Posted by:
pollythinks
(
)
Date: November 11, 2015 02:20PM
My husband: WWII, 158th Liaison Sqdn., Sargent, Arial Photography, which meant he flew in a single-engine paper plane, with a pilot, with himself in the rear section, and his head down and taking pictures of strategic areas (railroad tracts, bridges, etc.), all of which made him very plane-sick, swooping up and down between hills.
Fortunately, as he says, he never had to kill anyone, nor was he killed.
Also, because he loved photography so much, he took pictures for himself everywhere he went (England, France, Germany, and elsewhere).
He just missed, by one man ahead of him, having to take the official pictures of the death camp survivors as they were liberated (for which he was always very grateful). (A New York newspaper man, a solider, took them, instead, a sight which he never got out of his head.)
Some 35 yrs. later, after my husband had been home a couple of decades, his film was printed, and we now have a large notebook filled with the pictures he took, with notes beside them as to what areas and equipment (and much rubble) they show.
He also has a part of a burned swastika flag he took off a burned tank, and (on a trade of cigarettes), obtained the same kind of hand pistol with which Hitler killed himself.