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A soldier who photographed World War II in Europe describes 6 of his photos that reveal the 'insanity of war'
Katie Sanders
Business Insider, Sun, May 30, 2021
Michelantonio "Tony" Vaccaro wanted to serve his country with a camera during World War II, so he tried to join the US Army Signal Corps. But under Uncle Sam's rules, the 20-year-old draftee was too young for that branch.
So Vaccaro, the orphaned son of Italian immigrants, became a private first class in the 83rd Infantry Division. By June 1944, days after the first wave of 156,000 Allied troops descended on the beaches of Normandy, Vaccaro landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw row after row of dead soldiers in the sand.
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WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES Whose subjects represent WHY MEMORIAL DAY MATTERS.
https://news.yahoo.com/soldier-photographed-world-war-ii-221900188.html
Docreed2003
(16,817 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)Docreed2003
(16,817 posts)MarineCombatEngineer
(12,092 posts)have no true concept of the horrors of war.
Thank you for this.
Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)While he was brave and volunteered for combat the story of PT-109 demonstrates his courage President Kennedy hated war for the reasons you know. He lost his big brother, a US Navy aviator, fighting the NAZIs.
Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
The Presidents big brother was the one being groomed for a life in politics by The Old Man, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. The younger Joe had served as a delegate from Massachusetts at the 1940 Democratic convention. A brave, athletic and conscientious young man, he volunteered for service in the US Navy before World War II.
After completing his tour as pilot of a US Navy B-24 Liberator on anti-submarine warfare patrol from 1943-44 over the North Atlantic, flying out of an airbase in England, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. volunteered for a top-secret mission, Project APHRODITE. The objective was to knock out the NAZI V-1 buzz bombs that were killing civilians in London and other English towns.
The Navy, in cooperation (and in competition) with the Army Air Corps, worked to develop a secret weapon a remotely piloted flying bomb. They would convert four-engine bombers into flying bombs that would be flown by remote control into the V-1 sites along the coast of France.
Joe and other pilots were needed to get the experimental versions of the 4-engine B-24 and B-17 bombers airborne. The planes had been converted from being a 10-man bomber, capable of carrying sixteen 500 pound bombs, into one giant flying bomb with a crew of two the pilot and the bombardier-engineer.
For the time, it was state-of-the-art science, engineering, and warfare. Joe Kennedys plane was among a few Liberators and Flying Fortresses modified for a very early version of remote control. The ship, basically, was historys first guided missile. The entire fuselage was filled with Torpex and gelignite, IIRC, and was to be armed by a rather elaborate, and untested, electronic arming panel.
Like something out of Buck Rogers, the Navy equipped the airplane with a primitive 2-channel remote-control pilot. One radio signal could make the plane dive and climb and another signal could make it turn left and right. A prototype video camera would also send information to the Mother Ship, where the remote pilot sat before a tiny TV monitor.
The scientists and engineers in the Mother Ship would take over and signal on two radio frequencies: One to turn the stick RIGHT or LEFT; or push the stick FORWARD or pull the stick BACK. Primitive today, they were the first remote-controlled weapon of mass destruction. The Mother Ship would follow two miles or so back and then fly it over the English Channel and guide it down into the rocket launch sites.
The technology was so primitive, human pilots were needed to get the flying bombs aloft. Once aloft, they were to turn on the radio-guidance controls and arm the flying bomb. Then, somewhere over the English countryside, they were to bail out. Sounds simple, but it was anything but.
The pilot and bombardier were to bail out at an altitude of about one thousand feet. Bailing out from the modified aircraft was extremely dangerous work. One B-17 pilot was killed and another lost an arm in the process. By the time it was Joes turn in the first APHRODITE B-24, there was reason for concern about a plan that looked like a suicide mission.
For the Kennedys and the future of American politics, the tragedy was that the Navy ship used a rather primitive arming panel. The regular engineer/co-pilot refused to fly and instead the Navy sent aloft the engineer who designed and installed the system.
Over the English countryside, the ship exploded, killing the two flyers and changing American political history. Joe's younger brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy then became the heir to the family's political ambitions.
John F. Kennedy made an outstanding President, living up to his brothers promise of greatness. JFK, it should be remembered, saved the world from nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While he never lived to see the dream realized, JFK also stretched mankinds imagination and reach to the moon. Ironically, he even used the NAZI rocket scientist who developed the V-1 to do so. The same von Braun who the allied air command sent his lost brother, Joseph, to destroy.
One of Hitler's superweapons, the V-2 was developed by Werner von Braun and his team at Peenemünde. History's first ballistic missiles were used to rain death, destruction and terror upon London. The allies were worried that if the Nazis continued developing their super-weapons, the V-2s descendants would be delivering bombs possibly atomic to New York City.
# # #
Two outstanding books on the subject of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. and his service in World War II:
Aphrodite: Desperate Mission by Jack Olsen
and
The Lost Prince: Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy by Hank Searls.
MarineCombatEngineer
(12,092 posts)Thank you.
I shudder to think what would have happened if Trump had been President during the Cuban Missile Crises, I suspect we wouldn't be having this conversation as the world would have been a smoking, radioactive heap.
Little history tidbit during the crises, when the Admirals, Generals were pushing Pres. Kennedy to initiate bombing runs over Cuba, it was actually Gen. Curtis LeMay who told Pres. Kennedy that his bombers and fighters could hold off for a few more days to let the politicians de-escalate the situation.
Who would have thought that the ultimate hawk, Gen. LeMay, would counsel restraint?
UpInArms
(51,252 posts)When Vaccaro encountered this dead German soldier, it appeared that other American soldiers had already looted his valuables.
"This is a man who we killed in frontline [fighting]. That was it. The family back home. A dead German soldier with the pictures he was carrying of his family. Of course I had photos of my family too. It reminds me of the tragedy of mankind. He's not a German. He's a human being."
"We just must stop using 'I'm Italian. I'm French. I'm Spanish. I'm German.' That's what makes us enemies of each other. We're all humans. In Spain. In Germany. It's a terrible mistake that man has made. We are humans. And nothing else."
Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)What the Cellist Said...
Every second we live is a new and unique moment for the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again.
And what do we teach children in school? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France.
When will we also teach them: Do you know what you are?
You are a Marvel. You are Unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you.
And look at your body what a wonder it is! Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.
Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?
You must cherish one another. You must work. We all must work to make this world worthy of children.
Pablo Casals
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)Died fighting fascists.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)NYC, 1957
RobertDevereaux
(1,841 posts)[NOTE: The Old Lie translated: It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.]
Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.]
%%%%
Warpy
(110,900 posts)Last edited Thu Jun 3, 2021, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)
Some people are natural warriors and in the modern world, we do need them to train so they are ready if the worst happens.
Any macho twit who thinks there is glory in modern warfare needs a padded cell and serious drugs. Modern war isn't two armies marching across a field to meet each other directly for close combat, it's filth, disease, hunger, misery, and death that can come from a long distance away or above at any minute, often fought against ordinary civiliians instead of an opposing army. Anyone who wants this is dangerously crazy.
No, I've never been in war. I've just dealt with caring for the people who have.
MarineCombatEngineer
(12,092 posts)so, because we don't, I leave you with this instead:
Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)Thank you for sharing Wilfred Owens poem. Death brought by gas was so horrible, it was outlawed by international treaty. It is said Hitler wore a small mustache in order to fit in his gas mask.
The poet Horace was both wrong and right. There is nothing wonderful or sweet in killing or being killed in war. Were it not for the sacrifices made by our forefathers, however, we would not live in freedom under the Constitution.
Heres a work created by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, a German staff physician and Protestant pastor, in December 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad:
1942 LIGHT LIFE LOVE Fortress Stalingrad CHRISTMAS in the CAULDRON.
The Doctor died as a POW in 1944. The work was preserved and now can be seen on exhibit in the preserved ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church (The Broken Tooth) in Berlin. It is absolutely breathtaking, heartbreaking and unforgettable.
https://www.visitberlin.de/en/blog/madonna-stalingrad-icon-hope
RobertDevereaux
(1,841 posts)paleotn
(17,778 posts)Like many vets, when they hit the last chapters of their lives, they open up on things they've kept well hidden for years and years. Dad wasn't happy about either me or my brother serving. Not that it wasn't honorable. It is. He didn't want us to see and do the things he saw and did. He figured he'd covered himself and his sons in that regard. We didn't fully get it until, toward the end of his life, he told us why he felt that way. The bloated corpses in the French hedgerows. Frozen bodies in Belgium. After awhile, dead bodies just became part of the scenery, like rocks and trees, and he gave them little mind. Getting hit and wondering if he'd die in that awful place.
But bloody wounds, mangled stumps and injuries we couldn't imagine just didn't shock him after awhile. It was just part of the dirty business. I still can't wrap my head around towns reduced to rubble and strewn with the mangled bodies of soldiers and French, Belgian or German civilians. But even after being steeled to that carnage, the camps still left an indelible impression. Buchenwald. Half a century later, he said the horrible smell was a fresh as the day he first saw it.
Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)This President also understood war and its true impact on a most personal level, losing a brother and brother-in-law during WW2.
JFK at Arlington on Memorial Day in 1963 (standing below what became his grave) was 1 day after final birthday. (Michael Beschloss)
BobTheSubgenius
(11,535 posts)I know this might seem a bit incongruous, but I think the "streaks" in that picture add to the photo, not take away from it. It was like the air was full of bullets and shrapnel, and the angry buzz and whistle of them.
Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)When I was not on a night mission, I processed my films in four army helmets and hung the wet negatives from tree branches to dry. Tony Vaccaro
American GI Ivan Parrott is seen running through smoke in no mans land near Neuss, Germany during the Battle for the Rhine, World War II, 1st March 1945
Vintage gelatin silver print
BobTheSubgenius
(11,535 posts)I love those two pictures even more because of their "flaws," which I see as enhancements. Thanks for your efforts!
Evolve Dammit
(16,632 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,642 posts)An amazing image...
HITLERS WINDOW
Eagles Nest Bavaria 1947
You know who else liked the view from Berchtesgaden?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/madison-cawthorns-visit-to-hitlers-vacation-home-alarms-his-nc-districts-jews/
QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded
Gregory Stanton
Just Security, Sept. 9, 2020
Excerpt...
I have studied and worked to prevent genocide for forty years. Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide, the first international anti-genocide coalition, see such hate-filled conspiracy theories as early warning signs of deadly genocidal violence.
The plot, described above, was the conspiracy revealed in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years. Central to its mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.
The Nazis published a childrens book of the Protocols that they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany. The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer (derived from the German word for Storm) spread the Blood Libel. Hitlers Mein Kampf, his narcissistic autobiography and manifesto for his battle against the Jewish plot to rule the world, copied his conspiracy theories from the Protocols.
The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. Nazi storm troopers (storm detachment Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.
America had its own dark side. Henry Ford echoed Nazi hatred of Jews and had 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed and distributed in the U.S. Father Coughlin preached the Protocols on national radio. The Ku Klux Klan combined its white supremacist racism with hatred of Jews.
QAnons conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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https://www.justsecurity.org/72339/qanon-is-a-nazi-cult-rebranded/
Which is why your observation about history, current events, and the role of the journalist are so astute.
Evolve Dammit
(16,632 posts)They are truly sick fuckers