Hello guys

I was wondering about reporters during WWII. I thought I remembered seeing a special on PBS or something like that about the attack on the Normandy beaches from the point of view of a reporter. I also remember that this particular reporter was carrying a small old black and white video camera. Did this actually happen and were there reporters with small video cameras there during the attacks. I'm sure it would be possible for them to carry small video cameras, and they were pretty small and light. Also it would stand reason, because how else would somebody capture the footage of the beaches after the invasions.

Just a question I have always had.

Thanks!

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"Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!"
Captain Henry P. Jim Crowe - 13th January 1943 - (Guadalcanal)

Sorry but video technology didn't exist back then. They would have had the good old film type cameras.16 mm cameras IIRC. Video uses a electronic process rather them a chemical process.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

There were reporters/journalists from the UK and US 'Daily Nationals', Stars & Stripes, Wire Services and Radio.

In addition, there were Army Photographic/Film Units that 'captured' the War on celluloid. The most famous photos of Omaha Beach are those of Robert Capa. Following an accident in the dark room only eleven photos were saved.

Steve W.

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The Glider Pilot Regiment 1942 - 1945

Assault Glider Trust

The Army Pictorial Service's films as information-operations tool in World War II

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

WWII photographer Peter Keane recounts living Signal Corps history

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Soon after Pearl Harbor, I went to Fort Monmouth, N.J., and offered my services in photography to the Army Signal Corps. Because of my photographic experience and the fact that I had taken ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) at college, I was offered a direct commission in the Army. I had to fill out many forms and get information from Cornell. Also, I had to get letters of recommendation from "important" people. Margaret Bourke-White, Jerry Rackett of Technicolor, and Navy Commander Edward Steichen cooperated. (In fact, Steichen wrote on his own Navy stationery.)

With all this sent to the adjutant at Fort Monmouth, I was told to wait for a reply from Washington. After six weeks I phoned the adjutant and obtained the phone number of the officer in Washington to whom he had sent all my papers. I called that number and spoke to an officer who actually looked up my file and told me that it would take several weeks more for an answer. I made that call around 5 or 6 p.m. and I believe that there was a change of shift very soon after that (because of what happened next).
I think my file had been left at the top of the pile so that when the next shift officer came on duty he picked up my application and processed it. (I believe this is what occurred) because the next morning I received a telegram addressed to LT M. P. Keane.
With the telegram, I went as ordered to the new Signal Corps Photo Center occupying the old Lasky Famous Players Studio (Paramount) in Long Island City, (N.Y.). (The building is still there and it is the present location of the Museum of the Moving Image.)
Afterwards, I went to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought the complete (Army) uniform.
At the Signal Corps Photo Center I was, for eighteen months, the assistant officer in charge of training film production. That was largely a desk job and required reporting progress of some 400 films in various stages of production to the General Chief Signal Officer of the Army in Washington.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Every two weeks I would alternate with a colonel delivering the completed films to Washington for final approval. While at SCPC, I met a number of friends from Hollywood who had been drafted and others who, because of professional film experience, were given direct commissions: Jesse Lasky Jr., Franklyn Coen, Jerry Hopper, Garland Meisner. In fact, I supplied the names of other Hollywood friends who, after being drafted, contacted me for help in getting assigned to our photo unit.
Our personnel officer took my list of such names and went to California with authorization to select them for SCPC. Fred Detmers and Charlies Benes of Technicolor were among those. Also with my job at SCPC, I was tasked to prepare a monthly progress report of all of our training film projects. This took several stenographers many days to type the constant changes in each subject. I designed a graph that would show each project's progress with a line that would rise sharply if the progress from script writing to photography through editing and all the film laboratory stages occurred without delay. Years later I learned that the graph system still was in use.
After a year I was reassigned to expedite camera and developing equipment to be located and shipped overseas. This was done at a control center near Philadelphia. Also, I was assigned to prepare a table of equipment for a new unit to be sent to Australia to join COL Bob Presnell, who was assigned to GEN (Douglas) MacArthur. In fact, I was in charge of that unit even though there were officers of higher rank. My job was to assure the delivery of my 70 crates to Brisbane and safeguard from confiscation enroute.
In Australia, I was assigned to select a motion picture processing laboratory to process all motion picture footage from our unit. In Sydney, I selected a lab called Cinesound, where I found they were not washing the film properly after the hypo and I had to procure Revers Lendlease Funds for additional tanks for that lab. Under COL Bob Presnell, we produced a 28-minute film of the action in New Britain, titled The Battle for New Britain which was used to open the Fifth War Bond Drive in the United States.
Among the crew that produced this film were Jesse Lasky Jr., the son of one of the founders of the movie industry; Bud Small, son of the famous director; Jack Hively, son of a well-known movie editor; and others.
After approval by MacArthur's Signal General, Stanley Akin, Presnell took the negative to Hollywood to prepare for release to the theatres. This film was re-released with the same title but with added footage from the Air Force and Navy. It was re-edited on videotape and released on TV. The credits on the tape were only for the people involved with the video tape and there was no mention of Presnell, Lasky, and Hively.
While in Sydney we had the good fortune of meeting a number of (significant) people. The first was Neal Ackland who had a job representing in Australia the American movie film producers and who was most helpful in advising us on the best ways to get cooperation from the local companies and government officials. I met Neal in New York when he was on a trip to meet the movie producers. I met him again about 30 years later when HBO (Home Box Office) sent me to Australia during the production of All Rivers Run. Neal was in contact with Cecelia Presnell, COL Bob's wife. From her I learned a year or so later that Neal had died.

Rest of his story is at,

WWII photographer Peter Keane recounts living Signal Corps history | Army Communicator | Find Articles at BNET

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

Good article here on the BBC's War Reporters.

Steve W.

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The Glider Pilot Regiment 1942 - 1945

Assault Glider Trust

sorry about that, i posted late last night, and for lack of better words, "Video" was all I could come up with. I meant the old film cameras. Thanks for the informative replies.It amazing how little information there is about the reporters.

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"Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!"
Captain Henry P. Jim Crowe - 13th January 1943 - (Guadalcanal)

Think 'cine cameras' for the more portable formats foxhole. 16MM would generally be very bulky professional items, even the smaller one's would be unsuited to real 'action use'.
There's 9.5mm, and the later Standard 8 cameras that will comfortably fit in the palm of the hand. I have a few of such, though not in as good order as the Pathe beauties illustrated on this site:

Pathe_Cine Cameras.
(My clockwork Baby looks like it was stored in a bucket for 40 years)
Main site: cineprese da collezione

Cheers,
Adam.

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"Wars cannot be fought with dream stuff" - Sir Percy Hobart.

There's quite a bit, if you know who you're looking for. Here're some to start with:

US:
Walter Cronkite
Ed Morrow

UK:
Richard Dimbleby
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas


Steve W.

__________________

The Glider Pilot Regiment 1942 - 1945

Assault Glider Trust

Don't forget Andy Rooney too.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

I hadn't forgotten him, I just put down four I knew straight off!

Steve W.

__________________

The Glider Pilot Regiment 1942 - 1945

Assault Glider Trust

I kinda figured that LOL.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

I'm the "Confederate with a pipe"!! LOL

wow, thanks for all the links. Guess it is all just a matter of what you are looking for.

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"Goddam it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!"
Captain Henry P. Jim Crowe - 13th January 1943 - (Guadalcanal)

Johannes Hähle. Here is some photo work of his.

Not the usual Propaganda Kompanie line of work, but...

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Some Propagandakompanie boys at work:

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Capa's Magnum portfolio.

Now I like photographs, but his are always special.

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"Wars cannot be fought with dream stuff" - Sir Percy Hobart.

Bill Stewart, Canadian Reporter at Juno Beach D-Day TheStar.com | NtoS | Bill Stewart, 90: War reporter landed on D-Day

Stephen Thorne
Canadian Press
William Archibald (Bill) Stewart, an "unflappable" war correspondent who landed with Canadian invasion troops in Italy and France, and described the Japanese surrender at Hong Kong, has died. He was 90.


Born Feb. 28, 1914, in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Stewart was known as a gentleman's gentleman, a quiet, self-effacing man who had followed Canadian soldiers as they fought through Italy and France.


He was among the last of an elite crew of Canadian Press war correspondents that included Bill Boss, Doug Amaron, Doug How and Ross Munro.


"My most vivid memory of him is when he was a CP war correspondent, landing with the Canadian assault forces at dawn on D-Day on one of the hottest beaches in Normandy, the first CP man ashore," Munro said in 1975.


"There was no more unflappable correspondent on any front."


Stewart was 19 when he began a 45-year career with the national news co-operative in Halifax in 1934. He worked in Charlottetown, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City before he was transferred to London, England, in July, 1941.


His battle experience began in Sicily, where he hooked up with the 1st Canadian Division. He was with them when they crossed into mainland Italy and fought their way up the country's Adriatic Coast to Ortona.


His copy was written in the classic wire-service style of the day — spare, crisp, but meticulous in its detail with flashes of brilliant colour.


Stewart followed the Canadians as they "marched across country through gullies and ravines, mounted slopes rising 3,000 feet and crowded through underbrush."


Just south of Ortona, he described how the fight in December 1943 went on "day and night, accompanied by the constant thunder of guns, the whistle of shells and mortar bombs, the groaning of tanks and the roar of aircraft."


In the Moro Valley, "the shells sounded like a passing express train that had no end. Birds flew about wildly, dogs crept into cellars and many Italian civilians hustled for the nearest abandoned German dugouts."


Thoughtful and serious, Stewart "was held in very high esteem, both by colleagues and by soldiers," said Bill Boss, who knew him from both perspectives — first as a Canadian Army conducting officer who escorted Stewart to the front, and later as a CP war correspondent himself.


"Bill was a different kind of guy," said Boss, the last of the CP war correspondents of the 1940s. "Sterling, quiet, observant, sharp. And a thorough reporter."


Stewart was recalled to London in January 1944 to prepare for D-Day and went ashore with Canadian troops on June 6, writing:


"We sailed for France with the invasion forces for the greatest military operation of all time on a cool grey evening with hundreds of invasion ships dotted along the Channel like stepping-stones leading to the continent."


He slept that night in the comfort of a French farmhouse, but it was shelled by the Germans the next morning and he was stuck sleeping in foxholes and ditches after that.


Stewart was a keen observer of the human condition. His copy delved deeper than victories and defeats, dead and wounded, to relate shades of grey that were uncommon in newspaper accounts of the day.


In Bayeux, Stewart told how local residents had, after four years of German occupation, almost forgotten the words of "La Marseillaise," the French anthem, as they gathered in cobblestone streets to celebrate liberation.


In March 1945, Stewart became the first Canadian correspondent accredited to the Southeast Asia Command and on Sept. 7, 1945, his 3,000-word account of Canada's role in the defence and fall in 1941 of the strategic British colony of Hong Kong came clattering out of printers in newsrooms across Canada.


Stewart went on to write about the horrifying conditions endured by Canadian and other prisoners of war taken by the Japanese.


Stewart went to Australia and became CP's Far East correspondent on Nov. 1, 1945. There he met Katherine Young, a Canadian Film Board representative. They married on April 23, 1946, and would have five children.


Stewart returned to Canada in 1947. He was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1948 in recognition of his wartime reporting.


Fluently bilingual, he eventually became CP's Montreal bureau chief, and was instrumental in establishing CP's French service, which he headed at its inception. He presided over coverage of Quebec's Quiet Revolution and the FLQ Crisis, establishing a solid reputation as an impartial interpreter and consultant to French and English reporters alike.


Although he retired in 1979, his byline appeared on the CP wire as recently as this spring, when he filed a story marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day.


A private family funeral will be held in St-Lambert, Que., on Monday. A public memorial service will be held at a later date.

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Regards, Michelle

Oliver Goldsmith, "I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines."

Other reporters covering D-Day

http://www.historynet.com/covering-d...erspective.htm

also http://www.truveo.com/DDay-Juno-Beac...g/id/800022432

http://members.shaw.ca/junobeach/juno-11.htm
The most significant D-Day film footage was shot on Juno beach by Sergeant Bill Grant. The film shows Canadian troops of the Queen's Own Rifles, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, landing in the second wave at Bernieres-sur-Mer, Juno Beach, on D-Day.

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Regards, Michelle

Oliver Goldsmith, "I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines."