Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/09/29

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Subject: [Leica] photographing WWII Vets
From: kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)
Date: Sat Sep 29 14:54:56 2007

some out takes from today's photographs for War Paint -- 
www.kylecassidy.com/warpaint -- 

"I could hear the shrapnel bouncing along the steel deck and I prayed; _Oh 
God, don't let my legs get cut off_.... Around the ship were hundreds of 
bodies, floating in the water, up against the hull." Raymond Dierkes, Ship 
Fitter 2nd Class, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944

"In the Navy," he said, "I was with wonderful people who taught me so much. 
I learned then, be nice to people, be happy, and things will work out. It's 
all you can do."

http://www.kylecassidy.com/lj/2007/raymond1.jpg

"We were hit by Kamakazi planes three times. We shot seven down, but we were 
hit three times, it never ended, they were constantly attacking. When they 
were strafing the deck I could see the bullets coming towards me, the ship 
was on fire, and my signal flags caught fire. I tried to put them out. You 
don't know how to react, because you've never experienced anything like 
that." -- Robert Dorn, LCS57, April 12, 1944

http://www.kylecassidy.com/lj/2007/don1.jpg

It was my great honor today to meet and talk to some amazingly brave and 
remarkable men who left their homes as children to fight in a war for 
something they believed in, saw things that no one should ever have to see, 
came home forever changed, but kept on going, and kept on believing. 

(Some of them also told me _the most_ scandalous stories about tattoo 
parlors in Honolulu and Tijuana.)


Replies: Reply from abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge) ([Leica] photographing WWII Vets)
Reply from michiel.fokkema at wanadoo.nl (Michiel Fokkema) ([Leica] photographing WWII Vets)
Reply from ocgarza at txcr.net (O.C. Garza) ([Leica] photographing WWII Vets)