Shooting War Page #7

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He said, "The hospital's next door."

I said, "Not yet. I'm gonna dictate to you

what, where, why and when."

He says, "You won't quit, will you?"

I said, "No way."

The situation remained fluid for days,

especially for Doug Wood.

Ailing with flu, he took refuge

in a command post.

He sent his driver and stills man

for more film, then fell asleep.

He did not hear to order to evacuate

the CP when it came under fire.

My still guy at that time

was a new guy, a replacement.

He told the driver,

whose name was lvan Babcock,

"There's some guys in funny hats

and I think they're shooting at us."

The driver told me, "I could see

their tracers going past my nose."

But he wouldn't stop.

The other guys had stopped there

and they'd captured 'em.

He just drove right on through

and let 'em keep shooting at him.

What Babcock drove through

was the Malmedy Massacre.

It was the war's worst atrocity

visited on American soldiers.

Somewhere between 71 and 129 Gls,

the number remains in dispute,

were rounded up and shot by SS troops.

They had infiltrated our lines, some

of them wearing American uniforms.

In this last-gasp German effort,

many of their troops were teenagers.

The Germans escaped serious

punishment at the war-crimes trials.

The weather lifted in late December

and air operations resumed.

I was fortunate enough, or unfortunate,

however you wanna look at it,

to lead the greatest air-combat battle

of World War II.

Eight of us had climbed up

over the field.

We were joining up

when 900 German fighters

made an attack on the front

on January 1 st 1945.

The squadron leader - there'd normally

be 12 aeroplanes, we only had 8 -

he couldn't see him.

He said, "You take over the flight."

I dropped five of 'em right on the field.

The pilots, armed with gun cameras,

were also combat cameramen.

Hitler had decided that he would deploy

all the fighters he had

to knock out the fighter fields

to support the Battle of the Bulge.

They planned it for early December,

which would have been effective,

weather wasn't good.

They put it off and said,

"January 1 st, these guys'll all be in bed."

It was all over the front,

not just at our field.

It was at the British field,

at all the northern airfields.

I later got a hold

of Hermann Goering's interviews.

In those interviews,

Goering said the largest loss

that the German Luftwaffe ever had

was the loss on January 1 st.

Mel Paisley, also this film's

chief researcher,

was decorated with

the Distinguished Service Cross.

During the war,

he shot down nine planes.

The Battle of the Bulge

ended January 7th 1945.

Germany was now largely open

to the Allies.

Italy, 1945. Dictator Benito Mussolini

was deposed and exiled,

the government surrendered,

and the populace turned viciously

on their former allies.

I went over to the CP and I was told

they had captured Mussolini.

General Crittenberger

was to take his surrender.

I went down to the CP

the following morning.

Here's a limousine

with three German officers in it.

They'd run into a roadblock

and been captured.

Critt said, "I'm gonna get

this bird's surrender."

I said, "What about Mussolini?"

He said, "Mussolini will have to wait."

And he said, "General,

we're both professionals.

"You can't get out.

The passes are closed.

"The smart thing to do

is surrender the Ligurian Army,

"which is the last intact enemy army."

Went back to see Critt

and he was sitting on a rail, dreaming.

He said, "Montagne,

every cadet at West Point

"dreams of the day when

an enemy army surrenders to him.

"Today it happened to me."

Crittenberger's decision doomed

Mussolini and other Fascists

to death at the hands

of partisan guerrillas.

Their bodies were displayed in Milan.

It had been going on

for some time when we got there.

We photographed what we could:

Crowds, Mussolini hanging upside down,

Petacci alongside him.

I remember her skirt

had fallen over her face.

A woman pinned her skirt between

her legs so she wasn't exposed.

They cut him down, his head hit,

and picked him up.

The partisans were running it.

We had nothing to do with it.

They took 'em to the morgue.

There were bodies you had to walk on

to get to where Mussolini was.

I asked the morgue attendant,

"Can you get him in the light?"

He said, "If I move him,

his head will fall apart."

So we got Petacci,

put her head on his shoulder.

It became quite a famous shot.

Meantime, Nazi Germany

was in its death throes,

but it desperately fought on.

Everything that could happen to me,

photographically speaking,

did happen that day.

The place was Cologne.

The date was March 6th 1945.

The street fighting was intense.

It was often impossible

to tell soldiers from civilians.

Sometimes, victims caught

in the crossfire were innocent.

By this time we had a new T-26.

The T-26 was so far ahead of

the old Shermans, it was unbelievable.

This German tank was

in front of Cologne cathedral.

It had knocked out some of our tanks,

causing havoc.

They had control over that whole area.

Bates followed the tank,

and, scrambling for position,

got this great footage

of armoured combat.

I heard our T-26 coming up.

The first shot went in and cut the legs

off the tank commander in the Tiger.

You can see the armour-piercing shell

going through the bottom of the picture.

Immediately, the driver

and the gunner climbed out,

but the second shot,

shrapnel had gotten them, too.

The concussion from that 90mm gun

was so tremendous

that it would blow me off my picture

and I'd have to get back on it.

I couldn't use a tripod.

I had to hand-hold it.

The tank commander

that had his legs cut off

just laid on his tank

and burned up in front of the camera.

That thing was burning

even the next morning.

There was still smoke coming out of it

because of all the ammunition in it.

Two months and one day later,

the war in Europe was over.

Its crusaders,

as General Eisenhower called them,

rest in cemeteries all over Europe.

If anything, their deeds are more

revered now than at the time.

Some of their immortality derives

from the photographic record.

The combat cameramen recorded

the last days, hours, moments,

even the last breath,

of many of those who lie here.

It isn't something

they talk about very much.

It was, as they say,

just a part of their job.

But it was a more important job

than they knew.

For the film they made is now

beginning to outlive memory.

Eventually, it will be the only

recollection, made on the spot,

of how our citizen soldiers

lived, fought and died.

The cameramen in Europe

had one more duty to history.

It was unquestionably

their most important:

Recording the horrors

of the death camps.

At Dachau, Walter Rosenblum

was too shocked to shoot.

These pictures were made by others.

There were a group of boxcars.

I climbed up to see what was inside.

The boxcar was full of dead people.

There were 30, 40 boxcars

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