Shooting War Page #3

---

They used armour-piercing shells

and there was no armour.

They were hitting sand

and skittering all over the island.

You'd see these 16-inch shells.

Nothing had ever happened with them.

What grabbed me and took hold of me

was the bodies, the dead bodies,

God knows how many marines,

face down, floating in shallow water.

That was the first time

that I had really seen dead bodies.

When you see these bodies floating

in the water, it grabs you.

And they all seemed to look like

a buddy of mine, Norman Hatch.

This was a piece of ground that wasn't

as big as Central Park in New York,

and in the course of that 72 hours,

6,000 people died.

5,000 of those were Japanese,

1,000 were marines,

and another 2,000 were wounded.

Passing a disabled tank,

Hatch heard this kitten's cry.

He thought it might be a wounded

enemy. It was just another war victim.

He thought he might make a pet of it,

but the kitten scampered away,

never to be seen again.

The quality of his film

earned Hatch a trip home,

where this footage of him was made

for an army-navy short subject.

We drove down Market Street

and every major theatre had my name

on it as taking the Tarawa film.

They were running it.

That's the best combat film

I've ever seen.

- And from an army man to a marine!

- It was just luck.

A movie cameraman,

a stills man... and a driver.

That's how the Signal Corps organised

its combat photographers in Europe.

The cameras we were using

were Eyemo,

called a bomb-spotter camera.

It had a crank on the side you wound up.

They only had one two-inch lens.

If you can believe

the running you have to do

to get your long shot, medium shot

and close-up with a two-inch lens.

It was really criminal

that they sent us there with that stuff.

Yet remarkable things

could be done with that equipment.

John Huston, one of several directors

who followed Ford to war,

used it to make what James Agee

thought the best war documentary.

Huston would write and speak

this strikingly ironic narration.

Patron saint:
Peter.

Point of interest: St Peters, 1438.

Note interesting treatment of chancel.

Huston found real war more difficult

to direct than the Hollywood kind.

From October 1943

until the middle of December,

San Pietro was the scene of some of the

bitterest fighting on our Fifth Army front.

The Italian campaign had entered

its second phase,

to push forward again after

a static period brought on by heavy rain.

Huston came over

and he had a mission.

To make a coherent narrative

of one small battle

that would represent the entire war.

He realised that you have no control.

You shoot what you can get.

You can fire three rounds then drop.

But you can't get ten feet of film

in the same way.

If you had control,

you can do a lot with an Eyemo.

They gave him two battalions,

out of the 36 divisions, who were in rest,

and said, "Here it is,"

and he staged that whole thing.

He used film that we had shot,

actual battle film,

and he intercut it with what he had.

His stuff was much better than ours.

Ed Montagne has a veteran's

tolerance of Huston's tricks.

He used picturesque munitions,

he slammed the camera

to simulate explosions,

he even posed American Gls

as dead Germans.

But he scared the poor 36th.

That was a nervous outfit.

He'd have them going up a hill,

he'd take a grenade and throw it down,

and yell, "Grenade!" and they'd dive.

Some of the stuff was great.

I admire him for what he did.

But I resented the fact

that I would get critiques from New York.

"Major Huston's men were able

to do this. Why can't yours?"

I had the same people.

Didn't speak very well of me, did it?

Some of Huston's most moving footage

was of picking up the pieces,

of life reasserting itself

in the little town of San Pietro.

The people prayed to their patron saint

to intercede with God

on behalf of those

who came to liberate them

and passed on to the north

with the passing battle.

By 1944, the combat photographers

were everywhere,

even the China-Burma-lndia theatre.

To most Americans, that was

the war's most obscure corner.

Hidden behind high mountains

and deep jungles,

it was both a political

and logistical nightmare.

One route was called the "aluminium

trail" after all the planes downed flying it.

When Stilwell and Merrill

met to plan a mission

against the key

Japanese airfield at Myitkyina,

photographer Dave Quaid was there.

When General Stilwell flew off,

I went up to Merrill

and I said, "Hey, General.

"Do you mind if I join you guys?"

He said, "Come on along."

Technically, Quaid was AWOL

when he joined Operation Galahad.

He had no idea

what he was getting into.

So now we're on this trail that's basically

impassable. We had to cut steps.

Even the mules that can handle

any terrain could not handle this trail.

We ourselves carried

so much equipment,

five days K ration

and ammunition and rifles.

I carried a 13lb camera

and 2400 foot of film.

It got so rugged

that the mules could not make it.

Finally, they had to take the loads

and the saddles off the mules.

They would get a GI,

and a bunch of guys

would lift this 96-pound saddle

and put it on his back

and then he would

have to climb the steps.

When we got to a more level area,

we would load up the mules again.

Quaid tired of repeating

front and back angles.

He found a precarious perch

to get this side shot.

The drop is 300 feet. I was young then,

and I jumped down and made the shot.

On the way, Merrill's Marauders

twice encountered Japanese patrols.

Here you can see an enemy bullet

cutting through the brush.

Quaid stepped into the open

to get this shot of a fallen foe

and the American who killed him.

Probably the dumbest shot

I've ever made.

The Japanese were so stunned,

they didn't fire.

They didn't believe their eyes.

This wilderness trek took six days.

The method of handling malaria

was the simplest thing in the world.

It was called walking it out of you.

All our walking wounded

from the two battles

we had fought coming

over the mountains were still with us.

The weary Marauders

still took the airfield by surprise,

but the Japanese continued

to hold the nearby town.

I became fascinated

with the 88th Fighter Squadron.

They had death's heads

on their P-40F airplanes.

They were only a mile and half

from the Japanese bunkers.

They could make one turn

and come down on a bunker.

They were great support

for the American and Chinese

surrounding Myitkyina.

I was always interested in unique ways

of looking at things.

I thought it would be great

to put my camera

into the P-40 on a dive-bombing run.

I see them up there.

They make their turn and down they go.

I see him right on the back

of the captain all the way down.

The captain pulls out

after he released his bomb,

and this guy is still

following the bomb down.

And there's this terrific blast and I see

him trying to fly through the blast.

He can't get any altitude, but

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes