his feet never touched the ground. he landed in a tree. on the drop zone, where it was indicated, and when they found him, he had about 172 stab wounds and bullet holes. his feet as i say never touched the ground of france. the germans used him as target practice. while i was at the sand table, the word got out, and 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 5, about 11:00, the unit was alerted. we all got on trucks. went to the planes, which was nearby. the airfield was the exeter field in england on the coast. i was waiting until the orders came to come to the plane. the runner came over and said colonel wolverton is waiting for me. and i got to the plane. the engines were revved up.

propellers were going. my gear was on the ground. about 150 pounds of gear to jump with. and the colonel himself was in the door, and he said, shames, your seat has been occupied, 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 his 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 who the hell the jump master was when he poked his head in 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 remember it 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 it was one

of our planes that had blown up, third battalion plane had blown up. had torpedoes on the bottom. and of course the flak must have hit one of those and killed everyone onboard, of course. the green light came on. 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 mort ar cannon 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, eight miles. must have been seven miles

because that was how far i found out i landed from where my jump zone was. whether the plane travelled over the jump zone, i do not know. all i know, i jumped into this maze of fireworks. looked like the 4th of july, 10 times over. stuff was everywhere. you could hear the shells going through your chute. a sound that i have never forgotten. i hear it in my sleep now. it's a distinct sound, a 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 flak.

whether my plane was hit, i'm sure it was, because there was so much there you could almost walk through the flak. it looked like stuff was curving. actually, you were curving, the flak 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 half an hour after i landed, i found out that i was in caring hands because we

knocked on the door of a farmer after picking up five men, not 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, we decided that we were going to knock on the farmer's door to find out where we were because we knew, and i told them, that the farmers knew the lay of the land. they would tell us, and we would get an idea where to go. this was about a little after midnight on june 6. knocked on the door.

a man and a 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, who 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 like we were from mars or what have you. anyway, i told the farmer, i said, st. mary glees.

and he said, oui, and he said this way, so i moved the map around and got us directions. next one i said, st. cannes demont, and he said oui, and pointed this way. i oriented the map a little bit more. and then i said, brivan. oui, and he pointed this way, and i shoved it around. and then i said karentan. and he knocked on the floor. he said, oui, karentan. and i said it again, and he said, oui, ici. so i told this guy with me, i said, oh, my god, we are in karentan. and i had put a sign on the steeple of the church that we had fabricated on our sand table, karentan, beware at all costs because we knew that was

the command post of not the division but a corps, 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. after getting out, and i realize 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 on the copes there in normandy. and it was a colonel. colonel johnson i found out later. the commanding officer of the 502nd. and we clicked into each other

with our devices that we had, our clickers, recognition clickers. and he said, sergeant, do you know where you are? and 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 600 or 675 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 -- we had a walkie-talkie with us. and the only thing the walkie-talkie would get would be british broadcasting company. beamed to 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 you, ed. what you don't know is you got a battlefield commission after that. but we'll get to that later. norm? first cameraman to go in with the marines. went into terawa. the first division was sent out, and had the first photographic unit that we had put together. at quantico.

and they went to goddal canal. that was our first operation in the pacific. but because they were so new, the lieutenant colonel that we reported in to said, what the hell do you do? so the photo officer tried to explain it, but things were so new in those days, and 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 has been around water for any length of time, you know that 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. but anyway, guadal canal is pretty much jungle. but on top of that, we had no idea of the terrain of the ground. so a lot of phography was

spent on detailing for the troops what lay ahead of them. they flew in what we call low lies in those days, small aircraft, and took pictures of what 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 the battle, so to speak. and they just couldn't seem to get at it because of all of the other work they were doing. terawa was different. here we had an island, that was part of a chain of islands. and the enemy was building an airstrip on it, which would very easily interdictt the naval activity in that general area. 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 japanese marines. so here we were going to have probably the first time in the world a marine battle, marines against marines. and there was a very large group of korean workers there. and we were so new to the oriental world, we couldn't tell the difference between a kaorea and a japanese. so we thought they were all fighters. but in any event, when we made the landing, on that first day, we had about 10 people who were shooting motion pictures, and we had probably another 10 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.

at our first landings at terawa were amphibious tractors. and because they could walk across the reef which we had been informed about, which would pull up our boats quite a bit, and with the men in the boats would have to wade in the water probably up to their chest until they got in. so the amphibious got in all fine. and we got one photographer ashore for the amphibious, and he was a still man. and i was with the regimental commander of the second battalion, 8th marines, who was sitting there watching his beach head being eroded because the amphibious tractors that had gone in ahead of him were now being fired at by japanese buried in a tank turret with a machine gun, and the amfib tractors were not really set up to accept fire. they were like tin cans. and they could be -- and

actually, the amphibious tractors originally were just for 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 damn boat in right away. now a little bit about jim crow. he was sort of a hero in the corps. he had been on guadal canal. he led his unit out in the pampas grass, up to his shoulders, and waiting for the japanese to shoot at him. and then when he did,he say, there are the sobs. go get them. and they would open up with the machine guns, the heavy guns, and obliterate the japanese situation. i figured anybody like that could be a good man to be with because he would be in trouble all the time. well, i was absolutely right because when he saw what was happening to his beach head, he had his executive officer on the beach with the troops. but he wanted to get in so he

said, put this damn 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. and i said i'm a motion picture cameraman. now to be polite for everybody, he said i don't want to a goddamn hollywood marine with me. i said, sir, i've got five years duty. i've had all the training. and i kn if i need a rifle all i've got to do is bend down and pick one up. with silence, he said all right, but stay the hell out of my way. i said yes, sir. so i was in his boat when we went in. i found out which boat it was going to be, and i was going to be with him. so it was good because i got on the beach. i was the first cameraman to get on the beach at terawa, motion picturewise. i met up with a still man who was opie new com. who was a corporal. and the two of us stayed together as a team through the whole operation. and terawa 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, new zealanders and the australians were really annihilated. this was at tripoli. and so -- no, it wasn't tripoli. i'm think of it a minute. talipoli. and he almost lost his job because of that. he was the 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 beach head 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. they call him holler now because he could yell. but he believed in the concept. so he trained, and that's why we were adept at landing. and when we landed at terawa, t against a heavily fortified beach head. it was said it couldn't be done, and we took that island in 76 hours. now in 76 hours in a beach head that was no larger or the island was no larger than about a third of the size of central park, new york, over 5,000 people were killed and a little over 1,000 people wounded. fortunately, of the killed, a little over 4,000 were japanese, fortunately for us, not for them. when the general was talking about things happening that you don't expect, the complete general staff of the command at terawa 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 when an aircraft was going overhead and spotted them and sent word out to a destroyer, the lingold, said there are a bunch of men walking over the strip, go get them, so they dropped shells there an killed them all. neither us or the japanese knew their command staff had been killed. would that have changed the battle? who knows. it might have, but who knows. it didn't. but 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 and the men -- the other

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

point. we probably had 800 men ashore in the amphib tractors at that point. there's a rumor i like to mention because it's a good rumor, but i've never been able to prove it. i say it's a rumor in letters that high, and that is that churchill was having trouble with eisenhower and his staff about landing on the places where these gentlemen landed, and -- because 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, he then turned to churchill and his own staff and said, now, dammit, we can do it because the marines did it at terawa. that's a rumor, but it's a good

story anyway. people have asked me a lot of times, were you afraid? that's a good question, because you knew you were going into combat. you knew that people were going to shoot at you. and my answer to that in all times is that once the adrenaline starts moving and you're starting into the action, you then do what you have been trained to do. now 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 because i told them i was as important as they were because the public had to know what they were going through. and that was -- that's the case all along right up until this date actually. and so it's very necessary. yes, you're scared. yes, things are strange. bombs going off all around you. i laid down after i walked in. i had to get off the boat, walk in with camera gear on my shoulders and my assistant was walking in behind me with the

same thing. if you have ever walked in water and 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've forgotten what it was now, but anyway, when you fall down on the beach and get your breath back and everything else, all of a sudden there's an explosion beside you, a real big explosion, and what had happened was that 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 right down to the beach and laid down beside us. i thought that was going to be the end, and there was an explosion over here, but that didn't explode. so, you know, you just can't plan anything. you have to go by what you've been trained to do, and that's the biggest thing in the event.

>> can i stop you there? we're running a little bit short on time but -- >> i was just going to say. >> go ahead. >> the film that we shot there. >> good segue. >> 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. a film that i shot and was involved in for iwajima. that was nominated for an academy award as well. >> we're going to show some of that film right now. >> good. >> can we do that? >> yes. >> hit it. the amphibians set up

machine guns. they got a few of us before we got them. commanding officer of the assault troops confirmed. one of our medium tanks remains in operation. although at the end of the second day gave us one which made it easier, the mortar blast continued from the enemy point of resistance. by this time we know the japs are licked. they must know it too. there you go.

[ applause ] >> do we have time for questions? can i tell one funny story? one very short, funny story. >> yes. >> this was along the line of things the general said, too. the third morning the executive officer of the battalion in the briefing said that he was going to take the large command post area that was in front of us and went all through the three days of fighting. he asked me if i wanted to come along and photograph it. majors don't argue with lieutenant colonels. i said, yes, sir. we went up. we sat in this foxhole and like world war i pictures you've seen, we had seen in those days, at 09:00 everybody check their watches. this was the time for jump off. they were going to go up the side of this thing and put flame throwers down the vents and drop explosives down the vents as well and get over the whole top of the thing. so at 09:00 everybody was back

at their command set up. it was very quiet. no firing. the colonel looks at his watch and said, 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, one foot up, you slide back two feet. one foot, two feet. all your gear on you and everything else. so we get up and 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 their command post. i turn around and look at him. he doesn't have a weapon. i said, major, where's your weapon? he said, i gave it to somebody that lost theirs in the landing. i said, where's your pistol? he said, it doesn't work. i said, we better get the hell out of here right now. so we were on top of the highest thing on the island. we could see all over the island. there wasn't a marine in si