Somewhere in France. Summer ’44.
John G. Morris
Contact Press Images
London, July 1944, German V1 and V2 flying bombs were pouring down on the capital. Life magazine had its correspondents in France where epic battles were being waged after the landing of the Allied troops on the beaches in Normandy. John G. Morris was determined to get away from his office as picture editor/Europe for the prestigious illustrated US weekly magazine which, with a focus on photography, was a source of news for millions of readers, in particular with pictures by Robert Capa. He decided to head for Normandy with a Rolleiflex borrowed from work.
“My self-appointed task was to go out and work with the different pool photographers on a daily basis. The fighting on the beach was finished but there was lots of fighting very close by. I felt it was my job. Here I was assigning people to cover the war at risk of life and I figured I should share it.”
The dozen rolls of 120 mm black and white film he brought back from those four weeks in the summer of ’44 were then left in a drawer. Shortly before turning 97, at the time of the 70th anniversary of D Day (June 6, 2014), Morris has gone to the report forgotten in the past. He had only ever used a few shots.
Preview
On July 18, 1945, John Morris left London, and the next day reached Utah Beach near Sainte-Mère-Église, grandly introducing himself as “Acting Coordinator, Press Photographers, Western Front.” He was determined to go out with the photographers covering US army operations for his magazine whenever he could, with his fellow countrymen, Robert Capa, Robert Landry, Ralph Morse and Frank Scherschel, and George Rodger from the UK.
In Normandy, the mixed woodland and pastures with hedgerows made it difficult for Allied forces to move at any speed. American high-altitude carpet-bombing caused tremendous damage, including to its own forces. Morris was lucky to escape the worst case of “friendly fire” in US military history, which left more than a hundred dead near Saint-Lô, including General Lesley McNair and Bebe Irvin, the Associated Press photographer Morris was meant to be with that day.
He expected to encounter fierce Germans, but some turned out to be terrified teenagers, almost children, or beleaguered men. In Brittany and Normandy, Morris saw black GIs, members of the French Resistance in rag-tag uniforms, and “indigenous troops” who had just been released from the Frontstalags [German detention camps located in France]. Seeing things for the first time, he recorded horse-drawn carts, the smiling butcher who was not supposed to sell meat to the Allies, and reporters sitting outside and typing their copy; in Rennes there was the spectacle of a local spitting at a woman being arrested for having allegedly slept with a German.
On August 15, 1945, John Morris was back in London. Ten days later, six Life photographers were in Paris when the French capital was liberated by the 2nd Armored Division under General Leclerc.
Robert Pledge, Director, Contact Press Images
