For those curious, it was in a small 2016 article about college textbooks [1] ("These Are the 100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes"). Not some prominent 100 women novelists of the 20th century list that was their cover story. At the bottom of the page it has a correction notice. People like to say Time Magazine made the mistake, because it blows it out of proportion and sounds better. If you say that one writer - David Johnson - made a mistake, it entirely loses its punch.
[1] https://time.com/4234719/college-textbooks-female-writers/
Publications have editors on staff to check what they publish, before they print and distribute millions of copies of every sentence in the issue. There's a longstanding and ubiquitous norm that publications are absolutely responsible for what they publish, and for good reason. You may as well say that Facebook isn't responsible for its norm violation du jour; just the PM who thought of it and the couple engineers that implemented it.
(which isn't to say that this is anything more than mildly amusing, but claiming that attributing the error to Time instead of one of its writers is "blowing it out of proportion" couldn't be more wrong)
Waugh specially was an established novelist before world war 2. He participated in various theaters in Europe, and later wrote about them. He may have been one of the foremost chroniclers of the British Experience in WW2. I doubt Americans have someone of similar achievement to compare. Herman Wouk isn't of the same level as Waugh.
Of course there was even the episode of his name featuring in the 100 'Women' novelists of 20th century list of Time magazine.