National Geographic: Cameramen Who Dared Page #3

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I had five whites

circling the cages and me,

and I was thirty,

forty feet away,

with animals swimming

between me and the cages.

You always have apprehension,

but driven a bit by the hum of

that camera and the spectacle,

you take a calculated risk.

Giddings has taken his chances

not only with the ocean's

most fearsome creatures

but also with its

most formidable places:

Like the hypnotically

beautiful

but perilous waters beneath

the thick ice

at the North and South poles.

Diving the North Pole,

and for that matter,

Antarctica,

I think represents

the toughest diving

that I've done anywhere

in the world.

Surface conditions north

and south, 60, 70 below zero,

water temperature 28.5,

a canopy of ice over your head

in most cases, 8, 9 feet thick.

Antarctic diving is very, very,

very tough on the gear,

tough on the people.

You're still concerned

about bends.

You're still concerned about

all the problems of shooting

and making images but, again,

You're going through a hole

that's 30 inches in diameter,

and you've got

a limited air supply.

And you're on the bottom

perhaps 40 minutes

and you've got,

you know,

You're gonna run out of gas

and you've gotta find

that exit hole.

If you are in trouble

or you're confused

as to where you entered,

that you wanna go deeper,

if you surface under the ice

and you're trying to see the exit point

and you're just

under the canopy, of course,

You can't see anything.

So, you know, in most cases

if you have an emergency

you're off to the surface.

In this case if you have an

emergency it's usually deeper

to get a quick

vantage point on

where the exit hole is and out.

Arctic diving is also some

of the most beautiful diving

that I've done.

It's really a fairyland

of sorts.

You have to be gutsy

and you have to be motivated.

The best ones are driven.

They want to excel.

They want to come back

with images the likes of which

no one's ever seen before.

The camera goes to war!

Each day it records

the courage

and heroism of our troops

in battle.

But rarely do you see

the camera,

and the men behind it,

who risk those same dangers

to send back their stories

and pictures.

This is "Cameramen At War",

made during World War II

but with an admiring salute to

the filmmakers of World War I.

In the last war

they set up their cameras

front line.

The man in the tin hat

and bow tie is D.W. Griffith,

responsible for that

silent epic.

The Birth of a Nation.

The get-up may look

a bit odd now,

but they thrill the audiences

of their day

with the first shots

of a tank going into action.

In World War II,

top filmmakers including

John Ford, John Huston,

William Wyler and Frank Capra

produced war documentaries

working in Hollywood

with battle footage

shot by military

and civilian cameramen.

Meet Jack Ramsen of Movietone.

His assignment is a daylight

raid over occupied Europe.

His main care is his camera.

It's carefully

and accurately fitted

to the door

of a Flying fortress.

It's covered with

an electric blanket

to prevent

the motor freezing up.

Every precaution is taken to

insure you're seeing

good pictures

If the cameraman gets back.

All set now except for his

oxygen mask

and heavy gloves

not easy to work

in but necessary at these

terrific heights

if he's to get pictures

like-Bombs gone!

Caravan's Jim Wright in

another Fortress takes up

where the bomber leader

leaves off

over an Italian cove,

pattern bombing it

for enemy submarines.

Wouldn't you think his fingers

would tremble with excitement?

The pictures are steady

as a rock!

The amphibious invasion

of the Pacific island

of Tarawa in 1943,

one of the bloodiest battles

in the history

of the U.S. Marine Corps.

A documentary film

about the battle shot

by Marine combat cameramen

later won an Academy Award.

This is the Army-Navy Screen

Magazine cutting room,

where combat film

taken by Army,

Navy and Marine cameramen

comes in from battlefronts

all over the world.

The Marine staff sergeant

with the expert medal is

from Boston, Massachusetts.

Sgt. Hatch went in

with the first wave

in the landing at Tarawa,

armed with a pistol

and a hand camera,

and brought back

a filmed record

of the fighting at that island...

you know that's the best

frame of combat film

I've ever seen.

Hey, that's okay!

And when an Army man says

that to a Marine, brother

he means it.

Oh, they're just luck.

Today, Norm Hatch has

vivid memories

of hitting the beach at Tarawa

with other Marine cameramen

who had no idea

what a fierce battle

they were walking into.

They didn't know they'd have

the extraordinary opportunity

of seeing the enemy

from so close

that both sides

in the fighting

would be shown

in the same frames of film.

They didn't know that,

despite their training,

combat photography

was something they'd have

to learn as they went along.

When we went in on Tarawa, the

only experience that anybody

had in the Marine Corps

doing a war story on film

was Guadalcanal,

and that was almost

nothing at all.

And so, consequently,

when we got ready to go,

it was sort of like

an improve situation, you know,

everybody makes it up

on his own.

My thoughts were basically

that if those guys can go out

there and fight

and do a good job fighting,

we had to go out there and do

a good job in photography.

We had the exit covered with

machine guns and rifle fire.

The Japs kept coming out

trying to knock out

the machine guns.

There's one of them.

That sniper's got a bead

on another.

There's a squad of them!

A lot of good guys from the

outfit weren't there anymore.

I'm glad I got these pictures,

because when you remember

the roaches

you've been fighting and

the things they represented,

And when you saw the flag go

up and remembered the freedom

that flag stood for, you knew

you were in on a good thing.

Vietnam a different war

and a different breed of cameraman.

Cameraman Norman Lloyd,

on assignment for CBS News,

filmed and recorded

these scenes

when Bravo Company moved

into a large Communist bunker

complex

six miles north of

the Vietnamese border.

The main enemy fore

had apparently pulled out,

but a rear guard element

was left behind

to slow down

the American advance.

Norman Lloyd, from Australia,

was a school dropout,

a kangaroo hunter,

a bar fighter, a loner.

He went to Vietnam on his own,

replaced a CBS cameraman

who was missing in action,

and stayed four years.

He won two Emmys and made

a reputation

for courage verging

on craziness.

General Westmoreland was

making a tour,

and there was a firebase

that was in deep trouble,

and, uh, and I really wanted

to get in to that firebase.

It was, but it was, they were

in terrible shape in there,

and I wanted to get in and I,

I walked up to him and I said,

"General, I want to get

into that firebase".

And I said the name of the

firebase and he said to me,

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