Omaha Beach : The D-Day Cameraman Who Filmed Assault Waves on June 6, 1944 - WWII Then & Now

oh [Music] my God [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] this is the only Motion Picture footage taken on Omaha Beach during the early hours of D-Day on June 6 1944 this footage is accompanied by a series of photographs taken in the exact same area and the men responsible for the photos and film was Sergeant Richard Taylor a signal core cameraman but besides filming on the deadliest Beach of all of D-Day what if I tell you that he was wounded in the arm while filming the events that morning and yet he continued to film until he could be evacuated now in this video we're going to Normandy to discover his story we're going to show you where the footage was taken and we're going to stand on the exact same location to take some then and now photographs but before we go to Normandy I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor myheritage for sponsoring this video myheritage is the number one family history service and I think that is really important because 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enjoy all the amazing features myheritage has to offer and if you decide to continue your subscription you get a 50 discount now let's continue our journey to Normandy alright it's 1944 and you plan to execute Operation Overlord the invasion of German occupied Western Europe during World War II and designed to bring total defeat to Germany the assault phase known as Operation Neptune would lend Allied troops in Normandy by air and sea and would become the largest Seaboard invasion in the history of warfare there's no way that you don't want this to be filmed or photographed for tactical historical and publicity purposes in order to control the photo coverage as best as possible the US Armed Forces had specific teams of military personnel within their branches trained to take film and photographs in various situations they would go into Comet operations and cover the events where civilian journalists either wouldn't or couldn't go for the Army these were the so-called signal photographic companies within the U.S signal Corps furthermore handheld cameras at that time such as the Leica or 35 millimeter IMO allowed photographers to operate the camera by themselves the unit that was responsible for the coverage of D-Day on the American side was the 165th signal photographer company there were the signal photo company attached to the US first Army the 165th consisted of several detachments but only three were scheduled to land in the initial waves the attachment G was to land with the fourth infantry division on Utah Beach Detachment M was to land with the second ranger battalion on point the hook and attachment L was to land with the first Infantry Division on Omaha Beach I could do a whole video about the photo coverage of D-Day on the American side but that may be for another time let me know in the comments down below if you'd be interested in such a video for now we're going to look at Detachment L that was scheduled to land in one of the first assault waves on D-Day on Omaha Beach I decided to meet up with full-time Normandy Battlefield tour guide florenplana he was going to accompany me to the location where Taylor shot the footage and explained the situation of that specific sector on the morning of June 6 1944. at 6 30 a.m it was low tide and so Sergeant Taylor landed with the 16th Infantry Regiment and they're gonna be the one that's going to be the first on this part of the beach on June 6 1944 and to give you an ID Joy about 2500 men were in the 16th Infantry Regiment and they lost more than 900 in one day missing killed and wounded in action so he was part of this group and they have heavy heavy casualty High casualties so Joy right now we are under Dublin 60 Dublin 60 is right there on the top of the bluff and we're just in the northern part of a little Hamlet called Kabul and actually which is kind of interesting you can see in the video footage that some of the beach obstacles are you know wooden Pole and after those wooden pool you can see it's a clear space which means that we're really on the most eastern part of the beach where you have those Beach obstacles and you can see that Cabo is right there and right now we are in this area on the beach right under Dublin 60. which means that those um shots that were taken by a surgeon Taylor should have been taken in this area so right now it's very different because it's it's clear it's beautiful but at that time we used to have a few Beach obstacles you can see all the guys trying to get out some of them are shot straight on the beach you can see a lot of men actually already dead in the water and uh this is kind of a not disturbing but perturbing when you think about the fact that it was just right here all those men that lost their life trying just to get out of the water crossing the beach and hide here behind the cliffs so all those shots this is the only place that have the cliffs like this yes so this is actually uh this part of the beach is very easy to recognize because of the cliffs that's the only area where we have like those Cliffs were approximately like uh in in feet so I don't know how you say that in feet but it's probably three four meters high obviously the cliffs are not exactly the same anymore as in uh the erosion 1945 1944 I mean because of the erosion yeah so the eclipse per se are not exactly the same because of the erosion but you know when you're looking at those pictures you can clearly see that it was taken right here dressed under a double in 60 and the guys after landing on the beach they're trying to take cover you can see Navy personal you can see first Infantry Division and which is very interesting you can see members of the 29 Infantry Division were supposed to land on the western sector of on my beach so it's a total mass total chaos and uh some guys are just trying to uh find protection right there behind those Cliffs and we have the most iconic actually pictures uh that we have ondite itself the attachment L consisted of only eight men and their Commander Lieutenant Martin C grossfeld in total four men of Detachment L were scheduled to land with the division on Omaha Beach first two would land with the 16th Infantry Regiment at age 50 each hour was 6 30 am so this would have been 50 minutes later another group of two men would land with the division headquarters at age 110 however the morning reports of the Detachment mentioned that one officer and one enlisted man landed on the coast of Normandy as part of the forward Echelon at 8 30 am we know that Sergeant Taylor was probably one of them which makes us think that the officer in question could be Lieutenant Martin C grossfeld however we talked to Taylor's family and they were only aware of Captain Wall's presence we do know that Captain Hermann V wall commander of the 165th signal photo company landed on Omaha Beach that morning however he was the company commander and a part of the detachment Captain wall took several photographs on easy red and was wounded by a shell shortly after resulting in the loss of his leg unfortunately we do not know which other man of the Detachment landed that morning besides the morning reports all other archive material of the 165th signal photo company is not to be found at the U.S national archives no one really knows where they are which is quite remarkable for a unit that supported the US first Army during World War II and to top it all off the footage a Taylor shot on D-Day is the only footage made by the Detachment that has surfaced after World War II it's kind of crazy to walk in these footsteps right yeah it's so peaceful today yeah hard to believe that happened right here so right here from where we are you can see three different uh WN witherstein Nest resistant nest wn62 right there double in 61 and over in 60. so if you're really trying to cross the beach here on June 6 1944 uh you're far that from several different directions and you're just a Sitting Duck because the Germans are right there on the top I don't know if you can see but this is double in 60. so you're very exposed you land here at 6 30 a.m in the morning you try to get out of the beach and you actually cross that bridge you have 300 yards of Beach and the only place where you can hide is behind that that Cliff so if Taylor landed here he will receive fire from the tub there yeah and from the fire Maybe over there yeah absolutely both direction from there and from there but I presume honestly most of the fire was coming from the wn60 because we're right in front of it so when we have the scene where the guys are being shot at yeah they're getting probably fire from the top that's my belief and if it's not that one that can be a little bit more on the west because as we said they're doubling 61 and 62. like we can see you see there are people on the top right there yeah you see them Yep this is where we have trenches actually looking down toward Fox red sector so this is actually where the Germans were right there on Dublin 60. so it gives us a a good uh idea of where they were we headed back to the cliffs where Taylor shot his film even though most archive material of the 165th was lost we found an interesting account in the signal Corps publication regarding all photography surrounding the invasion of Normandy it contained a small paragraph about Richard Taylor and it says United States signal Corps photographer Sergeant Taylor stepped off the boat into a Normandy Minefield in three feet of water at each hour and 30 seconds later shrapnel wounded him in the upper left arm Sergeant Taylor stumbled but managed to keep the camera above water as machine gun bullets sprayed him with water and sand as Doughboys dropped around him some dead others hurt he filmed it all waiting to the beach he shot 100 feet of film of our advancing troops he returned to the hospital in England to have his wound attended and brought one of the first combat films of the assault of the Fortress of Europe his were the first motion picture to arrive in the United States age plus 64 hours in the caption sheets that were received with the film from Sergeant Taylor he doesn't mention his injuries all he says is an eve several scenes are missing because of difficulties with snipers and machine gunners Sergeant Taylor voluntarily enlisted in the U.S Army in 1942 he was already working as a photographer for Studio in New York for his actions on D-Day Sergeant Taylor was awarded the Silver Star he was photographed in a hospital in England on June 9th still holding his camera he was talking to a paratrooper that was also wounded in France two days later he wrote a letter back home to his parents hope you were not worried because I haven't written recently I was very busy also confined due to opening of the second front I am fine and I'm resting in a clean Hospital getting the best to eat and drink I'm also attended by good doctors and Charming nurses from the states I got a slight wound in the left arm on the morning of D-Day France there's nothing to worry about really Dad as my arm will be the same as before in another week or two managed to get some good photos so I was told before leaving France in the hospital he turned over the film that he shot on D-Day he had three cans each containing approximately 100 feet of 35 millimeter exposed film of the operations another reel of 100 feet exposed 35 millimeter film and two rolls of exposed film containing stills from his Kodak 35. his D-Day film and photographs became one of the most iconic ones that come for D-Day for his film is the only to show combat infantry on Omaha Beach on June 6 1944. over the years people have tried to identify some of these men that appeared in the photographs the men in the foreground was supposedly identified as Nicholas a Fina of company I of the 60 Infantry Regiment unfortunately Taylor never wrote down the identity of the men that appeared in photographs we also believe that the reason for that is that some of the photographs are still images from the original film rule that contained this footage because all photographs have the same reference number to the negative and some photographs are identical to the motion picture footage that Taylor shot another interesting feature is a scene where we see a man that looks like he's holding a photo camera who was that man was it lieutenant grossfeld or was it another photographer whose name we don't know besides Taylor and Captain Hermann wall we know that at least two other photographers landed on Omaha Beach that morning these were Robert Kappa who apparently took his famous photographs on easy red and yang photographer Pete Paris who was killed by the same shell that wounded Captain Hermann V wool also an easy red or could it be Taylor himself while another man was holding his film camera these are interesting questions we'd like to answer one day sergeant Taylor continued to photograph and film The War he filmed parts of the liberation of Luxembourg in September 1944 and was also photographed here he was also responsible for taking photographs at the side of Melody Massacre for collecting evidence he survived the war and passed away in 2002 at the age of 95. his D-Day film is probably one of the most used films for D-Day documentaries however all credit to his film is lost but not mentioning his name or when mixing his footage with other D-Day footage shot by other cameraman therefore we can proudly say that all Motion Picture footage used in this documentary was shot by Taylor this video was our attempt to restore some of that credit by putting a name and face behind the only Motion Picture footage shot in the assault waves on Omaha Beach on D-Day on June 6 1944. it's cool you can see it's a 30 cal water cooler machine gun [Music] they're carrying the ammo here [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] 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Channel: SNAFU DOCS

Views: 3,978,302

Keywords: ww2, world war 2, world war 2 documentary, d-day, d-day documentary, d-day omaha beach, omaha beach, omaha beach documentary, d-day omaha beach documentary, ww2 documentary, ww2 then and now, ww2 then now

Id: HFkxH_qclYY

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023