Shooting War Page #5

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D-Day's most famous footage.

The only American film

you see from D-Day

was our motion-picture guy

that was with 1 st Infantry Division.

He got wounded

and carried his film back with him.

He got about three or four scenes

before he got hit.

Much of Taylor's footage

is of combat's aftermath.

It is of men who have

spent themselves in war,

trying to regather their strength.

They dig in, they tend to the wounded.

Mostly, they register

the shock of survival.

Their history has shrunk,

for the moment, to this one terrible day.

They can see nothing but the awful

shore they so recently crossed.

They're forced to contemplate the

deaths they, by some miracle, avoided.

On D Plus One, the supplies rolled in.

So did the foul weather.

Everywhere you looked, boats and

their crews were in peril on the seas.

Walter Rosenblum

was there shooting stills.

So was his motion-picture partner,

Val Pope.

There were sinking boats

that I presume had been shelled.

A young army lieutenant

swam out with a life raft

in order to bring back

the people off the boat.

When I started, I said,

"Walter, you're a good swimmer.

"You have two alternatives.

"You could go out with him and help him

or you could photograph."

And at that moment I realised

that my job was to take pictures,

and that's what I had to do.

These stills and the movie footage

helped fill some of the gaps

left by the lost D-Day pictures.

Tragically, Val Pope would be killed

in action a few days later.

A well-known picture

was this young lieutenant

who was bending over a GI

giving him first aid.

He looked like the most heroic fellow

I'd ever seen in my life.

I was very happy

to make that photograph.

It epitomised what the war was about:

People who came to fight

for what they believed in.

Three weeks after D-Day,

there were almost half a million

American soldiers in France.

Stephen Ambrose calls this

the great achievement

of the American people and system

in the 20th century.

Who would dispute him?

Only the Gls still struggling

to break out of their beachhead

against unforgiving terrain

and a stubborn enemy.

On the beaches,

the barrage balloons arose,

protecting the incoming supplies

against the almost

entirely absent Luftwaffe.

Everywhere, casualties were counted.

They were heavy for airborne troops,

but the planners

were ready for death, too.

It was neatly registered.

The high command

were less well prepared

for a unique and hazardous feature

of Normandy's topography.

All through Normandy,

it was hedgerow country.

They were six foot high

and six foot thick.

Trees growing out of the tops.

They're fortresses.

We could be digging in on one side

and the Germans'd be digging in

on the other side.

There would be little openings

with gates through 'em.

Guys would have to attack

through them or over the top of one.

The hedgerows,

planted in the Middle Ages,

frustrated the war of movement,

but not for long.

An ordinance sergeant figured out

that he could weld two big prongs

on the front of a tank.

They'd dig into the hedgerow and

the tank'd shove its way right through.

After we got that, it made it a lot simpler.

Some 60 years ago,

an anonymous German bureaucrat

poked his finger on a map

and decreed that this French field

would be the site

of these coastal batteries.

They're still there today,

silent yet ominous reminders

of the way in which war intrudes itself

on ordinary human life.

And, yet, that life

has an amazing stubbornness.

The guns may thunder,

but the fields must still be harvested.

The geese have to cross the road,

even if it's choked with military traffic.

The ordinary scheme

of human life goes on.

Our cameramen recorded that, too.

The young liberators were bored,

restless, coltish, when off duty.

These airmen discovered

these horses in a Norman pasture.

One was an Oklahoma cowboy

who for a moment gracefully recaptured

one of civilian life's lost pleasures.

It was little known that

our pre-invasion bombardment

killed a lot of French people

living behind the line.

I was amazed that

the French people I photographed

didn't blame the Americans.

They regarded us as the liberators,

even though our bombs killed people.

There was a sweetness

in these welcomes and a certain haste.

After the Normandy breakout,

it finally became a war of movement.

For this Free French tank battalion,

it was a personal war,

as Russ Meyer learned

when he joined them.

Took our jeep right with the French tank.

We'd go right between them.

His best wartime buddy, Bill Teas,

was already with the French unit.

He would lend his name to Meyer's

first post-war erotic hit,

The lmmoral Mr Teas.

Needless to say, the French tankers

were welcomed with special warmth.

The Americans were included

in that welcome.

They would all say,

"Amricain. Trs bien."

There was danger on these roads.

We go down the street

and the guy says, "Stop!

"Don't go! There's a bunch of Germans

down that road.

"Get the hell out of there."

Forewarned, they engaged

in a brief, violent firefight.

This time, they took prisoners.

I'd love to know the guy today,

'cause if we hadn't been warned,

somebody'd have gotten our tonsils.

But they weren't always so lucky.

In a later engagement,

they took heavy losses.

As was often the case in tank battles,

the wounds were ghastly

and hard to accept.

As tankers struggled

to free a trapped comrade,

others rethought the battle

and re-fought it.

There was a desire

to protect the home front.

If these had been Americans, these

pictures might not have been taken.

You didn't wanna get Gls, though.

Or I would get something where at least

the American wouldn't be

readily recognised.

I was concerned about their family,

that they'd see them in the newsreels.

But Paris was nearly at hand,

less than three months after D-Day.

As the liberators approached, the

underground rose against the Germans.

German tanks were opposed by

the Resistance carrying only small arms.

Amazingly, they forced an uneasy truce.

It is possible they prevented

the destruction of the city.

The honour of entering Paris first

was given to Free French forces,

but as their leaders

showed themselves, gunfire erupted.

De Gaulle and other officers were there.

I'm sure Leclerc had to be there.

The city had not been fully cleared

of German troops.

They all came marching

down the Champs lyse

as part of this parade.

There were snipers, and there were

shots fired and everybody ducked.

The street fighting was actually

intense and deadly.

People were pinned to the ground,

unable to move.

The terror was palpable.

Reprisals against French collaborators

were swift and harsh.

That was not the end

of French vengeance.

We were advised of activity

regarding collaborationists.

They were taking, in this case,

women collaborationists

and shaving their heads.

These are, I guess, women who had

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