A couple of years ago my wife Christine and I were doing research at the Corps of Engineers History Museum at Fort Belvoir. The curator, Eric Reinert, suggested that he had helped another lady with similar interests and we really ought to contact her. You might be ready to guess that he was referring to Marion Chard.
My daughter of the 93rd Engineers did, indeed, share a passion with the daughter of the 6th Corps Combat Engineers. Marion put up a link to our website, www.93regimentalcan.com and we put up one to hers. We've been checking in and enjoying this site regularly every since. And we're relieved to see everything back on line after the recent server problems.
Chris and my website is dedicated to the three segregated black general service engineering regiments who suffered, sometimes died and always lived with vicious discrimination while they did their part to push 1400 miles of Alaska Highway through the Northern Rockies in just eight months in 1942. Our book, We Fought the Road, will be published by Epicenter Press early this fall, and we are going back to the road for a publicity tour in just two weeks. I contacted Marion today and asked her permission to share this post with you, and she graciously agreed.
I promised her, and I promise you, not to fill your screen with promotional material. But if you are interested, we will be blogging on Facebook. Search for Christine and Dennis McClure and you'll find our author page with multiple links to the website. If you're interested, please follow us. We also have an author page on Amazon--search for either Dennis McClure or Christine McClure. And, of course, you are always welcome on www.93regimentalcan.com.
Thank you again, Marion for your fine site and for this opportunity.
I'm sure many of you have already read the ANNOUNCEMENT, at the top of each page/section, but it's sure good to be back HOME again, after a severe server crash! We've been gone for two weeks and it was terrible not being able to access ANY of my sites, especially this forum.
Just worked out a few more minor problems, but still can't access the emoticons. Working on it...
LOL... long time no see or talk everyone... yes, I mentioned the boys who gave support and got the beans, the bullets and the gasoline to the U.S. Army personnel on time, on target and kept it coming.
These boys have been forgotten in the greater picture of the ground war in the Mediterranean. I have since switched branches and now I hit for the United States Navy. I love the United States 3rd Infantry Division and the beloved U.S. 30th Infantry Regiment but, in 2013 my life and time took a turn to some forgotten men. Those brave men, walked the decks of the ships that brought the U.S. Army personnel to those hostile shores and cleared the waves on land and sea to make each and every landing a reality.
I've been away, hard at work bringing their story to light for the public. I went to work at Ships of The Sea Maritime Museum here in Savannah, Georgia and I wouldn't trade a moment of it. I LOVE my work, especially lighting up visitors faces when I research their family's relatives and bring their service to light for them in real time. I focus primarily on a ship named after my hometown of Savannah, U.S.S. Savannah, CL-42. A remarkable ship and crew, and its saddens me that I had to go back to the museum to remind me of this fact. However, its been a journey, better yet one heck of an adventure to bring her and her crews service to light.
I now run a page of Facebook to her and her crews honor. Just look up "U.S.S. Savannah, CL-42" I have TONS of documents, photos and family members of the ships crew on there.
I'm also in the process of finally pulling the trigger and writing a book on the U.S.S. Savannah, CL-42 to make sure her and her crew are not forgotten. It will cover EVERYTHING, her conception in 1933 via Senators Carl Vinson and Park Trammell, to the bombing of September 11th, 1943 at Salerno, to her escort duty for the Yalta Conference to her sad scrapping in January, 1966 at Bethlehem Steel.
I think we need a section dedicated here to them, to the United States Navy. For without them, victory, let alone the ground campaign wouldn't have become a reality.
WWII combat cinematographer Norman Hatch dies at 96
By BEN NUCKOLS Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Maj. Norman T. Hatch, a Marine combat cinematographer during World War II whose harrowing footage became the basis of an Academy Award-winning documentary short, has died, his son said. He was 96.
Hatch died Saturday of natural causes at a nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia, the city where he lived for most of his life, said his son, N. Thomas Hatch Jr.
Hatch's footage of the 1943 Battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, now part of Micronesia, was unusually graphic, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to give special permission for the resulting documentary to be shown as a newsreel. The documentary, "With the Marines at Tarawa," won the Academy Award for best documentary short.
Hatch was so close to the action that he was able to capture Japanese soldiers and the Marines who shot them in the same frame.
"Two squads of Japanese came out — about 12 men," he told NPR in a 2010 interview. "They were mowed down. I had the machine gunner right in front of me."
His footage also shows Marines lying dead on a beach. He told NPR that he remembers the stench of the dead and the thick black smoke that forced him to change the shutter speed on his hand-cranked 16mm camera.
"I was told by guys on the front line that I didn't have to be there, and I would quietly tell them that I did," Hatch said in the interview. "The public had to know what we were doing, and this was the only way they would find out."
He was also with the Marines for their assault on Iwo Jima and contributed footage to another documentary, "To the Shores of Iwo Jima."
A Massachusetts native, Hatch joined the Marine Corps in 1939 after graduating from high school. He already had an interest in photography and further developed his skills while with the Marines before he was sent to the Pacific.
After the war, he worked as a civilian at the Pentagon, retiring as the senior audio-visual adviser to the Assistant Secretary of Defense. He later ran a production company. He collaborated with author Charles Jones on the book "War Shots," about his work in combat.
Survivors include his wife of 74 years and their son and daughter. He will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
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