books. The first was Travelers Rest published in South Carolina in 1938. The second was I See England, published in 1941, which told of his interaction with the British during wartime. The last, his masterpiece, was Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory published in 1942.