Invasion Films

The first D-day newsreels reached U.S. theaters on D-day plus nine. They are the collective effort of U.S., British and Canadian Army, Navy, Air Force and newsreel cameramen. They have caught some of the finest, most moving, most revealing shots ever made of war:

P: Swift, terrific plane shots of the thousand wakes of the invasion fleet, so deep below that they resemble the tremulous urgency of amoebae on a microscope slide.

P: An enemy fighter plane exploding like a toy.

P: The faces of Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery--faces heavy with power, craft, superhuman responsibility, humanly transfigured by the exhilaration of a great and successful change of rhythm in history.

P: The faces of enemy prisoners--despairing, angry, sullen or incredulous, betraying more clearly than in any previous film the certainty that from that day on, the struggle was hopeless.

The finest shot of all was made by U.S. Signal Corps Sergeant Dick Taylor (who, though wounded later, kept at his job) from a landing barge, with his camera focused on the bow. The barge is under fire. The men in it, crouched low, show a physical, animal restlessness more revealing--and far more complex--than any manifestation of pure fear. Beyond the bow of the barge, wavering with the motion of the water, and terrifyingly close, loom the upper floors of bleak Norman seaside houses. The barge opens its mouth. Not in a neat, eager, clattering rush as people have sometimes imagined, but wretchedly, one by one, crabwise the crouching men disembark, hip-deep, and begin to wade ashore. Their officer, at the blunt bow, stands erect and unprotected. As, one by one, he gestures his men forward, he is almost smiling.

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