JOHN G. MORRIS (1916)

Prisonnier, Normandie, 1944 Tirée à Chicago, 1945 Épreuve argentique d'exposition d'époque, 338x226 mm, signée, Get the Picture page 78 German Surrender in Normandy, 1944 Printed in Chicago, 1945 Large vintage gelatin silver print, 338x226 mm, signed, published in Get the Picture page 78 An hour after the St. Malo shooting incident a group of German prisoners were brought in, hands over heads. One had perhaps fired the shot that missed me. "You poor kid," I thought as I took his picture. FRANCE With London under rocket attack, the joke among American soldiers in the summer of 1944 was that it was safer to be at the front than in London. That was not what made me decide to go to France in July, 1944, but it's what I told Dele in a letter. The real reason was that I wanted to share the experience of covering combat with those whom I asked to do it on a daily basis. Since I wasn't a qualified photographer, I invented a job. Life was in a picture pool with the three wire services: Associated Press and the London affiliates of UP and International. It was easy to persuade them that they needed a "pool coordinator" in France. That got me the credentials I needed. In mid-July I walked ashore on Utah Beach, with Ned Buddy, who had a job similar to mine as coordinator of the newsreel pool. We were assigned to the First Army Press Camp, which had taken over a chateau near Vouilly and its surrounding garden. There I was based for four weeks, going out each day with a Life or wire service photographer, in a jeep with a driver assigned to us. Since undeveloped films were sent by courier to London, there was little "coordinating" to be done. For once I carried a camera - in case I got separated from the photographer I had gone out with. I sent my films back to London but instructed the darkroom to give priority to the "real" photographers. Once, at a forward observation post on the front at St. Malo, Capa was challenged by an artillery officer to walk into the German lines to ask