WWII Pictures
When I went overseas in January 1944, I never thought of taking a camera, so I have no photos from the Anzio Campaign. I then remembered that we had a small simplistic camera at home (no controls other than film advance and shutter release). It was all plastic, probably a forerunner of the Kodak Instamatic. The picture quality was not great, but it was small enough to carry in my musette bag and the results were better than none at all. I asked my parents to mail it, along with some film, and they did while we were training in Italy for the D Day landing in Southern France.
We were prohibited by censorship regulations from mailing undeveloped film home, so a I had to find a photo shop that still had pre war photo supplies., so that I could mail the negatives home. They were few and far between! The few still in business were not anxious to use up their pre war chemical supplies so they wanted “an arm and a leg†to process the negatives. The occupation currency was not worth much, but American cigarettes would buy anything! I didn’t smoke, so my cigarette ration covered my photo processing expenses. The resulting prints could then be mailed home. They were precious and I still have the prints 60 years later.
The first picture below shows a couple of my men ((LMG on right) on the deck of our LCI and the smoke screen covering the beach as we went in. Smoke generators on small Naval craft raced back and forth to hide us from enemy view. Several LCI’s had struck mines in shallow water with heavy casualties among the debarking men. So my LCI threw rope cargo nets overside so we could climb down the cargo net into smaller shallow draft LCVP’s (Hold the verticals, dummy, or your hands will be stepped on!)
The ramp of our LCVP went down on the sand and I ran off with an OCS “Follow Me!†There was some incoming artillery and light small arms fire. I jogged across the sand to the tree line along the road. I looked back and saw that my men were following in single file, jogging in my footprints. If anybody was going to step on a mine, let it be the Lt! We took up positions on the bank of the parallel road and fired at the enemy in the hillside vineyard ahead.
The second picture shows a crude 88mm gun emplacement on the beach that was knocked out by our Naval gunfire. My four recon jeeps were brought in a few hours later on LCTs with their ignition parts sprayed with a waterproof substance and the air intake came through a flexible tube wired to the angle iron wire cutter welded to the front bumper. I was told to send out three of my recon jeeps (in different directions) to find the enemy. Two came back, but the third was still missing. So I went out with my jeep and driver to look for them. We found them in a melon patch eating ripe melons! (See picture 3 below). Cpl. Hollis gave me a melon and I led them back to the beach area. (I gave my driver half).
Russ Cloer
Getting the pictures posted may take longer!