Marc Aronson - Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and the Invention of Modern Photojournalism

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY | NEW YORK

To the memory of Lisa Jalowetz Aronson,
who knew all about love, life, and artistic collaboration

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American soldiers huddle behind barriers to avoid enemy fire as they approach Omaha Beach early on June 6, 1944D-Day. The Germans had planted these steel obstacles and linked them to explosive mines to hamper landing craft. To capture the moment, Capa had to be in the water, dodging bullets like the rest of the men.

AS ROBERT CAPA TELLS IT : A metal ramp cranks open and lands with a splashing thud. Chilly dawn fog rushes into the craft where thirty soldiers sit shivering, crouched on benches. The floor sways, slick with vomit; the seas have been rough. Ahead, these men know, is a most dangerous mission: they must capture a slender, crescent-shaped strip of beach at the bottom of towering cliffs in Normandy, France. At the top are hundreds of Nazi troops, stationed in their bunkers behind machine guns and mortar pits, waiting.

Capa, the only photographer to land with the initial wave of the mission, removes one of his two cameras from its oilskin cover just as the rush of men clamber into the freezing water, rifles held over their heads. From the bluffs, a rain of machine-gun fire breaks out; within seconds, dozens are falling into the waves. The sea pools red, but there is no stopping the soldiers swarming off similar barges, pushing into the foaming shallows toward Omaha Beach. Capa follows, repeating to himself words he learned in Spain: Es una cosa muy seria. This is a very serious business.

Capa is photographing the first moments of D-Daythe crucial invasion planned by the Allies. For five years, war has raged across Europe. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, America was drawn in. Capa risks everything to capture the story of World War II, the global fight against fascism. He takes risks all the timejudging; figuring out which missions to go on, which dangers are worth braving, which conflicts magazines will assign him to cover. He has been to Italy during the Allied advance, where he covered nightmarish scenes in Naples.

In the spring of 1944, he stayed in London, where everyone seemed to be aware of an imminent and yet absolutely secret invasion plan. Then, in late May, Capa was summoned to military headquarters on the coast of England, where leaders were planning this most audacious of operations. To enter France from the coast will be crucial to winning the war. Everyone knows this, even the Germans: Well have only one chance to stop the enemy, and thats while hes in the water, struggling to get ashore. The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive, declares German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Soldiers who made it through the obstacles and strafing fire scrambled to reach the beach and dig in.

The soldier whose face is barely visible in Capas photo has been identified as Private First Class Huston Riley, who was injured in the invasion but survived.

On the night of June 5, Capa gambles into the wee hours with men who know what awaits them. They are on board the USS Samuel Chase, a warship that carries in its belly several barges, each of which will be propelled into the water several hundred feet off the coast of France. Of the two thousand soldiers he accompanies, Capa says, They are tough experienced men, some have been through invasion before, and now are the spearhead again.

Capa is given a choice. Which unit will he join? Which wave of soldiers, headed directly into the teeth of Nazi guns, should he photograph? He takes one more gamble: he will launch with the boats on the second round of the very first wavethose most at risk. He puts himself as close as possible to the fight.

The landing does not go entirely as planned. The choppy, high waves and current blow many of the boats off course. Now the soldiers, scrambling through the bloodstained waters to shore, find themselves in a different position than was anticipated. Due to overcast weather, B-26 bombers, meant to pound the German positions and create craters where the men can huddle for protection, are dropping their bombs too far inland. Rockets intended to stun the German troops have gone off too soon. The men are advancing on the open beach, where they will be picked off by the German gunners up on the bluffs. Scores of soldiers press themselves into the wet sand, huddling behind the forbidding obstacles the Germans have erected: stakes of metal and concrete and mine-tipped logs that jut up from the shallows.

Crouching behind a steel barrier in the freezing water, Capa keeps photographing. Exhausted from the water and the fear, we lay flat on a small strip of wet sand between the sea and the barbed wire. The slant of the beach gave us some protection, so long as we lay flat, from the machine-gun and rifle bullets, but the tide pushed us against the barbed wire, where the guns were enjoying open season.

Crawling toward a lieutenant he played poker with the night before, Capa pulls out his second camera, raises his arms, and snaps away while keeping his head bowed down, mortars exploding around him, until he has finished a few film rolls. Then terror seizes hold. The empty camera trembled in my hands. It was a new kind of fear shaking my body from toe to hair, and twisting my face.