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WWII Cameramen Risked Their Lives To Get the Perfect Shot
Combat Camera
The Italian campaign was a brutal and costly slog for the Allies pushing up the length of Italy in December 1943. The capture of Ortona and its deep-water port was the responsibility of the Canadian 1st Infantry Division. The town was staunchly defended by elite German paratroops and although it was finally liberated, intense house to house fighting resulted in 2,300 Canadian dead and wounded. Cameraman Sgt. Jack Stollery, armed with nothing more than a pistol, binoculars and a Bell and Howell movie camera, was one of the first to storm the German defenses.
Stollery and the advance column soon encountered heavy resistance. Seeking shelter, he crouched beside the relative safety of a Sherman tank and continued shooting movie film. Suddenly he scampered to the other side of the street to get another angle because that’s what combat cameramen did, get your wide-shot and then your medium-shot and always edit in the camera.
His colleague Sgt. “Stormin’ Norman” Quick, interviewed decades after the battle, picks up the story
“The tank crew sees this crazy photographer dodging bullets to get his shot and says ‘if he can do it, we can too’ so they closed the hatch and revved up the engine. Jack climbed on top of that Sherman, set up his tripod behind the…
