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Balls of steel

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By Guest,
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Guest

Guest

Posted
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69 years ago today.  Could you imagine what those guys were thinking? I'd be crapping my pants

 

beachlanding_b.jpg

 

photo1.jpg

 

d-day-opener.jpg

 

d-day_beaches_pointe_du_hoc.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Captroop Grand Master

Captroop

Posted
Posted

79 years ago today.  Could you imagine what those guys were thinking? I'd be crapping my pants

 

 

photo1.jpg

 

 

 

Interesting story:

 

All of the famous, blurry photos of the D-Day landing were all taken by Robert Capa, the only combat photographer who went in with the first wave (the first fugging wave) on D-Day.  You can actually see how much he is trembling when he took the photos by the distortion in them.

 

He took 64 photos during the landing for Time magazine. He sent them in, and the photo tech, who was rushing to develop them, turned up the heat in the film processor in an effort to develop them more quickly...and destroyed all but 16 photos.

 

Robert Capa, by the way, when he wasn't taking photos of combat, lived in Hollywood, where he hung out with famous directors like Howard Hawks, and dated celebrities like Ingrid Bergmann. But then he'd shun the socialite lifestyle to go and risk his life taking pictures of places no one else would dare go. He definitely had combat addiction. And instead of living out his life as a millionaire amongst the stars of tinsel town, he died when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam.

 

If ever there was a fuggin' man...

robert-capa.jpg

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Captroop Grand Master

Captroop

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He also landed with the second wave, not the first. 

 

Pretty sure it was the first, from reading his Bio.

 

 

"The war correspondent has his stake — his life — in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute ... I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave."

– Robert Capa

 

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Apparently, I got my numbers wrong.  106 exposures, of which 10 survived.  I'd kick that photo tech square in the nads for every photo he destroyed.

 

http://www.skylighters.org/photos/robertcapa.html

 

 

 

"The flat bottom of our barge hit the earth of France," Capa remembered in his book Slightly Out of Focus. "The boatswain lowered the steel-covered barge front, and there, between the grotesque designs of steel obstacles sticking out of the water, was a thin line of land covered with smoke — our Europe, the 'Easy Red' beach.

   "My beautiful France looked sordid and uninviting, and a German machine gun, spitting bullets around the barge, fully spoiled my return. The men from my barge waded in the water. Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background gangplank to take my first real picture of the invasion. The boatswain, who was in an understandable hurry to get the hell out of there, mistook my picture-taking attitude for explicable hesitation, and helped me make up my mind with a well-aimed kick in the rear. The water was cold, and the beach still more than a hundred yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steel obstacle. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. He took the waterproofing off his rifle and began to shoot without much aiming at the smoke-hidden beach. The sound of his rifle gave him enough courage to move forward, and he left the obstacle to me. It was a foot larger now, and I felt safe enough to take pictures of the other guys hiding just like I was."

 

 

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