zone where it was indicated and when they found him, he had about 172 stab wounds and bullet holes. his feet, as they say, never touched the ground of france. the germans used him as target practi practice. while i was at the sand table, the word got out. i was told to stay there until everyone was briefed. no matter what time of day or night. i was to brief them or my section was to brief them when they came in, whether it was individuals or platoons. whomever. i was there for about two days. i was also told that i was not to leave the briefing tent until

colonel wolverton, battalion commander, sent for me. well, the night of june the 5th, about 11:00, the unit was alerted. they all got on trucks. went to the planes which was nearby. the airfield was the exitor field in england on the coast. i was waiting until orders came to come to the plane. the runner came over and said that colonel wolverton is waiting for me. when i got to the plane, the engines were revved up, propellers were going. my gear was on the ground.

it was about 150 pounds of gear to jump with. and the colonel himself was at the door and he said, shames, your seat has been occupied. it's been occupied by an observer from the nevada. 16-inch gun observer. you have to go to plane number so and so. well, i have no idea in the world what number he told me because i was a little nervous, to say the least, and scared to death, to say the most. like the rest of us. he said that this jeep would take me to the plane that i was designated to jump from. i got on the jeep with all my gear. went to the plane. when i got to the plane, again, being nervous, as i was, and scared as i was, i have no idea

or who the hell the jump master was when he poked his head out the door and said shames, you're going to be number 19. get in the back of the plane. make sure they clear the plane when we get the green light. so i remembered very distinctly, i said, sir, number 19? i said i thought it was only 17 or 18 people on these planes? he said, well this one is going to be 19, you. so i jumped on the plane. got in. got my gear on. got to the back. crossed over. couldn't see a thing in the world because i was in the back of the plane. very back. all we could see was flashes of light when we got across france. one particular huge flash later on i found out was one of our planes that had blown up. the 3rd battalion plane had blown up. had torpedoes on the bottom and,

of course, the flack must have hit one of those and killed everyone on board, of course. the green light came on. when we jumped out -- before we jumped out, we were shuffling to the front of the plane. the gentleman in front of me slipped. he was a mortar man. he had a 60 millimeter mortar carrying in his gear wrapped around the gear. and nothing unusual. we jumped with 60 millimeter mortars and tripods and 81 millimeter bases and so forth. it was nothing unusual. but he slipped. by the time i got him up, we must have gone six or eight miles. must have been seven miles because that was how far i found out i landed from where my jump

zone was. when the plane traveled over the jump zone, i do not know. all i know, i jumped into this maze of fireworks. it looked like the fourth of july ten times over. stuff was everywhere. you could hear the shells going through your chute. a sound that i've never forgotten. i hear it in my sleep now. it's a distinct sound. that bullet going through the silk. how long it took me to get down, i don't know. it wasn't very long because i imagine we jumped about 700 feet. we were supposed to jump at 900. some people jumped at 300. they were trying to evade flack. whether my plane was hit, i'm sure it was because there was so much there you could almost walk

through the flack and the chutes were isolating. it looked like stuff was curving actually, you were curving. the flack was straight. so when i got down, i hit into a bunch of cattle. i had no idea in the world where it was. had i known at that time where i was at that time, i would not be here today because i would have dropped dead right then. i found out later that i was at the carnation milk factory, milk plant in the cattle shed. it was about a half hour after i landed i found out that i was in carington because we knocked on the door of a farmer after picking up five of my men, or moot my men but other people's

men. and i had no idea which way to go or where. but we did have a trace plane that was told to us that was going north and south. but i knew that we had to go northwest to get to our objective. so on the way to this northwest direction, i picked up five men. and we huddled around after about five minutes and we decide ed that we were going to knock on the farmer's door to find out where we were because i told them that the farmers knew the lay of the land and they would tell us and we would get an idea where to go. this was about a little after midnight on june the 6th. knocked on the door. man and woman came to the door. she started to scream.

we immediately slapped the hand over her face, dropped her down, got the farmer down and i put my map out on the floor with my little flashlight and i said to him, directions. of course, we explained to him it was an invasion. he understood. she never did. she was still almost ready to scream. and her daughter was nearby. she couldn't scream. she was so frightened. of course, we had all black faces and some of us had these indian crew cuts and so forth so we must have looked pretty good from mars or what have you. anyhow, i told the farmer, i said st. mary glees and he said we and he pointed this way. st. mary glees. so i moved the map around. i got a direction. next one i said st. comdemont

and said oui and pointed this way. i oriented the map a little more. then i said brevan. oui and he pointed this way. and then i said carintan and he knocked on the floor. he said oui, carintan. so i said again. he said oui. so i told this guy with me, i said oh, my god. we are in carantin and i had put a sign on the steeple of the church that we had fabricated on our sand table. carantan. beware at all cost because we knew that was the command post -- not a division, but a corps of herman goring armor

corps. so i told the guy that i was with, i said let's get the hell out of here right now. and after getting out and i realized i just passed a little stream and i knew from my map reading where we were then. so we started heading toward our objective. and i picked up 18 different people on the way. and about 3:00 in the morning, this officer came out of one of the bushes there in normandy and it was a general -- a colonel. colonel johnson i found out later. he was a commanding officer. the 502nd. and we clicked at each other with our devices we had. our clickers. recognition clickers. and he said sergeant, do you

know where you are? i said, yes, sir, i know exactly where i am. and i identified myself. and he says i'm colonel johnson. so he said, show me on the map, and i did. he went his way which was completely opposite from where we had to go, and i went my way. and about 4:00 in the morning, just about light, i brought 18 men to our objective, and we were the only ones there besides about 30 others. it was our battalion objective for the 6067 people that we should have had there. but we stayed there for the three days. no one knew we were there until we were finally -- now we had a walkie talkie with us. and the only thing the walkie

talkie would get would be broadcasting company beamed from the ship. and from the ship we picked up their signal. we found out that the invasion was a success. we stayed there and held those bridges until we were relieved. thank you, sir. >> thank york ed. >> what you don't know is you got a battlefield commission hat for that. norm, first cameraman to go in with the marines. went into tarawa. nt to talk about that? >> not exactly the first cameraman to go. the first division was sent out. and it had the first photographic unit that we had put together. and -- at quantico. and they went to gaudal canal. that was our first operation in the pacific. but because they were so new,

the lieutenant colonel at the photo officer reported into said what the hell do you do? so he tried -- the photo officer tried to explain it, but things were so new in those days. we had so little information on the areas that we were in, the navy, for example, was still using the british naval maps of 1902. now if anybody had been around water are go length of time, you know the islands would change. they would either grow larger or grow smaller. water depths would change. and so forth and so on. and that's another story that i can tell. gaudalcanal is pretty much jungle. but on top of that, we had no idea of the terrain of the ground. so a lot of photography was spent on detailing for the troops what lay ahead of them.

they flew in what we called old wives in those days. small aircraft and took picture whafts was going to be taken the next day, hopefully and so forth and so on. so that was done. and very little actually was done of a battle, so to speak. and they just couldn't seem to get at it because of all of the other work they were doing. tarawa was different. here we had an island that was part of a chain of islands and the enemy was building an air strip taun would which would easily edict -- interdict the naval activity in that general area. and so they decided that they didn't want that flight spot going down there while their ships were out here. so we were to take it. well it was garrisoned by

about -- pretty close to 4,000 rigicenti, which were japanese marines. so here we're going to have probably the first time in the world a marine battle. marines against marines. and they are a fairly large group of korean workers there. and we were so new to the oriental world, we couldn't tell the difference between a korean and a japanese. and so we thought they were all fighters. but in any event, when we made the landing on that first day, we had about ten people who were shooting motion pictures and we had probably another ten shooting still photography. but as luck would have it, as the general explained a little earlier, things never happen exactly as you think or plan they're going to do. our first landings at tarawa were amphibious tractors because they could walk across the reef which we had been informed about

which would hold up our boats quite a bit. and the men in the boats would have to wade in the water probably up to their chest until they got in. so the amphibs got in just fine. and we got one photographer ashore with the amphibious and he was a still man. and i was with the regimental commander of the 2nd battalion, 8th marines who was sitting there watching his beachhead being eroded because amphibious tractors that had gone in ahead of them were now being fired at by japanese buried in a tank turret with a machine gun and the amphib tractors were not really set up to accept fire. they were like tin cans. and they could be fired through. actually, the amphibious tractors originally were for just bringing in supplies. but we decided because of the reef to use them to bring in

men. so, anyway, there was consternation on the beach. everything was kind of fouled up. so jim crow said, put this boat in right away. now a little bit about jim crow. he was sort of a hero in the corps. he had been on guadalcanal. he had led them now the the grass up to his shoulders and waiting for the japanese to shoot at him. then when they did, he would say there are the s.o.b.s. go get them. and they would open up with their machine guns, heavy guns and would obliterate the japanese situation. i figured anybody like that would be a good man to be with because he'd be in trouble all the time. i was absolutely right because when he saw what was happening to his beachhead, he wasn't due in. he had his officer on the beach with the troops. but he wanted to get in so he said put this boat in. but when i went to see him, to tell him that i wanted to go

with his unit he asked me what i did. i said i'm a motion picture cameraman. now to be polite for everybody, he said, i don't want a hollywood marine with me. i said i've got five years duty. i've had all the training. and i know if i need a rifle, all i've got to do is bend down and pick one up. there was silence. he said, all right. but stay the hell out of my way. so i said, yes, sir. so i was in his boat. we went in. i found out which boat it was going to be. i was going to be with him. so it was good. i got on the beach. i was the first cameraman to get on the beach at tarawa, motion picturewise. i met up with a stillman. a corporal. and the two of us stayed together as a team through the whole operation. and tarawa was important for this reason. because of an order that churchill gave during world war i to make a landing, that was

very, very poorly done, the british, the new zealanders and the australians were really annihilated. this was at tripoli. and so -- no, i'm mistaken. not tripoli. i'll think of it in a little bit. calipoli. and churchill almost lost his job because of that. he was the equivalent of secretary of the navy for the british. and ever since that day, none of the military, army, air force, anybody thought that landing against a heavily fortified beachhead would be successful so, therefore, they didn't train for it. but we did train for beach landings. and you've heard of holland m. smith. he believed in the concept so he

trained. and that's why we were adept at landing. md when we landed at tarawa, we landed against a heavily fortified beachhead. and it was said it couldn't be and we took that island in 76 hours. now, in 76 hours, in a beachhead that was no larger -- or the island was no larger than about a third of the size of central park of new york, over 5,000 people were killed. and a little over a thousand people wounded. fortuna fortunately, of the killed, a little over 4,000 were the japanese. fortunately for us, not for them. when the general is talking about things happening that you don't expect, the complete general staff of the command tarro was killed on the first day and nobody knew it. how were they killed? for some reason or other, the admiral wanted to change his command post.

so he got his men together and they were walking across the airstrip to another part of the island. and an aircraft was going overhead and spotted him and sent word out to a destroyer, the lingo and said there were a bunch of men walking across the strip, go get them. so they dropped a couple of shells and killed them all. nobody, neither us nor the japanese knew that their command staff was killed. would that have changed the battle? who knows. so we went ahead and took that. now, my job was to document what went on. and that's what i did. i shot motion picture camera with the idea of telling stories of what i saw. and consequently, as a result of that, the other photographers were in boats. and because of the fact that the

japanese was zeroed in on the reef, they had three eight-inch rifles as they were called on the other side of the island. and they had never been knocked out, either, by the heavy bombs that were dropped or the heavy gunfire from the battleships. why? i don't know. i'll never know that. but, anyway, they were zeroed in on the reef. and every time a boat came in in the beginning of those boat waves and the ramp went down, a shell would explode. so that went on for about ten minutes. and all the leaders radioed out to the command ship and said don't send anymore people until we tell you to. that's how rough things were right at that particular point. we probably didn't have any men ashore at that point in time.

they said, well, the germans have got the whole waterfront covered so well with heavy guns that if we do, we're going to be annihilated on the beach. well, anyway, churchill was smart enough, supposedly, to know that we were going to make that kind of a landing. and when we succeeded, we then turned to churchill and his own staff and said, now, damn it, we can do it because the marines did it. that's a rumor, but it's a good story. people asked me a lot of times, were you afraid? now, that's a good question

because you knew you were going into combat, you knew they were going to shoot at you. my answer to that in all times is that once the adrenaline starts move iing and you're st t starting into the action, you then do what you have been trained to do. that's what you're there for. a lot of guys would ask me, as a cameraman, what are you doing here? you don't have to be here? well, i did have to be there, i told them i was as important as they were because the public had to know what they were going through. and that's the case all along right up until this date, actually. it's very scary. yes, you're strange. i layed down after i walked in. i had to get off the boat, walked in with camera gear on my shoulders and my assistant was walking in behind me with the same thing. if you ever walked in water, fortunately, by the weight i had, my feet stayed on the ground, i stayed upright.

but when you got in, you were exhausted walking through about x number of feet of water. i forget what it was, now. but, anyway, the -- when you fall down on the beach and everything else, all of the sudden, what had happened was a submarine torpedo which had been up on part of a storage thing up on the land had been hit. and the torpedo had just taken off and come downright through the beach and laid down beside us and i thought that was going to be the end.

the film that we shot there became an academy award winner for 1944 and it was the first time, of course, that the marine corps had ever won such a thing. never did again. it was involved in for iwo jima, that was nominated for an academy award, also. >> well, we're going to show some of that film right now. >> oh, good. good. >> can we do that? hit it.

>> there you go.

>> can i tully one funny story? this is along the line of the things the general said, too. the third morning, the executive office of the battalion and the briefing said that he was going to take the large command post area that was in front of us. and he asked me if i wanted to come along and photograph it. well, of course, majors don't argue with lieutenant colonels. so we went up. we sat in this fox hole. and, like world war i pictures, or we had seen in those days at 09:00, everyone checked their watches. they were going to go up the side of this thing and put flame throwers down the vents and dopm the explosive and get over the whole top of the thing. everybody was back at their command set up. it was really quiet. no firing. the colonel looks at his watch

and says are you ready? i said i'm ready. and so he gets up and says follow me. we get up and trying to run up a sand block house is hard. one foot up and you slide back. one foot, two feet, all of your gear on you and everything else. so we get up, we run right across the top of the thing. we look over and we see a bunch of japanese soldiers down there looking up at us wondering what we're doing on our command postment and i turn around and look at him and he doesn't have a weapon. he said i gave it to somebody that lost theirs in the landing. he said where's your pistol? i said it doesn't work. he said we better get the hell out of here right now. so we're on top of the highest thing on the island. there wasn't a marine in sight. we were the only two there. we run back and we run down and we get another fox hole. and you can understand that this