PROLOGUE
 
I was twelve years old when the radio announced that the Allies had launched the long awaited invasion of Europe that would ultimately lead to victory and the end of World War II. That day was June 6, 1944 and would come to be known as D-Day.
 
This June will be the 60th anniversary of that historic event.
 
I beg your indulgence as I begin the story, about one of the greatest assignments of my long career as a newspaper photographer.
 
D-DAY REVISITED
 
By Dick Kraus
Newsday
Staff Photographer (retired)
 

CHAPTER FIVE

After living out of a suitcase for two weeks, it was good to get home, unpack and get into a full sized shower. I took a couple of weeks vacation to get back in tune with my family and to take care of neglected chores at home. Then, I went back to work and spent a considerable amount of time running my many rolls of color film through our Fuji processor. I had been careful, while shooting, to label each roll with a number to correspond with the copious caption notes that I had been taking. I had to be sure that the film and the notes could be wedded after processing.

I also made sure that I touched base with the Art Director who was laying out the special D-Day Anniversary edition since I was told that I would be involved in the picture selection. He told me that he wouldn’t be able to begin his layout until he had all of the copy from the writer, Jim Kindall. I checked with Kindall and he was still sorting through his notes and it would be weeks before he would begin writing.

One of several pages in the D-Day Anniversary Issue that featured head shots of veterans. Including, at top, Lawrence Peter Berra, aka Yogi, the former Yankee baseball great.

In the meantime, I was off of the Photo Department’s regular schedule so that I could work on the project. There were still a myriad of headshots to be made of WW II veterans whose stories were going to be in the special issue. These were being compiled and written by other staff reporters and whenever I got word that an interview had been made, I would set up an appointment to go and make the requisite head shot. Most of these were local Long Island vets, many of whom were now in nursing homes. Some required driving across the state, as some veterans had moved from Long Island. Some days I would have a half a dozen heads to shoot, and sometimes there were none. I would try to work on the film from Normandy and Germany since my Photo Editors wanted to get a jump on getting them printed. They wisely wanted to avoid having to get everything done at the last minute as the deadline approached for the special issue. Plus, I would be back in Normandy at that time, shooting for daily stories.

So, a Photo Editor and I would spend long hours, hunched over a light table, looking through a loupe at frame after frame on roll after roll of film, trying to second guess what would be needed by the Art Director when he got Jim Kindall’s copy. Every few hours, we would have to get up from the light table, stretch, then walk down to the cafeteria for coffee, just to allow our eyes to refocus after squinting through that magnifying loupe. Since we were picking far more photos than would finally end up in the paper, we had the darkroom make black and white prints. Then, those, which eventually got selected, would be reprinted in color. (Lord, how much easier this would have been had we been in this new digital imaging era.) On days when I wasn’t shooting for the project, I spent writing captions for the photos that had been printed. All of this took months of effort by our darkroom staff and I.

There were days when the photo staff was overwhelmed with assignments for the daily paper. If I had nothing scheduled, I would offer to help out. I saw nothing wrong with that. I’ve known of some of our staff, who, when given a long-term project to work on, would make themselves unavailable when they had nothing scheduled. I always felt that such an attitude was unfair to the harried staffers who had to pick up the slack of the missing man.

One day Kindall called and told me that he had scored a coup. There was a famous photograph that had appeared in the old Life Magazine in 1944, right after the Normandy Invasion. It was shot by a renowned war photographer; the late Robert Capa. The story of his D-Day photographs has been documented and shown on TV specials many times since that day. Capa had landed on Omaha Beach with the first wave of troops and had stood at the shoreline, calmly making his photos as the fury of the war exploded about him. All the other photographers lost their film of the initial invasion when the bag in which it was being shipped back to London, fell over the side of the LST that was ferrying it to a ship that was headed back. Capa jumped on a boat that was heading back to England and brought his film back personally. However, owing to deadline pressure, a darkroom tech tried to rush the developing process by turning up the dryer heat, where upon most of the film emulsion melted and slid off the backing. Only a few frames survived from that historic day.

One of those showed an unknown American GI, later identified as Edward Regan, crawling on his belly through the water, trying to get out of the line of fire coming from the German guns on the cliffs above the landing zone. The man had survived the D-Day landing; survived the war and Kindall had located him living in Georgia. The next day, the two of us flew to Atlanta and took a cab to the vet’s home.

He told his story and described to us, the sheer panic he felt as he stepped off his landing craft into the maelstrom that was happening all around him. He dropped to his stomach once he reached the shallow water at the shoreline, to avoid the deadly metal that was flying about in every direction. He told us how amazed he was at the sight of a young man, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, standing erect in the ankle deep water, aiming a camera at him. I made a photograph of the old veteran, holding a copy of that famous photo.

Copy of a page from Newsday's D-Day Anniversary Special Edition. The top photo, ©Robert Capa/Magnum Photos, shows Edward Regan crawling through the surf at Omaha Beach on D-Day. At bottom, left, is Magnum Photographer, Robert Capa, who made the photo, © Ruth Orkin. The photo at bottom right, ©Newsday Photo by Dick Kraus, is the shot that I made of Regan almost 50 years later at his Atlanta, GA home.

It was getting close to the June date when Jim Kindall and I were to return to Normandy for the D-Day Anniversary. There were a million details to take care of. One of which was making sure that the Hotel Courtonne remembered that we had booked a couple of rooms for the two weeks when we would be covering the ceremonies. Before we had left, we had been assured that we had two rooms reserved for us. However, when I made a trans-Atlantic phone call to the Hotel, no one seemed to have any knowledge of such arrangements. Damn!!! What the Hell was going on. Accommodations were scarce as hens teeth when we had left there seven months ago. There were surely no rooms to be had now, with less than a month before the D-Day anniversary. I was pissed and my lousy command of French made it difficult to try to rectify the problem. I asked around the newsroom to see if anyone had a better command of the French language than I. Fortunately a young woman reporter came to my rescue. I explained the situation, telling her that the hotel had promised us a couple of rooms back in November of 1993. She relayed that information to our French hoteliers and after some back and forth discussion, we were told that there would be something available for us for the two weeks although we would have to change rooms at sometime during our stay. That was fine with us. It would be better than living on a park bench.

Kindall was finally getting his copy to his editor and to the Art Director. But, every time I went to see the Art Director, he told me that he was busy working on daily stories and hadn’t the time to work on the D-Day Special. This theme continued for weeks and about a week before I was ready to go back to France, I stopped by to remind him that I wasn’t going to be around to supply him with my expertise and input. To which he replied, “Oh, I’ve already laid out the art for the story. Would you like to see it?”

So much for the photographer having any input, as I had been promised. Jeez! Why is it so difficult for newspaper editors to allow any creative input from the photographers who make the photos? They seem to be so determined to keep any of their power from slipping out of their hands. It wasn’t as though I had any expectations of being able to tell them that they shouldn’t use this or that photo. Instead they should use this one and it should be played large and up front. No, I would never presume to have that much clout. But, knowing what happened as I made the photos and Kindall wrote the prose would seem to put me in some position of being able to make relevant suggestions as to which shot would go better with the story.

Alas, it just wasn’t meant to happen that way. So, I looked at the layout and kept my mouth shut as I saw pictures used that had little relevance to the story, knowing that I had shots that worked better. He did use a couple of my favorite photos and ran them large. Especially the one of the German machine gunner, Franz Goeckel laying a wreath at the grave of his fallen comrade.

©Newsday Photo by Dick Kraus

I would be back in Normandy when that special edition hit the streets. I asked Sandy, the Photo Department’s secretary, den mother and the glue that kept everything from falling apart, to put aside several copies for me.

Next thing was to work on our credentials. Kindall had been in touch with the White House Press Office who was coordinating American Press coverage. President Clinton would be attending the ceremonies on June 6th. But, before he went to Normandy, he would be spending several days touring other important World War II battlegrounds in Italy and Great Britain and meeting with world leaders. The Press Office said that they would have credentials for us and we could pick them up when we boarded the press plane that would accompany the President’s plane. Problem. We weren’t going to follow the Prez. We had our own agenda which called for us to fly right to Normandy two weeks prior to June 6th and begin doing daily stories on the preparations and activities that led up to the actual anniversary. One of Newsday’s White House correspondents would be with the President and her stories would be illustrated with wire photos.

After explaining this to the Press Office, they said that they wouldn’t mail our credentials to Newsday. They would be carried on the press plane but they would get them to the Press Office that was being set up at the American Military Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy. We were told that we could pick them up there in plenty of time to have them when we needed them. I certainly hoped so, because without them, we would just be two American Tourists in Normandy, unable to get anywhere near the action.

It was time to start gathering up equipment and film. I would be taking a Leaf Transmitter with me so that I could transmit my pictures from my hotel room each night. This was a computerized gadget that fit into a metal case for ease of carrying. It contained a small 5 inch tv to view the pictures. It hooked up to a telephone line and once you had the picture cropped, color corrected and tweaked, and a caption written, you called the home office and they would hook you up to their computer and in about 20 minutes, your color photo and caption would appear on their system. Compared to today’s system of digital cameras, laptop computers and satellite phones, this was horse and buggy technology. But, in 1994, it was almost cutting edge. I was using a Leaf I. There were already Leaf III’s in use, but not for me. Still, it was better than coming in from the day’s work in the field, and running to an AP facility to wait my turn to have my film processed and transmitted. Life was good and I was ready.

NEXT MONTH, THE 6TH AND FINAL CHAPTER.

 

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